I think my cats are lunatics

I watched the sunrise this morning.  Unwillingly.

I shouldn't say unwillingly; perhaps that's too harsh a word.  I was, however, not happy to be awake during the sunrise.

For whatever reason, the cats were acting very oddly last night.    Lucy pounced on Louis multiple times, and we had to spray her at least three times throughout the evening.  Louis scratched constantly on the closet door in our bedroom for most of the night, yowled often, and then walked on me to wake me up around 4:00 a.m. so that I could dig earwax out of his ears.  Lucy, meanwhile, gave small cries that made it sound like she was lost and sad... in our one bedroom apartment. My first guess would be the Super Moon, but as you can read here, NPR quoted LiveScience which quoted two different studies on the correlation between behavior and the moon:

"A 1985 review of research published in the journal Psychological Bulletin found no convincing evidence that full moons spur mental hospital admission uptakes, psychiatric disturbances, homicides or other crimes. A 2010 study similarly found a lack of excess criminal lunacy on full-moon days."


So there was that.

And I have poison ivy, so that certainly contributed to my inability to stay asleep last night.

And I ate junk 30 minutes before going to bed, and I'm thinking that that had something to do with my insomnia.

All in all, it was a perfect storm for sleeplessness.  I laid awake for what felt like an eternity, though I'm sure it was only half an hour, before I finally gave in and started reading articles on my phone (which incidentally gave me the time: 5:07).  Knowing that I only had a two hours to rest before taking Joseph to work, I chose to stay awake and read until his alarm went off.  I boiled some eggs for his breakfast and water for his tea, and successfully drove him to work.

I'm back at home, thinking about how grateful I am to be bored.  Being bored allows me to appreciate things that usually stress me out during the school year-- and especially the unknown that I'm we're facing with this move to Atlanta.  I am grateful to have a job, and even more grateful to have a job that allows me three months of being bored, relaxed, on vacation, traveling...

I am also grateful for seeing the Super Moon this morning, as well as the sunrise, and waking up early.  I've learned in the past two days that sleeping in makes me not want to do anything but lay in bed for the rest of the day.  Even though I'm currently going on 5 hours of sleep, I am less fearful of being productive.

And I'm very, very grateful to have an amazing husband who takes care of me when I'm cranky, itchy, and hungry <3

Sunset on the solstice

Yard Sale!

A few weeks ago, Joseph and I were all set to start packing up our house during the middle two weeks of June, go to a wedding the first week of July, and then pretty much immediately move out of our apartment on July 9.  You can read all about what happened with those best laid plans here.  However, despite being able to put off packing up the apartment, going through needless things that haven't been used, much less looked at in over a year (or more), I was still in the mindset that I needed to go-go-go and pack-pack-pack and sort-sort-sort... which for me means, STRESS-STRESS-STRESS!  Sooooooo I went through our little storage area and found loads of things that we could get rid of, but I didn't just want to give it away.  Plus, we still hadn't put our old TV up on craigslist from months ago...

And then I had a brilliant idea:

YARD SALE!

Now the question was, where to have it?  You see, we live in a 15 story apartment building and I am sure The Beach Company would not have approved of us selling stuff on the front lawn of Broad Street.  And then, really, who on Broad Street (one of the nicest areas in CHS) would go to a yard sale?  OK, who did I know who had a house, with a lawn, and lived in an area that had a yard sale-going demographic?

And then it hit me:

BECCA!

Such a lovely, wonderful friend, she said yes when we asked if we could have a yard sale at her house-- and it even worked out well for her, because she and her husband had stuff to sell as well.  So she bought little sticker price tags and made signs, Joseph put an ad on craigslist, and I drove over to Becca's with Dunkin Donuts coffee and, yep, you guessed it: donuts.  Oh, and I brought all our stuff.

We set up shop at about 7:00 a.m. and by 10:45 a.m. everyone who was going to come by came by.  We were very successful, by yard sale standards, and raked in a combined total of $60.  It's always exciting and a little scary to try something new, especially when you're hoping to make money doing it.  I believe we pulled off this yard sale with aplomb and it was SO much fun!

Today's musings

It's been five days since my last post, and not too many exciting things have happened here.  We are still riding on the euphoria of getting the apartment we wanted while simultaneously settling back into regular life.  I've been studying Latin obsessively, and have noticed that the same quality that I enjoy in learning Latin is in studying music theory, playing Words with Friends, and working certain math problems or stoichiometry.  And it's the same quality that I enjoyed when learning Spanish and later French.  I'm unsure what exactly the quality is, but I believe it's also the reason why I enjoy teaching beginner foreign language classes.  I remember being resistant to the idea of majoring in either Spanish or French in college because I didn't want to learn about the literature.  I like knowing the finer details of a language's grammatical structure, working problems methodically.  Latin is providing a veritable plethora of grammatical structures to identify, interpret, and construct.

The trials and tribulations of studying Latin

Anyway, other than my musings on the finer points of studying a dead language, we went grocery shopping today; picked out paint colors for our new apartment; and I went to a yoga class taught by one of my friends from teacher training.  It was her first class and she did a fabulous job!  I also took a Bikram yoga class downtown, and had my first truly positive experience in a Bikram class.  Meanwhile, Joseph has been practicing guitar diligently as we will be playing a wedding for some of our friends in July.  We're excited to play such good music for such good friends!

Pale green, yellow, and blue

A little idle talk of this and that

Atlanta was a whirlwind!  We arrived at the Michelsen's house at 2:15 p.m. on Monday, just in time for us to put our stuff down while I did a quick "costume" change from leggings and flannel shirt to a cute skirt that looked much more professional since I had to go to a meeting at 2:30.  Oh, a meeting?  Yes.  Because now I will not only be teaching Spanish I and II, as well as French II and III; I am now going to be teaching Latin II.

Don't worry about reading that sentence again, because you read it correctly the first time.

I'll let it sink in a little longer.

OK, so, yes, I'll be teaching Latin II.  But hey, that's cool because I like languages and grammar and jigsaw puzzles!  Aaaaaaand they want me to focus much more on the culture of ancient Rome, so I will get to create lots of awesome projects.

On Tuesday I had my first lesson in Latin and realized that I probably would have loved learning it in high school.  I then started to set up my new classroom (which I chose based on how many bookshelves... there were 5 or 6) with three corners designated to each of the three languages I'll be teaching.  At noon, Joseph and I had an appointment at North Highridge Apartments, our number one choice for where to live in Little 5 Points.  These apartments are in such high demand, there is no waiting list; you have to call daily to see if anyone has put in their 30 days notice.  Of course we fell in love with the place immediately.

French doors.  Screened in porches.  High ceilings.  Wood floors.  Charm.

We had lunch at the café across the street from North Highridge and then walked to our second appointment on Euclid Ave.  It also had wood floors, but those were the only commonalities between the two.  Although much smaller, they were a great fallback in case we didn't get into NHA.  After that appointment, we decided to travel to Downtown Atlanta (honestly not a place I'm likely to visit again anytime soon).

Late afternoon found us at The Porter (back in L5P), where we saw some friends of ours from CBX.  And we ordered frog legs... I almost cried before I ate mine.

For dinner we went across the street to Front Page News, the sister restaurant of Tijuana Garage.  It was a very cool patio setting, and we got to sit immediately next to the fountain in the middle of the courtyard.

Today, I finished setting up my classroom in the morning and then I took Joseph to Julianna's Coffee and Crepes in Inman Park for brunch.  They serve the best Hungarian style crepes you'll ever eat!  On the way there, around 10:30, we called North Highridge to see if anything had opened up.  Nope.

By noon we were on the road to Tennessee to visit Mom and Dad.  At 2:30, my phone started ringing.  Caller ID said "North Highridge Apartments."  Someone had given their 30 days notice for a large one bedroom!  Yes, dear reader, the quest is over!  WE GOT OUR APARTMENT!!!  If there was still any question of whether we had made the right decision to move to Atlanta, I'm pretty sure this sealed the deal for both of us.

We arrived in M'town by 5:30, and Mom and Dad had decided to have some friends over for dinner: a lovely family of 6 who like to sing, apparently!  Here's a shot of two of my favorite people making beautiful music:

Paper Anniversary - Continued

Best.  Anniversary.  Ever.  

In my last post I left you hanging, dear reader!  Joseph found all of the clue for his scavenger hunt: 

CLUE #1: check the blog for important info!  We both grew up in Virginia, and I have several stickers on my guitar case from... Virginia!  We spend the rest of the morning until brunch singing and playing guitar together; so much fun, so romantic, and certainly a core of our relationship!

CLUE #2: we'll go to brunch and then you'll see who has your clue #3... it was... wait for it... UNCLE BAYNE!!!

CLUE #3: for clue #4 we'll have to stop by your favorite store.  We arrived at the Charleston Beer Exchange whereupon I gave Joseph a hand made gift card (because it had to be paper!).  Oh, and gave him...

CLUE #4: We'll go back to our alma mater where we first met, but not the right department.  It is our PAPER ANNIVERSARY after all!

Lucky for us, the Halsey Institute had an exhibition as part of Spoleto that was sculptural art made from all sorts of books!  The above photo was taken at the Addlestone Library.  The work is interactive, and it is a book Zen garden.  Perhaps the exhibition was for Spoleto, but we liked to think that C of C put it all together for our first anniversary :)  And it was here that Joseph also received

CLUE #5: One more stop before we head home... but only because I need air for my tire!  I had originally intended for us to do the whole scavenger hunt by bicycle; unfortunately, the weather did not get on board with my plan and it kept raining intermittently throughout the day.  Anyway, the final stop was Affordabike, Joseph's favorite place to take his bike in for tune ups and to get neat gadgets and accoutrements for it.  Again, he received another little hand made gift card from me :)

When we got home, this is what I found waiting for me: 

Oh yes!  My dear husband had created a little scavenger hunt for me, too!  We went to my favorite store in Charleston, Anthropologie, and to my second favorite, HarrisTeeter!  However, we had to hurry home because time was running out for us to get ready for dinner at The Macintosh: 

Overall, an amazing day!  Tomorrow I will fill you in on our great adventures in Atlanta!  

xoxo

Paper Anniversary

To my amazing husband on our first anniversary.  I love you more today than ever.  And since this is our paper anniversary, I wanted to do something special and a little different.  So, in the vein of the main character of one of our favorite shows, I have created a little scavenger hunt for us today.  You can find the second clue where we both grew up.

I'll update the blog again tonight or early tomorrow morning for you, dear reader, to let you know all we did.  I know what you're thinking, too: "Gasp! THREE days in a row!?"  Yep, now that it's summer, I want to do this blog right.  Wish our valiant hero, ahem, my husband, the best of luck on his adventure today!

When are we moving?

For the last month, we've been telling the world that we'll be moving to Atlanta when our lease expires on July 9.  However, Joseph and I both received an email yesterday from the building manager asking if we were planning on renewing our lease, since we never responded to the letter they left at our door on the first of May.  We never received any such letter.  I visited the office and told them we never received the letter.  The receptionist looked in our file and told me that since they had put a copy in the file, we had to have received the letter.  She then told me that the building manager had also mailed us a copy.  We never received any such letter.  Unlike any other apartment building in the developed world, Sergeant Jasper requires 60 days notice of vacating the premises.  So now we are stuck here until the end of July.  This has made our plans slightly more difficult.  

As frustrated as we were, Joseph and I realized that this may actually be a good thing for multiple reasons.  We no longer have to rush to pack up the whole apartment during the middle two weeks of June.  We now have time to sell items on eBay.  We are going to team up with our friends Becca and Will who have a house in N. Charleston and have a yard sale for anything that is too good for the thrift store, but not good enough for eBay.  And we have more time to be with Papa, Aunt Beka, Uncle Bayne and Aunt Lynda and John.  We have more time to be with our friends.  And Joseph can work for another month.

Meanwhile, do you remember where you were a year ago today?  We do!