Back to the regular work week post spring break...friends from Canada and their daughter visited from Saturday to Thursday. Then we drove up to Boston Friday to see more Wheaton friends and returned last night.
One of the things Ezer brought up yesterday was the topic of what needs each of us has that need to be met by other people. He's very understanding and supportive of my need for female friendships and regular contact with even the long-distance ones.
On the way back from Boston we stopped by Providence. My family has a funny habit of visiting college campuses in new cities, so I thought we should keep up tradition and visit Brown. It seems like a nice campus but unfortunately it was quite chilly and windy so we didn't walk around too long. But we had a nice lunch, long browse at the Brown bookstore, and visited the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) museum of art.
I always like to have a piece of paper and pen with me when I browse bookstores in order to jot down book names (I'm a big fan of the public library) or websites I come across. Things I wrote down yesterday: A novel called Snow Flower & the Secret Fan by Lisa See, Fat Girl by Judith Moore, this magazine called The Believer, and the website for this organization started by former Brown students (was reading the alum magazine) called the Polaris Project (polarisproject.org) which is trying to stop human trafficking worldwide.
Ezer and I have been thinking about doing some kind of service vacation. The thought occurred to me that we could volunteer somehwhere like the Polaris Project for a week (based in D.C.). Another idea is spending time with this organization called Common Hope (www.commonhope.org) in Guatemala which friends of ours did a few years ago.
A theme of the week was children. We hung out with a 7-month-old, a 15-month-old, and a 3-1/2-year-old. I think it's good for us to hear about different parents' experiences, how their lives have changed, the joys and challenges, and to just spark sharing of where each of us is in thinking about the future. We also talked about finances, trips we want to take, what household things we might need, whether we want to try to get a car, etc. There's a lot to think and talk about. At the same time neither of us wants the topic to dominate our lives for the next year.
I did actually get some work done on my dissertation over spring break as well. I've sent the latest draft to my advisor. She hasn't read my first draft, yet, so I figure I'd try to send her draft 2 ASAP. Fortunately, my secondary advisor did read draft #1 and gave some good feedback. I just want it to be summer. But I try to remind myself that each day is a gift and that I need to live in the present and not the future.
My sister sent me the Grey's Anatomy soundtrack as a belated bday gift. I like it a lot and even set up my iPod with these speakers Ezer's brother gave us. The car we borrow from Ezer's sister only has a cassette player. We listened to it on the way up to Boston but were hampered by battery life and forgetting to bring my iPod charger. I was looking forward to last night's episode but it didn't quite grab me as previous ones have.
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