Moving, car time, new job

About a third of the way through the busy month of moving stuff, wedding stuff, and new job stuff.

This past weekend, Pat and I drove down to North Carolina (stopping in Richmond for the first night) to hunt for a place to live. After viewing roughly 10 places over 3 days (one even included dead cockroaches!), we found a great, clean, remodeled, 2-bed duplex home to rent in the artsy town of Carrboro. I'll only have a 15 minute drive to work, and it is within walking distance of a lot of neat stuff. Includes 2 parking spaces and tons of storage space.

And as an added plus, we'll be paying almost half of what we currently pay for our 1-bed apartment in Somerville. Love it.

While we were down there, I went into my new office for a couple of hours to say hi and have a couple of meetings. When I think of everything I have to get done and what they expect of me, I want to puke and scream at the same time. It's awesome and scary.

Since getting back to town (after stopping in Baltimore for a night), I've been working for my new company remotely, doing a ton of research and tomorrow is basically all phone calls. While it's nice to be at home with Pat and get work done, I'll be glad to start going into the office in mid-August. It makes it more real somehow when you're made to go in and chill in a cube for 8+ hours a day.

The happiest bit of news from the weekend was that Pat was offered the teaching job he was interviewing for. We're still waiting for the paperwork from the school system, but it should pretty much be a done deal. He's really stoked to be getting back into the classroom, albeit a middle school one (his students will be 8th graders, social studies), and is already planning on coaching lacrosse at the high school across the street.

Very thankful for the good luck that came our way.

This weekend is my first bridal shower, hosted by my matron-of-honor sister-in-law and my wonderful aunt (who will be our wedding officiant). We're driving back down to Baltimore Friday evening, picking up my friend Lori on the way. She and I, and my friend Steph (aka ninja bridesmaid) went to UVM together for grad school. This will be the first weekend we've all hung out since the summer after we graduated! So nuts, so excited.

And I get to see my niece, who is the most awesome little girl on the planet, for reals. She has 2 teeth now; crawls around like a speeding race car; and happily chatters away in nonsense, French, and a few English words. We get to celebrate her first birthday while we're down there, which is really rad.

Happy times right now, busy, but definitely good!