A Capitalist Brew

We had cool, perfect weather on our trip.  We returned home to find that summer has officially arrived in the South.  There are no days below 90 in sight, and the humidity is stifling even at sunrise.  At least our new house has shade and a new air conditioner.

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• Road trip started driving the first day as far as Roanoke, VA. The kids were quickly tired of the trip, and Brooke was sick the first day. We actually left the house late because we were not sure that she would even be able to be in the car. After several hours Brooke started to ask why we were still in the car and pointed out that flying would be much faster. We did find some interesting places to stop to eat and walk around in Chattanooga and a small town in Virginia.
• After a rough night getting Luke to sleep in a bed for the first time, we set out for the rest of the drive to PA. The drive was smoother the second day. We saw a lot of motorcycles along the way who we thought might be headed to DC. Brooke also had fun constantly asking if we were seeing woods, asking if there were bears in the woods, asking how old each tree was, and shouting out “Look, a farm!
• We were in PA from Friday night until Monday afternoon. We enjoyed the mountain wilderness, a trip to the local amusement park, many rides on Papa’s big tractors, and visiting with the family. Luke started to get the hang of sleeping in a bed with me, but he also ended up catching Brooke’s cold.
• On Monday we left PA for DC. We explored our old stomping grounds in Northern Virginia and found that not much had changed before heading into our hotel in DC. On Tuesday we took the kids on the Tourmobile around DC and spent most of our time around the monuments and at the Natural History museum. Brooke really loved the dinosaur bones, the rock and mineral exhibit, and the special live butterfly exhibit.
• On Wednesday morning I ran over to walk around George Washington University before I spent the rest of the day at a conference.  I presented the third essay in my dissertation, which went very well.  I also met some doctoral students who were asking me questions, wanted me to read their papers, and were interested in doing some work together.  For the first time I started to realize that I am no longer the student and am on my way to establishing myself as a researcher.  This is a very strange and new feeling that I must grow into.  On Wednesday afternoon we left DC and drove as far as High Point, NC before settling into a hotel for the night.
• On Thursday morning we headed to Charlotte to visit with our friends Melissa and Ursula.  Brooke had been excited about seeing Ursula since we first left on our trip, and the girls had a lot of fun playing together.  The last time the girls had been together, they were less than one year old!  After lunch we went on with the drive knowing that our home and our own beds were waiting for us at the end of the line.  It was a long week with a lot of driving, a lot of stops, and a lot of fun.  Sometimes the trip was pretty tough with Luke.  He was sick and grumpy a lot of a the time, and Scott was sick and tired for the last day or two of the trip.  Coming home was great, but Bella is doing very badly after being boarded for such a long time.  And now we are faced with the task of packing up and getting ready for the big move in one month.

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After a week on the road up and down the east coast, we are back home.  My nerves are shot, and our home is complete and utter chaos right now.  Hopefully we can re-gain control over the weekend and I will be able to gather enough time and energy for a real post.

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The kids both had their last day of preschool this week (Tuesday for Luke and today for Brooke).  I am not sure how Brooke is really feeling about all of it, but it was hard to say goodbye.  We may still see some of these people before we leave because they go to our church, but for some it was definitely the goodbye.  I had not expected it to be as hard as it was, and I tried to seem as upbeat and hopeful as I could for Brooke’s sake.  I know she is sad as she thinks about leaving behind her friends as one already moved and left her several weeks ago.  I don’t really know what to say to make her feel better knowing that it is likely she will never see most of those friends again.  It’s not like they are older and will email or something.  I have told her that we can write letters and send pictures and that I know some of her friends will like that and write back.  I try talking about the new house and new friends we will make at TaeKwonDo and school.  We are really going to miss everyone.

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School and graduation are over and done, and yet in the past few days I find myself carrying more stress than I did in the days leading up to graduation.  This is the time I should be basking in the glow of my accomplishment and enjoying a little break, isn’t it?  What am I doing wrong?  I think what I see is the dwindling number of weeks before we move and the increasing number of things to deal with in those diminishing days.  This weekend was consumed by Brooke’s ballet recital, and this week is making sure everything here is ready for us to be gone for a week (last day of school for the kids, teacher presents, dog boarding, mail, packing and traveling with the kids, being ready to go to TaeKwonDo testing the day we return, etc.).  During the time we are gone we will also be taking a side trip to DC where I will be presenting at a conference in front of a very distinguished group of scholars.  The paper is ready, but the presentation is incomplete.  I also had hoped to have a different paper ready to send out to a journal before I left on this trip, but that is delayed.  And this delay means my deadline for the next paper is going to end up delayed too.  I really need to be working on these things but seem to be lacking the discipline to just sit down and work for a few hours straight (I think it is all those other things I mentioned that are mentally prohibiting my mental focus).  And have I mentioned moving?  I don’t even know where to begin with that one.  I have a big mental barrier in place that is keeping me from even acknowledging the move until June.  I seriously need to punch and kick some things.

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Even with the price of gas pushing $4 a gallon, I’ll splurge on a tank or two for this Sunday drive.

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It has been 3 months since I took the plunge and became a Mac girl. I am asked pretty regularly how I feel about the switch, and I guess I am the test run for a lot of people still standing on the edge and deciding if they too should make the leap. So, I felt like I owed my blog readers a report. If you are thinking about getting a Mac, you should do it! I have the smaller Macbook Pro, and I love it. There has not been one day when I wanted to go back to a PC. In fact, just the opposite. The few times I have had to boot up a PC, that miserable and disgruntled feeling quickly returned. I heart my Mac.

I will be up front about the few issues I have had with the Mac though because there are a few. First, I have some issues with the Brother multifunction printer we bought prior to getting the Mac. The scanner software does not work. You can scan something, but then you can’t get it to save on the computer. Also, on some flash-based pages where I want to print things for the kids to color or whatever, I can print nothing but a blank page. So, there is a definite issue with this particular printer, but I have no love for it anyway and have had my eye on a Canon multifunction for a while. Also, there is no card reader in the Macbook Pro, but you can solve this by purchasing an internal or external card reader separately. I think those are the only issues I had at all, and they are more like minor annoyances every once in a while.

The good thing is that almost everything I need can be done on the Mac. The exceptions are my tax software and some specialized real estate valuation software that I have used as part of a graduate course in real estate investment in the past. I won’t be using it next year, so that is not a problem. Every other piece of software I could want either came on the Mac or can now run on the Leopard OS. I am running MS Office 2004, Endnote, and Stata all for the Mac. It is all great. The only issue at all is with (surprise!) the Microsoft Office software. I chose to purchase the Office 2004 student and teacher version because I did not want to pollute the Mac with the Windows OS. It could do it, but I felt like it really would be like a form of nasty pollution. Office for the Mac was my only other alternative. The iWorks suite is fabulous for home use, but I really need to use Office to seamlessly share files with my colleagues and students. Office 2004 is compatible with the Windows versions used by all my colleagues, which is why I didn’t go with the new Office for Mac (which is a total mess if others are not using the new versions too, and they are not). From the trial version that came with my Macbook Pro, I thought I would have no problems. Unfortunately, there are a few features missing from my version of Office. The more advanced Excel data analysis tools are nowhere to be found as is the Word equation editor. So, the few times a year I will ever need those features, I will be forced to take the files over to my old (or new work) PC. Again, that seems to be more a problem with the version I purchased than with the Mac. Another annoyance, but it can be dealt with easily. I have had no problems sharing files with colleagues at all, and the Mac software even has the pdf converter embedded in its programs. No extra software is necessary! Awesome for those of us who have to convert Word to pdf on a very regular basis!

Other things I love about the Mac?  I love iphoto.  It is easy to use and integrates well with all the other applications.  I love imovie.  For the first time, I actually got those home movies off the video camera and started doing something with them.  It is fun and easy, and everything I need is already there and working.  Also, ical and the address book are very cool pieces of software that I hope to start using more and more.  I imagine these being even more helpful when I eventually get an iphone.  It took a week or two to get used to the subtle differences about how things work in the Mac world, but it has been an exciting adventure.  Really.  It all just works better and looks better and runs better.  Did I mention my Mac boots up in like 30 seconds or something ridiculous?  Ever sat there waiting 5 minutes for your PC to boot?  Other than the printer, everything just works and works well.  It is like a wonderful dream world where the programs look good, are intuitive and integrated, and are fun to use.  I know there are cool features that I haven’t even tried yet, and so I am still finding new reasons that I love my Mac.

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Today I was privy to an odd email conversation among a group of friends/colleagues.  It was funny but shed light on how weird all of them actually are.  Suddenly I realize why I fit in with them.  Yet, I was never a part of such strange display of behavior before.  Perhaps now that I am officially one of them I will be seeing much more of these weird group dynamics.

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Far before the desire to marry and have children ever entered my mind, the desire to earn a Ph.D. and be a college professor was the big dream of my life. Growing up I always thought the field of study would be geology or geophysics, but the dream never died even when I decided I would not continue any further in that field. This weekend that dream became fully realized as I donned my fancy graduation gown and tam. I walked up on the stage, Z placed my hood over my head, and I finally and most officially crossed over the threshold from student to professor. I tried to remember the moment and the symbolism of that act.

The rest of the graduation ceremony was rather dull. They did nothing but read off names for over and hour and a half. I had a lot of time to really process my thoughts and feelings about the event. I really was not overly emotional about the actual graduation ceremony as I think a lot of doctoral students likewise feel. For me, the big emotional release happened three months ago when I defended the dissertation and got the committee signatures. Defense day, however, was a fairly solitary event that was only shared with my committee members. Graduation day was when I got to share this accomplishment with my family in a way that was real for them. My mom brought with her pictures of all my graduations from preschool through my third college graduation (this was my fourth college graduation) as well as a pendant that I had received at my preschool graduation. It was fun to really look at all of those pictures and see where I started and how I got to this point.

And so, as my husband asked this morning, what is next? We joke about how I may someday go to law school (though it is something I would actually do at night at the right place and time in my life…but not to be a lawyer). I don’t feel much different. I didn’t wake up the day after graduation and suddenly feel like I had all the answers and was an expert in my field. I don’t feel any different at all and wonder if that will change when we leave here and move into my new office and new position.  I guess the next goal is to get published, but with any luck that will not be much of a long-term goal.  I have some short-term goals in mind for my research since I need to get that up and going as quickly as possible.  Beyond that lie things like tenure, but I think I need to figure out who I am as a professor and where I want to go before that enters my sphere of reality.  For now I am just looking to the short-term to lie the groundwork for that eventual long-term goal.  I think my next long-term goal is not work-related at all.  I want to get my black belt in TaeKwonDo and become a certified instructor.  So, I think graduation day was about completing the set of requirements laid before me to achieve my goal.  Moving beyond graduation is figuring out where my interests and passions lie and setting my own new set of challenges and goals for the next phase of my life.

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With my son’s second birthday on Friday, my graduation on Saturday, and Mother’s Day on Sunday, we had a very long weekend of celebrating with gifts, cake, and various food and drink. I will post more about graduation later, but for now I leave you with the yummy cake we enjoyed. The girl at the bakery suggested the money, and I thought it turned out looking very cute and original.

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