the month of august was full of things, as was the rest of the summer. i went from dog/house-sitting at kristin's to visiting matt while he was dog/house-sitting/falling down the stairs at jamie's to packing and moving to a new house. a few have heard this story already, but lacey and i decided to move in together. the anyway overwhelming move was complicated by lacey's lease expiring a few days before we could actually get into our new place. so, we spent about a week with her entire apartment packed into my apartment. it was pretty impressive.
everything went from my place into a u-haul and then into the new townhouse across highway 322 - about 500 yards away. the movers, originally slated for 11:00, showed up at 9:00 am with the notion that they would be "unpacking only" and done & ready to move on to the next job by noon. ohhhhhhh how wrong they were. it was definitely an interesting way to start the day, but as is usually the case, things worked out and our movers helped us load everything into a 32-foot u-haul and across the expressway. those of you who know me well enough to appreciate this will be happy to hear that everything got to the new place in one trip :) 
we kept them busy carrying and hauling until almost 4:00. bless their hearts. lacey and i have been in the new place for almost a month now and things are still sort of coming together.the beginning of the semester is well underway. there are three new students in the developmental area and they all seem to be very nice and fun. i have added jenae neiderhiser to the list of faculty members here that i'll be doing some work with. my primary work will still be with kristin, of course, but jenae and i will be collaborating a project that uses a sample of adopted children, their adoptive parents, and their birth parents to look at heritable factors that contribute to young children's risk for developing anxiety disorders. who knows if we'll find anything, but we're certainly going to give it a shot.
this weekend kara visited. i'll post pictures of that later - as they come in from kara and lacey. it was fun time, to be sure. as does everything lately, it went by extremely quickly. this weekend also began our fantasy college football league. cbs sports would only allow a league of 10 members, so matt, lacey, ryan, erin, josh, becca, rachel, carmen, nick, and i will be dueling it out as the season progresses. awesomely, the "live scoring" hasn't yet posted the results from the first week of play, but i'm currently trailing rachel by about 8 points. deonte thompson and i are not friends right now and i am actually
more irritated with florida than i was a week ago, which i thought was impossible (rachel also has florida's defense, by the way. they are apparently both unlovable and inescapable). lacey, matt, carmen and becca have all posted their wins already.my final pre-classes outing was with lacey and ryan to the spikes game. as always, the baseball was average, but the company was terrific. and then it all settled in again. of course. it's a regular 4-day rushed workweek this week and then next friday matt and i are both slated to for dissertation proposals. mine is at 1:00 EST and his is at 2:00 CST. assuming we both pass, we'll be able to celebrate together that evening when i get into CoMo around 10:30 (CST). this is a very strange life to lead.
here's hoping that everyone else is doing well, though, and that some sort of routine is established soon that makes everything at least appear to make sense. happy labor day!
