My computer is struggling to transfer many GB of files from my harddrive to the server. To reduce its workload, I’ve done everything else I can think of that doesn’t involve my computer—straightening up my desk, filing papers, talking to a few coworkers to get some questions answered... and my computer is STILL transferring files. Bleh.

Today is my 1 year anniversary at work. Sadly, this is the longest I have held a single job in my entire 26 years of life, not counting the two years I was in grad school and working for the company that paid my tuition. It’s been... different than I expected. Recently I’ve gotten an opportunity to work on a new program, and it’s been nice to stretch my brain a bit and do something different. I have a feeling this won’t be a long-term job for me, but then again, I have trouble seeing anything as a long-term job for me...

I got a haircut yesterday, and I think it’s the first time that my wonderful stylist here has goofed. I spent forever messing with it this morning and eventually ended up going to work with my hair in a ponytail. Ugh. I can’t decide if I want to go back to have her trim it, or if I want to wait a few days to see if I get used to it (or at least figure out how to not gag when I look in the mirror).

My paper for this conference is due on Monday, and in typical fashion, I’ve put it off the final edits until the very last minute. I’ve had a hard time getting motivated for this thing, especially now that our travel arrangements for Hawaii are all set. :) I’m not getting graded on the paper or the presentation, although it would suck to look like an idiot in front of people I’ve never met, just like it would suck to look back at this paper in several years and wish I had spent more time polishing it.

Meh.

Good news!

I am thrilled/relieved/amazed to report that my eyes are doing better! I have a few theories on why they’re doing better, but I can’t be sure... best case scenario, it’s because I started allergy shots a few months ago and the shots are working. Worst case scenario, the past few weeks have been a complete fluke. My best proof so far is that on Saturday night, I spent a few hours outside on a friend’s porch and drank a single beer and my eyes only looked mildly pink the next morning. Hooray! Just a couple months ago, spending two hours outside, staying up late, and drinking any kind of alcohol would have turned me into an unbearably itchy, red-eyed monster, so this is definitely an improvement. I think it’s also helped that we’ve had the air conditioning on almost all the time that we’re home these days. I still have a ways to go—the whites of my eyes aren’t yet that beautiful healthy pale blue, no contacts yet, and I’m still on the allergy eye drop, but even small improvements are fantastic. (Seriously, sometimes I look at makeup ads in magazines and wonder if the whites of the models’ eyes have been photoshopped because it’s been so long since my eyes were that clear.) And believe me, the contacts party is still on if I make it that far!

The other interesting/exciting thing that’s been consuming my time lately is looking for a townhouse. When Josh first suggested it a few months ago, I scoffed at the idea because—come on—only grownups buy houses! We’ve been looking primarily in Reston, which is a wonderfully green, outdoor-oriented city a few miles east of where we currently live. I’ve fallen in love with a couple of places that we’ve looked at so far—one was a top floor condo on Lake Thoreau with an amazing balcony overlooking the lake and a dock for us to keep our own kayak (!). But it was a foreclosure, small, and needed A LOT of work. I loved how much potential it had, but it would have quickly stretched home-repair skills and budget, even before the $300/month condo fees. Josh was not amused.

The second place was a contemporary townhouse a couple miles west of the south Reston lakes. It was HUGE, very well maintained, had a beautiful deck and yard, and backed up tons of mature trees and running trails. Plus, we met several neighbors the couple times we were there to look at the house, and everyone was extremely nice. The icing on the cake was the turtle Josh found in the backyard. :) We had a couple reservations though, so while we debated the merits of this house for a couple days and the “oh my gosh, are we actually going to do this??” another couple swooped in and made an offer, and the sellers accepted it. I was really disappointed.

Unfortunately, everything else we’ve seen since then hasn’t lived up to the turtle townhouse. We found another place this past weekend that’s possible, but we haven’t fallen in love with it like at least I did with the other two. The size and layout would work very well for the two of us, but it has a few potential resale issues and it would require some work (although nothing too involved). Still, I like the area and it meets a lot of my top criteria... we just haven’t fallen in love.

Work has been frustratingly boring recently. I’ve been finding myself at work daydreaming about all the other glamorous careers I could have—journalist, photographer, environmental activist or researcher, writer for HowStuffWorks.com, any work for National Geographic. Then I get even more carried away and start wishing I lived somewhere like France, for example, where I’d only have to work 35 hours a week. The wife of a friend of mine has a job where she’s required to work 50 hours a week, but she’s compensated by a salary that’s 1.25 times what the standard for that position would be. From a standard 40 hours a week perspective, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t take the extra hours for the extra pay. When I turn it around though and think about whether I would take a 25% pay cut to work only 30 hours a week, I’m less sure of my decision. Once you have the money and your lifestyle “inflates”, it would be harder to go back.

Yesterday I finally booked my ticket to go to Hawaii this August.

!!!!!

I booked my flights through work, because officially, I’m going to to Honolulu present a paper at the AIAA GN&C conference. Josh got on the same flights using miles, because unofficially, we’re going on vacation, baby!

I’m presenting in one of the morning sessions on Thursday, August 21st, so we’re arriving on Wednesday afternoon and then staying an extra week until Sunday the 31st. We get to stay at the swanky Honolulu Hilton Wednesday night, but after the conference, we’re getting booted out of the hotel and will probably be staying in grungier places the rest of the trip. But hey, grungy in paradise is better than anyplace here!

So we basically have no idea what we’ll be doing for rest of the time that we’re there. Josh wants to see the areas where they filmed Jurassic Park, I want to go surfing, and we both want to see volcanoes. We know another couple that is staying in Hawaii after the conference, so we might tag along on a few of their adventures. I’ve heard that island-hopping isn’t cheap, but I spent a week in Oahu a few years ago, so I’d like to at least go to the Big Island and Maui or Kauai. Ahh, so many choices...

Funniest work compliment I have ever received (sent in an email today):

“Melanie, these are absolutely amazing charts. You are my favorite plotter of all time.”

So I may not have any analytical skills or guidance & control talent, but at least I can plot stuff in Matlab.

Notes on domestic life

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always had chapped lips. It was probably a combination of my stupid habit of rubbing my lips together when I’m nervous, which happened all the time at gymnastics practice (not to mention continuously drinking from my water bottle), and playing wind instruments growing up. It seemed that I could never get enough Chapstick on my lips, so I started carrying a tube around in my jeans pocket all the time. The days that I forgot it or lost it to the dryer meant dry, peeling, cracked ugliness, and those were the times that I would say to myself that when I finally grew up and had my own place, I would stock every room with Chapstick so that I was never more than an arm’s reach away from one. I had forgotten that until recently, and the day after I recounted my dream to Josh, he showed up at my place with a three-pack of Chapstick whose contents we have since divided and stashed around my apartment. It’s glorious.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about food. I’ve been thinking to myself that I should really make more of an effort to eat more healthfully and eat a wider variety of foods. Enter my bread machine. It was a gift from my dad several birthdays ago, and I used it a couple times in Houston and once in Boston, but mostly it sat in its cardboard/styrofoam home on top of the cupboards. But several weeks ago, I was inspired to make stuff from scratch, so I pulled it out again and baked a loaf of whole wheat bread. I did this several times, and the loaves always came out fine, but the recipe constantly wavered somewhere between slightly off (fresh) and downright gross (week-old). Over the weekend I finally discovered that it’s because the whole wheat recipe uses molasses instead of sugar. Blech. Molasses doesn’t belong in bread. So I tried the basic white loaf (which uses sugar) and substituted one cup of whole wheat flour for one cup of the white flour. Yum! The only thing I’m going to do differently next time is reduce the salt. The bread machine is officially in business.

Still on my kick, I went to the library today and checked out a Cooking Light cookbook titled 5-Ingredient 15-Minute Cookbook. Perfect for people like me for whom anything more than boiling pasta water is “a lot of work” for dinner. It’s quick (duh), healthy (duh), there’s a picture of every recipe, they suggest side dishes to go with each meal, and they even write out a grocery list for you. Yeah, I know… how lazy can you get… but trust me, I need all the help I can get.

I’ve also discovered a hidden benefit to quasi-living with someone else – there’s more inspiration to cook because you won’t have mountains of leftovers, and – AND – there’s someone else to split the work! I usually “cook” dinner for the two of us, and Josh is awesome on dish duty.

Belated birthday

My 26th birthday was just over a week ago, and it feels very strange to say that I am 26 years old. My actual birthday was very low-key, since work has been so busy lately and Josh and I had just gotten back from our whirlwind wedding weekend extravaganza. It was crazy—a friend’s wedding in Richmond on Friday night, driving back to DC early in the morning to catch a plane to Detroit for my dad’s wedding on Saturday night. And that still feels weird to write too! Anyway, I had to stay late at work on Monday, so Josh and I just went out to dinner at TGIFriday’s that night. I told Josh several weeks ago that I wanted to go to the Melting Pot for my birthday dinner, but I knew we wouldn’t get a chance to go before we left for the weddings, so maybe when he gets back this weekend we’ll be able to do it. We made plans to go there nearly three years ago when we both worked in Houston, but it never worked out, so I’m hoping that the second time’s the charm. :)