san diego etc.

so, another month has begun. i am finally starting to feel like the holidays are over; most notably, that the head-spinning rush associated with every holiday season has finally subsided. it helps that i currently possess zero plane tickets for trips to be taken in the next months. that's not to be saying that i won't be heading to ohio at some point, but at least i don't have plans to get on a plane anytime soon. yay. although this makes me uncertain where i'll be getting my crossword puzzles from. i guess the student newspaper will have to do.

Room View of the San Diego Sunset

for many reasons, i'm incredibly grateful that it has been forty degrees for the majority of the last week. not the least of these reasons is because it would have been a ridiculous adjustment to try to go from san diego's pseudosummer to a subzero winter back in madison. matt and i had a lovely trip to SoCal, staying several days near the gaslap district, and having a view of the bay that was absolutely lovely no matter what time of day you looked at it.

Every brunch should come with fresh kiwi

we also got some time in with josh, becca, cole, and even yuna, christine, erika, and all of the missouri folk that we find ourselves seeing much less frequently than we would like to. we found ourselves in an area that seemed to always have fresh fruit, perfectly rip avocados, and fish tacos, and a perfect poblano sauce that i would swear could be eaten with almost every meal. seriously, look at this fruit that came with my brunch. i can't even explain to you how excited i was. i have always considered myself a lover of northern-california things, but i must admit that the time i spent in san diego made me question whether i could exist in a SoCal locale. i don't have a lot of other stories from san diego. matt was conferencing and i was working in the hotel for most of the trip. but i do have a few more pictures that i will just continue to scatter throughout the blog.

San Diego

the drama of the last four weeks was definitely an issue with my car. it was stuck. . . well "stuck." i had originally thought the problem was the 6" of snow that we got in the span of a couple of days and my lack of driving it (i.e., scooping it out) with enough frequency to prevent it being snowed in by the elements. SO. . . ever the problem solver, i went and got myself a shovel and freed my car from the walls of snow surrounding it on three sides. as it turns out, the real problem was that it was sitting a on a thick sheet of ice. this, of course, meant that no amount of wheel spinning was going to get me free. it seemed like a really ridiculous problem to have, but nevertheless was not an easy one to resolve. luckily, there have been enough above-freezing days in a row now that i was able to back out of my parking space on thursday, get myself some groceries, and feel like a normal human being again. i still do most of my traveling on the bus. i just like the security of knowing that if i need to get across town, it isn't going to mean an extra half an hour of travel time, bus changing, and frequent stops.

View of S.D. and Petco Park from a Rooftop Bar

i am finishing up my first manuscript here at uw, hoping to submit it for review sometime in the next week. i feel like i should have about three of these under my belt at this point, but i have learned that nothing ever moves quite as quickly as one hopes. often times, it is nobody's fault; it is simply a product of the time things take and our own inabilities to predict what the duration of any one project will be. but hopefully this is the start of many months of productivity ahead. keep your fingers crossed.

today i am heading out with paula and a few others to take advantage of a groupon deal that came through in january. for $5, we will be scaling the indoor walls of boulder's climbing gym. i'm pretty sure that i haven't done any version of climbing since cj took us out to one of the state parks in PA. it was a good time, though. and it's a chance to meet a few new people - someone has started a google group & mailing list for the post docs here, which is where this groupon-oriented event began.  it should be interesting! i'll fill you in on it later.

happy super bowl sunday, everyone! and have a wonderful week.