In NC

Hellllooooo! I'm in NC for a week. I got here Wed July 28 and I'm leaving Tues Aug 3. Steve is in Hawaii during this time. :-P What a hard life he has!!! ;-) I took him to the Baltimore airport Wed morning, and I'm spending the night in Baltimore again this coming Tues night (and hopefully Katherine will be joining me!) and picking him up Wed morning. He's having all sorts of fun: went scuba diving (touched an octopus on the head!), snorkeling (with wild turtles!), hiked to a waterfall, and tomorrow he's taking a helicopter tour around the island. He's on Kauai, the most uninhabited, natural of all the Hawaii islands. He went by himself, but met up for a few days with two of our friends from Penn State. They were there for the APA annual conference, but Steve sure isn't, LOL!

Thursday I cleaned out my room at home, for a new tenant to move in today. For 10 years, my parents have been talking about renting a room to a student at some point and it has finally happened. They wanted to do it the spring before I went to graduate school, but I had a fit because I would have had nowhere to live for 3 months! I told them that, once I went to Penn State, I wouldn't mind, but before, I would be very upset about being displaced. Anyway, their ultimate plan has always been to renovate the basement into an apartment (kitchen, bathroom, etc) but that would cost a lot up front, so for now they're just renting my old bedroom. It's upstairs and only shares a bathroom with Z's room, so there's more privacy than if all 4 bedrooms were together. Plus, Z is on the trail until December, so he'll have the whole upstairs to himself! The guy's name is Eddie, and he's a physics graduate student at Wake Forest, from China. His wife is in a graduate program at Appalachian, so this was a perfect deal for them--it's cheap ($200) compared to all other apartments around town, which is good since they're paying two rents, and he'll only be in W-S during the week, and Boone for weekends and holidays. It sucked that I had to spend a whole day at the beginning of my visit cleaning out my room (leaving furniture though), and I have to stay in Z's room for the rest of the time, but it makes sense because I'm only home 2-3 weeks a year. What remains to be planned is where I'll stay once Z gets back from hiking the Appalachian Trail, and moreover, where Steve & I would stay if he comes home with me for Christmas this year. There is a pull-out couch in the basement....but the basement is cluttery and makes me insane!!! We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.

Friday, I went down to Greenville and Furman and saw 3 people in 5 hours! I walked around campus & chatted with my friend Julie (just graduated, 2 yrs younger than I am), then visited with Sophia (aka "Dr. P," my wonderful undergrad research advisor) for a little while, and then had dinner with Bryan (aka "Bryyyyyyyyaannnn," as Z says). All of these people are moving from Greenville in the next couple days, too, so I caught them just in time! Julie is moving to Columbia SC for the music education graduate program at USC. Sophia has resigned from her faculty position at Furman :-O because she was burned out after only 5 years, working too much, and although everything looked great for tenure, decided that a life that crazy was not a long-term solution. She, her husband, and 2-year-old daughter are moving to St. Louis, where her family is, and she will be teaching at a community college. She’s happy about the choice, even though it’s a serious downgrade, and one that’s not easy to reverse. She won’t have a lab or have any active research, so it will be difficult for her to get another four-year college job ever again. It’s sad and scary to me that one of my role models has already burned out on academia! Sophia was one of my inspirations for going into this field, and I hate to see that she has become disillusioned with it so quickly. :-(

I caught Bryan on his way out of town, to move to San Francisco CA, seriously. He had spent all that day packing the moving van with his & his girlfriend’s stuff. He locked his apartment, dropped off the keys, met me at Subway for dinner, and then he & his girlfriend were heading to Chattanooga to spend the night and continue on to CA today. Crazy!!! Get this…he will be working for the Girl Scouts of Santa Clara County, doing web and computer stuff. Even funnier, everyone who works for the Girl Scouts has to join! ROTFL.

Today, I’m hanging out with my mom & grandmother, and might meet up with my aunt (“Aunt Sister”) for coffee in a little bit. Lazy days are lovely things.