Redlands

Perfect weekend in Redlands.  I wish J & I could have stayed a little bit longer down there.  More and more I realize how fortunate I was to have grown up in such a lush home, neighborhood, city...  Every time I go back there, I am struck by the loveliness and indisuputable quality of the physical surroundings.  Apart from a few select places in the poshest parts of Los Angeles, I've seen no residential areas as pleasing to the eye as our part of Redlands, not even in San Marino or the often-touted Country in Diamond Bar.  Suburban bliss?  Only in East Redlands!  Perhaps M & D really ought to consider retiring in Redlands when D finally closes up his practice in Hemet.

I also discovered that S has super-cool friends.  I always knew that R did, but this weekend was the first opportunity I'd ever had to mingle with S's amigos.  Everyone had an absolute blast at his "re-30th."  A lil' bit of everything...squeaky clean fun for the uninitiated, sweets for the decadent...*wink wink*  Good times!

Worth the 2 days lost of paper-writing?  Without a question!

Oahu, here we come!

It's settled.  We are going for sure at the end of May!  We're both giddy as schoolgirls, and we grin like goofy idiots everytime we look at each other (and that's, like, alllll the time)!

Our agenda includes scoping out the U of H at Manoa (you know, my future employer!) and affordable real estate (ever heard of Aiea?).  Of course, we don't plan on moving there any time soon, but perhaps the time will be ripe in about 10 years...

Spring Break

Spring break 2006 is almost over.  I think I've been productive.  The presentation's in a month, and I'm starting to feel the nerves.  I need to continually remind myself that this is a work in progress and it doesn't have to be perfect.  And, anyway, when are articles ever perfect in the academic world?  It's practically guaranteed that someone's gonna rip your work to shreds.  I mean, we do it all the time in our classes.  What goes around...  *sigh*

So, obviously, another spring break has come and (almost) gone without J and me having gone anywhere.  Darn you, you two-faced, middle-of-the-semester Berkeley spring breaks!  We've been daydreaming incessantly about blue skies, brilliant sunshine, and warm, aqua-ocean beaches, but we'll have to wait for the semester to end before we can actually live out any of these island-ly longings.  We haven't decided for sure yet, but we'll probably be going to Oahu in late May.  J has never been to any of the Hawaiian islands, but he's already talking about moving to Honolulu!

We've joked about moving to Hawaii countless times in the past, but I think we're actually semi-serious these days.  SF and East Bay weather may be amazing compared to, say, Connecticut weather, but it's still rough having to endure 9+ months of too-cold-for-tank-tops weather every year.   The only drawback would be the absence of snowy mountains for snowboarding.  We'd have to fly to Japan or Australia for that! (;

My man is more of a feminist than 99% of the women in this world.

I am extraordinarily lucky.   

That, sadly, is extraordinarily unfortunate.

Sixteen miles lie between my new home and the Berkeley campus. For the first two weeks of this semester, I drove the commute, but the terrible parking situation in Berkeley quickly put an end to that. I investigated public transportation options and learned that I could bus from the local transit station to the BART station, and then ride the BART into Berkeley. Eventually, I will be able to walk from my house to the transit station, but for the time being, road construction prohibits me from doing so. For now, I have to drive to and park at the transit station, which is not as easy as it sounds. The station's lot fills up completely by 6:20 a.m., so I have to get there before then to secure a parking space. Not a particularly ideal situation when your first class doesn't start until 11 a.m., y'know?

Here's a recap of my first park-n-ride experience:

5:00 a.m. Alarm rips me from my heavenly slumber
6:00 a.m. I'm out the door, hair dripping
6:10 a.m. I arrive at the transit station, heart pounding, concerned that I haven't arrived early enough to get a parking space
6:12 a.m. Score! I find a spot!
6:15 a.m. Watch in amazement as the remaining spaces fill up, still elated that I managed to snag a space
6:20 a.m. Realize that it would be ridiculous to ride into Berkeley this early in the morning because no one will be on campus for another hour and a half. Now what?
6:21 a.m. Recline the seat and try to take a nap
6:45 a.m. Wake up shivering from the extreme cold. Try to warm up by covering myself with a flimsy rain poncho 
8:05 a.m. After nearly two hours of immune system-busting half-slumber, I stumble out of the car and wait for the bus
8:50 a.m. Arrive in downtown Berkeley and walk to campus
9:00 a.m. Trudge into a library and fall uncomfortably asleep on a wooden bench
11:00 a.m. Go to class groggy and with bench marks on my face
11:01 a.m.-11:00 p.m. Hate life and curse my wretched fate