The Seversons

So I’ve been teaching for about a month now, but my second class just started a couple weeks so my workload doubled rather suddenly. I’m still trying to juggle how to work things with the new schedule. There is not as much time for running errands around town and I’m up later at night. The first week I caught nearly nothing done. This week I am improving, running errands, scheduling lunches, cooking lasagna. I still haven’t reached my ideal state of getting-stuff-done-ness, but I’m working on it.

As for teaching itself, I do enjoy it a lot so I’m having a good time. I’m even enjoying my two hour drive to Alabama as much as such a thing can be enjoyed. I’m on my third audiobook already. And the whole thing is so delightfully low stress.

However, I did realize something the other day. I started teaching the summer after my first year in law school, back in 2002. Then, my students were close to my age, and many were older. And once a year or so had passed, my students were the age of my younger sister. Then once I finished law school and moved to Atlanta, my students were the age of my next younger sister. And now… my students are the age of my younger brother, the youngest of the four of us. It’s weird. They all stay the same age. I just get older. But I don’t feel much older than them when we’re in the same room. It’s only when I think about it. They’re undergrads. That was a long time ago. Sometimes one will ask if I’ve gone to law school yet. Yes, I went. I graduated. I’ve been practicing for nearly 4 years. I’ve worked in two states, passed two bars, held three different jobs. It’s a little strange.

But I have heard that some lovely business cards will be coming my way. (I have a title now.) I’ll post a picture when they come in.

Speaking of the random age weirdness, Eric’s favorite part of our trip to Chattanooga wasn’t his deep tissue massage, but when we got carded at the movie theater.

Girl behind counter: “Are you over 18?”

Eric and I look at each other.

“Yes. We are definitely over 18.” We laugh.

She gives us a funny look.

“We’re 28!”

We don’t bother to pull out our ID’s.

Finally, I didn’t note a few weeks ago when Eric and I passed a few milestones. We have now been together two years, since the day we picked as the official beginning of our relationship. That day is just a couple days after our 6-months-of-marriage mark. And happily, we are not yet disgusted at the sight of each other. We’ll keep you posted on that. It’s a bigger deal than you think. We are now ahead of most celebrity marriages. We are not yet at the point where brushing our teeth has become foreplay. We still spend most nights at home, which means it’s easy for me to be the most beautiful girl in the room. (Yes, I am a little desperate for material for the blog today. I have shamelessly made two Flight of the Conchords references, with video links, and it was fully premeditated.)

We’ve come home twice over since the last post.  All this travel is unusual for us, but things have been busy.  The Conference in San Diego wasn’t much of a vacation.  Eric had to prepare his lecture and attended a lot of other talks.   It was definitely easier for me.  We knew that the preparation for the conference would be stressful and that there would be a lot of other things going on, so a few months ago we decided to take a little three-day weekend shortly after.

When it comes to traveling, the two of us are very similar.  We like low-key and not a lot of planned activities.  Relaxation is usually the main goal of a trip.  So instead of going somewhere far away and exotic, we just drove up the road a little ways and spent our weekend in Chattanooga.  It gave us a chance to spend some time away from home, without any pressure, but not so long that work stress would start to seep back in.

We found a hotel in the city by the river and scheduled only two activities: a massage for Eric and a pedicure for me.  We kept it simple, as we are prone to do.  As much as possible was done without leaving the hotel.  Eric took two naps on Saturday.  I did lots of reading.  We didn’t go anywhere that would require us putting on nicer clothes.  Eric took a run along the river.  We went to a movie.  All nice and relaxing.  We got back on Sunday afternoon, though I had to teach two students right afterwards.  Eric got to take a nice Sunday bike ride, which has been his habit these last few weeks.

The camera didn’t accompany us, though I doubt we would have had any pictures to take.

Now it’s back to the grind.  Eric is working to finish his Ph.D.  It’s only a matter of whether he finishes it a while before he goes back to med school or whether he works right up to the deadline.  I’m in full working mode now, with two full classes running instead of just one.  I drive to one of them and it’s in a different time zone, so things are a little off in my body clock.  Okay, a lot off.  My sleep patterns are shot between the late night drive home and our recent trip to Pacific time.  Between my crazy sleeping schedule, my classes and my drives, and the tutoring sessions I schedule for private students, my life of leisure is a lot less leisure-ful right now.

It’s not a complaint, really.  It’s good to have things to do.  Now that I have a full week ahead of me I can get into normal routines.  For example, today had a grocery trip, a few loads of laundry, running the dishwasher a couple of times, and baking a lasagna.  Nothing too strenuous but enough to keep me busy and allow for bits of down time here and there.  Eric is about as busy as he’s ever been.  At this point I’m not sure whether things are going to get better once he starts his med school rotations or whether we’ll see even less of each other.  But we do work at being able to see each other when possible.

We will never be much of a jet-setting couple.  While we’re at one of those times in our lives when getting up and going somewhere is more of a possibility, getting through Eric’s PhD is our #1 priority.  And after that med school will be the #1 priority.  Followed by residency.  So talk to us in about 20 years and we’ll see about doing some traveling.    I’m considering taking a tiny trip of my own at some point, since I’ll have at least a couple weeks off in June, possibly more depending on what kind of schedule I get.  But it all depends on lots of things.  And then there’s always the Thanksgiving and Christmas trips which both require quite a bit of distance to cover to see our respective sets of parents.  Eric is weighing the possibility of heading up to Philadelphia to run a race with his sister, Julie.  And I’m trying to talk him into taking a few days off before med school starts again where we can do the same kind of thing we did this past weekend, but for a few more days.  Maybe Savannah or Tybee Island, somewhere within a few hours drive.  Is it strange that I feel like we hardly travel, and yet we’re practically booked through the end of the year?

And it goes without saying that if any of you are ever in the metro Atlanta area, we would be happy to show you around.  Because staying at home is something we do quite well.

I thought I may be able to squeeze in three traveling posts this trip, but it didn’t work out. I didn’t have enough time to write in the last couple days, and yesterday Eric kept hogging the computer while he was working on his presentation so I couldn’t write. Today is our final full day, since tomorrow we head to the airport to start the eternally long trip home. We have decided that flying is one of those things we’re going to try to avoid when at all possible. Especially when the flight is 5 hours long.

Our plans for the remainder of the day are shamefully low-key. We are thinking we’ll chill and grab a movie. Instead of doing a big fancy dinner like we’d thought, we’re going to try and find somewhere reasonably quiet and inexpensive. (Finding one or the other isn’t so hard, but finding both may present a challenge.) Eric has finished his conference stuff so we’re just in crash mode.

The things we wanted to do on our trip were largely accomplished, though not exactly in the order we anticipated. We thought we’d catch the Padres game on Sunday since Eric didn’t have any sessions that really grabbed his attention and the Park is right by the Convention Center. But it turned out it was a sold out game so it left us with an afternoon open. So we hit the road to the sole In-N-Out in San Diego proper. I have become quite the expert at the local mass transit, since we are car-less.

We found it pretty easily and settled in for some burger goodness.

We got Andrea’s advice too late and so still don’t know exactly what “animal style” means, but we were happy enough with what we got. Jeanine, Eric took this picture specifically to make you jealous. My apologies. On our little excursion I did learn that it appears California’s smog problem can be solely attributed to all the idling cars in the In-N-Out drive-thru. It was insane.

After our lunch, we headed back towards downtown. We stopped by the harbor and rented some bicycles to go on a ride around the harbor. While Eric is Mr. Cyclist Expert, he hasn’t ridden a plain old one-speed in a long time so we were on about an equal level of ability. And while I feel extremely out of shape, I was pleased that the limiting factor in the ride wasn’t my legs getting tired, it was my butt getting sore.

This is what happens when Eric is in charge of the camera. I end up looking dorky in lots of pictures. And the following is what happens when Eric isn’t paying attention when he’s walking around:

The bruise is much bigger and scarier in person. He has a nice goose-egg on his leg from walking right into a nasty fire hydrant. If you know Eric at all, the fact that he walked into a large , obvious, and brightly colored object shouldn’t surprise you.

Monday Eric spent most of the day at his conference. I was left to find shoes to match the new dress I bought (an unsuccessful venture, why are this season’s sandals so gross?) and to head out North to meet my friend Chris for lunch. It was nice to squeeze in some girl talk in the midst of the trip. Monday night was the big lab dinner with everyone, but we had to call it an early night since Eric was one of the unlucky ones presenting bright and early the next morning. Presenting on the last day of the conference is really not something you want. It means you spend the rest of the conference being nervous about your presentation instead of just getting it done with.

So this morning we were up early and I got a guest pass to attend the session where Eric presented. I was planning to have pictures, but the camera informed me right before I took one that it didn’t have enough battery power. Lame. Suffice it to say, Eric looked very handsome and he did very well. As for me, I sort of understood what he was talking about which is a huge step forward from last year. It’s hard to say, “Good job, baby,” when it all seems like gibberish. But now I actually think I have a very very low level understanding of epithelial cells.

Our trip has had lovely weather, though it’s a bit cooler than Atlanta right now. The sun’s been out and we even got a little bit burned on our bike ride. The food’s been great and we’ve enjoyed downtown San Diego. Still, I admit I’m looking forward to our next trip to Chattanooga, a little weekend excursion coming up where I won’t have to kill time in the hotel room while waiting for Eric to come back from his conference. Depending on how things go, we may be back again next year when the conference will go to New Orleans, which is another destination with great food and lots to see, so I’m excited about that. Now if we can just survive the return flight, we’ll be okay.

We have arrived in San Diego!  We flew in on Friday, on an incredibly long flight.  Flying cross country is not a little thing.  Then there was the matter of the Screaming Baby of Death that was three rows up from us and that did not stop screaming.  He may take the occasional break for a couple minutes, but then he’d start back up again.  Not having a baby myself but considering one in the future, this made me think about what to do in this kind of situation.  Do you dope up your kid on baby benadryl or something to make them sleep?  At the very least I’d think standing in the aisle may have helped, but the parents never even got up from their seats.  If they thought sitting down would keep them off the radar they were very wrong.

Due to the aforementioned Baby, Eric and I kept our headphones on the whole flight.  We did play trivia together for a long time, since the plane had a trivia game you could play against other passengers.  For the three rounds we played together, I won two and Eric won one so we considered ourselves quite the team.

By the time we got in we had some serious travel fatigue.  We crashed at our hotel almost immediately upon arrival.  Although Eric did take a picture of the view from our hotel room.

If you look off in the distance, the thing with the little arches is the convention center Eric goes to every day.  On Saturday morning we had brunch together (Cafe 222, it was very good, kind of like the San Diego equivalent of the Flying Biscuit, one of our Atlanta brunch spots)  and then checked Eric in for the conference.  I was very happy to see that while I’m a woman who dropped out of the sciences, there were lots of women there.

After a couple hours of walking around together, Eric had to be at a lecture and so he left me to my own devices.  I took a little jaunt through the Gaslamp District, where we are staying in downtown San Diego.  On the way I had to stop and take this picture just for JoLee.

Yes, that is Croce’s as in Jim Croce.  His wife opened up a restaurant and jazz bar a long time ago.  I didn’t know that.  There was an outside display case of a bunch of memorabilia but I couldn’t take a picture because people were eating lunch right in front of it.  I had to explain to Eric before my trip who Jim Croce was because he had never heard of him.  Shameful.  (Bad Bad Leroy Brown, people.)  I took him to the wikipedia page on Croce and said, “Yeah, he died very young.  It was tragic.”  Sure enough the wikipedia page had a whole section entitled, “Sudden Death.”

I did a little shopping in Eric’s absence and got us dinner reservations at Ra to have Sushi.   Andrea left it as a comment in my last post and it turns out it’s just a couple blocks from our hotel and I’d already been thinking about it.  Once you get too far from the pacific, sushi isn’t generally that great of an idea, so I hadn’t had any in a long time.

We don’t think we’re going to get a chance to go to the zoo, which makes me a little sad.  But we are going to hit a few more California requirements.  We’re going to have some Mexican food tonight.  Tuesday we will rent bikes and ride along the harbor, and also track down the closest In ‘n Out Burger.

As you can see, we did remember the camera so there will be pictures to follow.

Sorry for the lack of posting. Eric has been beyond busy. And me, well, I’m currently going back and forth between days when I feel like all the time I have still isn’t enough to get stuff done and days where I do nearly nothing. Today was one of the latter. We did tons of cleaning house this weekend since we had people over for the first time since we got married. (We’ve taken full advantage of the newlywed excuse to just stick our heads in the sand and never leave our house.) So there weren’t nearly as many things as normal to do. But there was still some work I could have done. Like a few loads of dishes. But then the door to the dishwasher finally broke, as it’s been threatening to do for months now. Since the door won’t latch, the dishwasher won’t run. I decided this meant to quit with the dishes. So instead I sat on the couch and watched Weeds and Goodfellas. If I’m doing nothing, at least I can watch people who are doing lots of things.

Eric and I haven’t been able to overlap as much as we’d like this week. He hasn’t been able to come home in the afternoons. And I ended up driving to Auburn Tuesday evening instead of being at home. It’s all okay because on Friday we leave for San Diego. This is very exciting news for me. For Eric it’s not quite as nice since he’s actually going for a conference where he will have to sit and listen to people talk for days. He’s presenting on Tuesday, which is lame because it means he’ll spend Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday worrying about Tuesday. As for me, I’ll be left to my own devices most days and I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do. Our hotel is pretty close to Balboa Park, which in and of itself is a lot to consider. I’ll be sure to report from the road. If you’re lucky, there will be pictures. Though I can’t guarantee this because it’s entirely possible we’ll forget the camera.

Last year I accompanied Eric to the same conference in D.C. We stayed in Crystal City and I did a lot less wandering around than I expected. Even though all the monuments were a metro stop or two away, I mostly took advantage of the break and laid around the hotel room most days. Given my couple weeks of leisure I probably won’t be as desperate for the relaxation. So I think I’ll make at least some attempts at getting out and about. Maybe I will go to the “Hotel Del” which is where they shot Some Like It Hot, one of my favorite movies. I also recently found an old picture of me with my parents there when I was very little. (It should have been the setting for the movie of Somewhere in Time but they moved it. Yes, this is the kind of random stuff I keep stored in my brain. It may seem weird but it helps when you’re playing Trivial Pursuit.)

I am enjoying my new schedule. I’m doing pretty well at working out every other morning. But it means I don’t have much to talk about. Unless you want to hear me talk about Howard’s End, which I’m currently listening to on cd in the car and want to talk about all the time. Or why I’m not sure Joe Pesci was really Oscar-worthy in Goodfellas. I don’t know who his fellow nominees were or anything, I’m guessing he got it because they weren’t expecting decent work from the guy who was that annoying dude in Lethal Weapon 2. I think his work in My Cousin Vinny was much better. This speech can go on, you can also hear my tirade about how I think I’m just over gangster movies in general. (I was considering looking at Casino or Heat or something as a follow-up but now I’m thinking no. Okay, I’ve caved. They’re in my netflix queue. Although right now they’re at 63 and 64.)

The problem, as you may have noticed, is that since nothing is happening, all I have to talk about is the stuff I’m watching and reading. Which goes on my other blog and really shouldn’t get play here.

I mean, I’m teaching, and it’s going well I think, but there’s not much to say. I go, I talk till I’m hoarse, my students stare at me until their eyes glaze over, then they go home. I never get good stories out of it. Well, I have a handful, but that’s only a handful from nearly 6 years of teaching.

Anyway. Tomorrow we’ll get packing and hopefully you’ll see something of interest on our San Diego trip in the future.