It's Over

The title very neatly describes the events in my life recently that has culminated in a sigh of relief and a splitting headache.

My brother's visit ended Saturday, and to say I'm a little sad to see him go is understating it a bit. While I'm sure he felt the week was slightly underwhelming in the form of entertainment, it was more activity that either me or Jeremy are used to on school nights. Yes, we are old and boring, but hopefully we managed to not totally ruin his vacation. As Jeremy put it, his visit gave us another person to stare at. After we took him to the airport Saturday morning, Jeremy and I came home and absolutely crashed. I spent the better part of 2 days napping on the couch, trying fitfully to sleep through a migraine.

Another activity I am happy to say is at an end is unpacking. Yes, we are officially finished with the chaos that was box killing. Now, cleaning and laundry are unending tasks in my life, but at least, I no longer have to spend hours trying to find new places for things that seem to have homes in our old apartment. Which brings me to question that I've been pondering. Our apartment in Memphis was a 2BR apartment. Our current apartment is a 2BR. Somehow, we seem to have less room here even though the square footage here is larger. We had even gotten rid of a lot of furniture before we moved. I fully believe that there was a worm hole in one of our former closets that allowed for the storage and retrieval of little used items.

College basketball also ended this weekend, much to our dismay. We had hoped to travel to Detroit to watch the Final Four, but alas that was not meant to be. This leaves us fans also in limbo as to whether our coach will return next year. I hope that this current hoopla is his way of negotiating a better contract, but I am not holding out too much hope. Very disappointing.

Busy

My brother arrived safely, and we've been on the go since. After an exciting weekend of basketball, we have a full schedule of eating out and watching movies. It's nice to have someone visit, and it's unbelievably nice to have a clean apartment. We've actually done a really nice job keeping things organized on a day by day basis.

Life is Good

Our friends in Memphis just welcomed their new baby girl into the world today. Congrats to them! We can't wait to meet her, but she'll be almost a year old by the time we see her.

Last night, Jeremy and I officially finished cleaning our apartment. It was actually easier than I had imagined even though it seemed a daunting task. I guess the marathon cleaning that we'd embarked on all month paid off. A little vacuuming tonight will finish everything off. We can't wait until my brother gets here tomorrow. This will be the first visitor we've had since we officially moved in.

The weather here is beautiful, and Spring seems to be officially here even though it's going to be a little chilly this weekend. I really needed the sun to come out. It has been very uplifting.

Tigers play their first NCAA game today. I can't listen to it today because of a meeting, but I hope they play well. Go Tigers!

It's Been Awhile

I haven't posted anything for awhile because I'd been in a funk physically, emotionally, and professionally. It wasn't anything earth-shattering, but had I posted, it would have been one whiny post after another and nobody needs that. Not to say that nothing good had happened in the last few weeks because that's not entirely true. The bad would have overshadowed everything.

That being said, I'm ready to begin writing about my life again. My brother is visiting next week, so it's lit a fire under our butts to actually finish the little things that we've been putting off. After spending a chunk of money getting the last things for the apartment, we are just about done. It is a nice feeling to look around and see everything the way I want it. The down side of the manic cleaning this weekend is the muscle pain that comes with climbing up and down the stairs a million times. My legs haven't hurt like this in a long time.

Future

This weekend is going to be a busy one, with lots of fun and lots of work. Tomorrow, we have an action packed day. I've been looking forward to every minute of it all week. We're headed off to Ikea again to finally purchase the bed for the office/guest room. We've finally gotten the room cleared out enough to actually get the last piece of furniture. There are still little bits and pieces of things that I haven't figured out where to put, but overall, the room is done.

We've been working really hard on finishing the room because we're hoping to have various guests come over in the coming months. My brother who was going to visit in February will likely come visit us for a week in March. That is provided he doesn't get the job he wants. Either way, he'll probably be applying for grad school at CMU, so he may be spending some time with us before it's all said and done.

Jeremy's mom and stepdad may also come and visit us in the spring, so it'll be nice not to have to rush and clean for them. After this weekend, if they were to just drop by, I won't have a heart attack/panic attack.

After Ikea, we'll come home and watch the Tigers basketball game. They're in Hattiesburg this weekend, and the game should be fun and loud. It'll be a good Valentines Day activity. After the game, we'll go eat dinner and then go ice skating. I'm looking forward to the entire event.

Sunday should be a nice, relaxing day with nothing much to do. Regular chores like laundry and finishing the office are all that's on the list. It'll be a nice change of pace.

Home

It's been a long time since I actually required airfare to go home for the holidays, and I'd forgotten just how crazy prices are. Since we don't know if Jeremy will have a job yet, we're limited by several factors when planning trips home. We both very much want to go to Dallas for Thanksgiving and Memphis for Christmas. However, as we approach those holidays, it seems like we'll be in Pittsburgh for both. If Jeremy doesn't find a job, we'll likely not be able to afford to go home for either holiday. If Jeremy does get a job, we may not have the vacation days to go home. This sucks because I've found inexpensive tickets to Dallas but the return date is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. We'd be able to afford the tickets but Jeremy probably won't be able to get two extra days off work. Ideally, we'd got to Dallas for just 4 days, but the cheapest ticket then would run us about 1k apiece. Not exactly financially feasible even if Jeremy did get a job.

As for Christmas, if can't go back to Memphis, we'll miss the entire basketball season. There's a good possibility that with a job, he'll only get Christmas Eve/Day and New Year's Day off. This means that there's no way we'd be able to go to Memphis.

It was so much easier when we both worked for Universities so we got all holidays off similar to the students. Additionally, when we could just hop in a car and drive to Dallas or down the street to his family's we didn't have to weigh the costs. The plus side I suppose is that Jeremy's mom and stepdad will probably visit us in the spring. My brother may come up to visit the schools and go skiing this winter. It will be hard not spending the holidays with family though.