Weekend Activities

I actually got up and went to church today. It's a bad habit of mine to disinclined to do things unless I have someone to do them with, but I kicked myself in the butt and went, and I'm very glad that I did.  I went to the service of Mission Boulevard Baptist Church, and they were quite welcoming.  It was very nice to be interacting with people face to face. Phone calls and chatting on the internet are great, but there is very little substitute for real face-time with people. I fear I am too much of a hermit, typically, for my own good sometimes.  I am so taken with the place on the outset that I considered going to the choir practice, but I got distracted and anyways, I don't quite want to jump in with both feet on the first day. All in all, I am definitely planning on returning next week.  Several of the people there are associated with the university, either working there, formerly having worked there, or attending classes.  There were lots of charming children running about and it was a lively place to be.  I think it will also be good to get to know people outside of the university setting, as well as my classmates.

In other news, I made a great pot of soup.  I took the 15 bean soup mix you can find with the dried beans, and chopped an entire thing of celery, 1 large onion, and a bit of ham plus a ham bone into it. Then I brought it to boil and then simmered it for about three hours. Perfectly delicious, especially on a cool day.

I am preparing to go on a trip to Kansas State in the latter half of this week, so don't expect to hear much from me then.  I have enjoyed phone calls and texts with several of my family members.  I have been abusing the Agatha Christie section of the local library to read the Hercule Poirot novels.

That's about all I can think of at the moment.  Ciao!

Thanksgiving

It is coming up on holiday time and so I have been reflecting on my friends and family.  I don't realize how much time there is in the evenings until I don't have anyone around to spend it with.  I have kept touch with some of you better than others, but I will try to get better about calling and/or texting people. Through the magic of the internet, I got to have dinner and a movie with my boyfriend. We had a video chat, we watched The Mask of Zorro and ate Mexican. It was fun, it felt very themed. I am going to have Thanksgiving dinner at my Professor's house, with his family and some of the other graduate students. I am thankful to have a group to eat with. It may have felt a little lonely otherwise, even though I have another video date that evening when I get home.  ^_^

I have taken advantage of the Thanksgiving market sales to make some banana bread, some pumpkin bread, and I have even gotten myself a little spiral ham.  I am going to cook it up and then store a lot for meals later, and make the bone into a big pot of hambone-bean soup.  I am much looking forward to it. My freezer is quickly filling, which will be nice in a couple of months when I am super busy and have less time to cook.

In a housing update, I have continued to see the occasional roach nymph.  I am not as worried about it, because nymphs do travel a lot more than adults, and so I think they are immigrants from somewhere else. All the same, I put out some baits, because I haven't seen any spiders. I told the office, and they said that the pest control treatment can take a couple of weeks to take real effect, because it needs to get onto some travelling roaches and be taken back to their colony area. That makes sense, and I am not currently too worried about the situation. In a way, it just gives me more of a reason to keep my rooms fastidiously clean than I normally have. It keeps me from getting lazy!  The lightbulb in my front room burned out, and when I went to ask them where I should go to get a new one, and what the wattage should be (since it wasn't recorded on the bulb) they just gave me a new one out of the back room. It has the super small socket, instead of standard, so they said they would just give it to me since they are hard to find. That was convenient.

That is all I have for now, until next time, dear readers. Until next time...

PS: I also listened to all of the archive for the faux-radio show podcast "Welcome to Nightvale" and it was pretty cool.  https://soundcloud.com/nightvaleradio

Settling In

So, I've been running about, getting keys, setting up insurance, arranging my apartment to be livable, and all sorts of things. I've mostly been doing my required reading at home so that I could simultaneously talk on the phone to official people, and unpack, and other things.  As a consequence,  I have felt a distinct lack of human interaction. I get a little of course, but mostly in the business transaction sense, rather than the chatting sense. Tomorrow I plan to spend much of the day in the graduate student office on campus, at my desk. Hopefully, this will help me get to know people, as well as keeping me on track with the things I am supposed to be reading, rather than getting distracted by non-relevant articles and out-dated news.

While I enjoy having my own apartment for a number of reasons, I do miss the companionship of roommate-hood, and the silence can at times be deafening.  The silver lining is that I'm rediscovering all of the music I have loaded onto my iTunes. I hope the my music isn't bugging the neighbors, but no one has complained yet.

BUT feel free to shoot me an email, call, or text if you haven't heard from me in a while, because I really want to stay in contact with everybody!

Ta ta, for now.

PS:  An awesome webcomic to read for positive feelings:  http://zenpencils.com/

So much to do!

Over the weekend, my parents brought me a bunch of stuff that I couldn't bring up in my own car, so I have a proper desk again.  This last weekend marks the last of my vacation.  I have a big long to do list, and so my blog post today will be about all the projects I am working on.

Necessary, and involving some deadlines:

1. Figuring out how to transfer state residency (plates, insurance, driver's license, all that jazz)
2. Background research for my Master's work
3. collaborating on the publications for the project I worked on between undergrad and starting my Masters (currently waiting on collaborators)
4. putting together a publication of my capstone project from undergrad

And these to dos are recreational, and necessary to maintain sanity:

5.Rappan Atthuk online setup
6.Blogging
7.Sewing (once I get my sewing stuff up here) 

And for my health:
8. Cooking decent food for myself on a regular basis

Thankfully, if all else fails, there is a tasty Mexican place quite close by called La Huerta that I can indulge in.

Adventures in Walking!

I have had so many adventures today!

I found an adult, female German cockroach in my bathroom just before I went to bed yesterday. I was able to capture her, and I have named her Hilda. So, I shall now begin a war on roaches in my apartment. My plan of action includes getting glue boards so I am able to assess the extent of the problem, and releasing wolf spiders in my rooms if I am able to find any. There is a pest control place scheduled to come to my apartment Monday to spray, which I do not find an ideal solution, but could be okay. For one thing, all of the dishes and cans of food which I unpacked yesterday have to come back out of the cabinets. I am glad I will be able to be at home when the pest control person comes, so that I can talk with them about whether my cabinet liners will interfere with the effectiveness of the spray, what exactly they are spraying, and generally what it is like to be in that line of work. I have considered going into pest control, if the whole academic research and agricultural work doesn't work out.

I decided to walk into campus today. I intended to attend a library seminar, and I also visited the secretaries to get a jump on my paperwork to get ID, parking pass, etc. I decided to walk partly because parking around campus is ridiculous and I don't have a pass yet so I would have to feed a meter, and partly because it is a beautiful day. It is a 3.7 mile walk to campus. The first 0.7 miles have only intermittent sidewalks, but it's actually not too bad. I can see myself walking to campus regularly in decent weather. Especially if I don't have to take much with me. Plus it is good exercise, and let's face it, it's a nice way to trick myself into getting my exercise. I do love walking though, and I saw some cool things. Firstly, I saw my first roadkill armadillo. It was in pretty good condition so it must have gotten hit very recently. It was amazing to see, because I just don't think of Arkansas as being the right environment for armadillos. I also saw a sign for an estate sale that I may check out, and a cool little mural painted around a manhole cover. It was a psychedelic lizard. I saw a house that was labeled with a name and date, so I assume it is some historic place. Once day I will google it to determine whether it is a place you can tour or not. Next time I walk that route I should bring my camera!

I was a bit peckish when I got to campus so I visited an on-campus cafe thing. The hummus wrap that I got at the Peabody Perks cafe thing on campus was gross. It had a label from the 10^th on it (gross) and it was just completely soggy. It may have been technically safe to eat, but not appetizing at all. I will not be eating there again, at all. Even if their other stuff is okay, I am offended that they even serve such low quality fare. Five days is a bit much. To be fair to them, I did not complain, I can't comment on whether they would have tried to appease me or not.

I got onto campus too late for my the first library seminar, but an hour early for my appointment. I got to talk with my adviser, and I will have an office on campus (for class work and things) and out at 'the farm' (for project work) which will be pretty sweet. I don't know how long I will hold onto the campus office, but it will be great for my first semester, since I will be taking three classes, which is pretty heavy for a grad student, but the rest of my semesters will be like 1 or 2. I'd rather get the heavy semester out of the way, so it's not so bad when I'm putting together my thesis. He has a thing going on much of the day Monday, so I don't have to come in until 2 or so, which I'm happy about since that means I will be able to talk with the exterminator. My meeting to set things up was not as productive as I had hoped. I did get a lot of paperwork done, but I have to wait for it to be processed before I can get an ID or parking pass, or U of Ark. email address or anything. It is alright though, I should be able to take care of much of that Monday. 

Moving In

I had 4 appointments to view apartments in the week before I drove down to Arkansas.  By the time I actually arrived in Arkansas, 2 of those appointments had been cancelled. Such are the frustrations of moving across states, I suppose.  Luckily one of those apartments is working out, so I have a place to live now, and don't have to continue living out of a hotel. Honestly, I didn't think there would be such hot competition for apartments in the middle of November.

This is the first time I am moving into an unoccupied apartment. Previously, I had been moving in with people as a replacement for their previous roommate.  So this is the first time I have had to create water and electric accounts.  I also had to jump through the seven firey hoops of setting up internet, which has its own frustrations. It is a service that people are going to buy no matter what, and even though there is some competition here, I had two companies to choose from, it was still fraught with 'one time set up fees' and other hurtles that pop up once you're half-way through the set-up process. I'm not very happy with AT&T right now, so I went with their competitor, who admittedly is not much higher on my affections list.

Anyway, I have a small apartment, and here are some pics of what it looks like empty. I have ceiling fans!

I sort of like the included bar stools. Door on the left is my room, the far door opens to the bathroom/laundry area.

I have my own laundry machines.  : D

Bedroom doors from left to right are closet, bathroom, and living room/kitchen area.

Anway, hopefully I will have more interesting things to post once I am completely up and running there. I will be starting a Master's degree in Entomology working with insect movement between Switchgrass fields and other crops.  I hope to have other interesting entomological and adventure posts in the future!