February's excitement

Okay, so maybe this month's exciting thing is supremely lame, but whatever. 

I just submitted a paper coauthored with Alexandra Durcikova (parts of which are pulled from my dissertation data) to a journal for review.  Yay!  Here's hoping for a quick review and some positive feedback. 

(Yes, that was my excitement.)

(And if that's not good enough for you, I also moved Lucy up here to Boise.)

Yay for dead presidents

I don't know if I should count a conjugal visit to Tucson as my resolution excitement for February, but it was a great trip.  Although I was technically there for Valentine's Day, that wasn't why I chose that weekend to travel.  I went because the combination of my MWF teaching schedule and Monday vacation for President's Day gave me an almost 5-day weekend at home.  Yay!  I will warn you, however, that this is probably the most boring weekend wrap up ever. 

I flew into Phoenix on Friday afternoon so I could hang with Xav and his friend Brad, who had been in town for work that week.  We had grand plans of dinner at Pizzeria Bianco, a supposedly great place with a long waiting line that doesn't take reservations.  We arrived just after they opened to put our name on the waiting list... and it was already four and a half hours long.  ?!  Apparently they let you stop by earlier in the day - before they open - to put your name on the list.  Ugh.  I was hungry and getting cranky, so it's back on our places to eat before we move.  We headed to Mill Ave and went to Gordon Biersch so the boys could have good beer and I could have good food.  (Even if our flightly waitress ignored us most of the night.)  After dinner we headed back to Tucson with Brad and dropped him off at his mom's house.

Saturday night should have been great - dinner with friends, sweet potato fries, U of A basketball.  If any of you follow Arizona sports, you know that only two of the three worked out.  Sunday was full of family and friends, and Brad came over to crash with us for the night because he missed us.  Or wanted to use our high speed wireless internet for work on Monday.  But probably because he missed us.

On Monday, we were all hunkered down with our work, but I snuck out that night to do dinner and drinks with a great friend.  The next day, Xav went back to work, and we did lunch together before I ran around to do some errands and pack up.  (I also caught up with a couple IBM friends while I waited to meet Xav, which was fun, but only reminded me of all of my other IBM friends I was missing.)  I came back to Bosie Tuesday evening, puppy in tow. 

This is my awesome Boise roommate, Lucy:

January's excitement

So, according to the internets, my new year's resolution was supposed to be doing something exciting every month. 

I hearby declare moving to Boise my excitement for January. 

I have something exciting coming up for February, but I don't want to spoil the fun just yet (or jinx myself).  Stay tuned.