World's Worst Blogger

I am officially the world's worst blogger. Life has just been really busy, and time flies. Since I last wrote, I have basically finished up my dissertation. I just need to format things and proofread for typos and other mistakes. I will probably turn it in to my chair in about a month, and I should be finished completely shortly thereafter as long as my committee doesn't want me to make a bunch of changes. Dan ran all my statistics for me, so I will need him to explain everything to me before I defend, but it shouldn't be too hard because I have a pretty good idea of what is going on. I am pretty excited to see the light at the end of the tunnel :)

In about the middle of January, we started tearing into our floors, and I am happy to say that after a couple months of mess, my house is pretty well back to normal. We have a couple of closets to do, and Dan has to reinstall the quarter round around the baseboards, but those are minor projects. I also need to paint most of the house, but we decided to wait until fall. I want to enjoy the summer and not be fixated on home improvements, and Dan worked so hard that he really deserves a break. Since I am permanently remote, I decided to turn the room that was the bird room before Ben moved out into my office, and it turned out really nice. I painted the walls a neutral beige color and it made the room warm and inviting. I bought a couple of bookshelves and a printer cabinet, which make it feel like an office. Now I just need to hang up a couple of pictures and I will be finished.

After almost three years of living in Alabama, Dan and I finally found our gumption and got back on the WFPB wagon for good. We had so many false starts over the years. The only advantage to the false starts is that I didn't let myself completely go, but I never could make it past a month or so before I caved and we went out for Mexican food and margaritas. My last margarita was on February 19^th, which was my year anniversary back to work. The next day, I started eating healthy and I never looked back. Once I realized that I was in this for life, I decided to sign up for a holistic nutritionist certificate program, and I started last week. I probably should have waited until I am finished with the dissertation, but I have six months to finish it, and because I care about it, I shouldn't have any trouble keeping myself motivated. I have been coaching my supervisor. She finally decided that keto wasn't working for her, which was my opportunity to tell her about WFPB eating. She was desperate enough to try it because of some health issues, and she is completely ecstatic about the results so far. She thought she would add a little meat back into her diet after about three weeks, but she is feeling so good that she has no desire to eat it now. I am so stinking proud of her. I do whatever I can to encourage her, and I think she really appreciates it. It has definitely helped us bond further, too.

Aside from all that excitement, I have three pieces of recent news. Two are not that exciting, but I am pretty excited about one of them. First, I got my COVID vaccine last week. I got the J&J vaccine just before the paused its administration. I am not too concerned about adverse side effects. Aside from feeling dizzy right after I got it, I had no pain in my arm and no illness. My kids got the Pfizer vaccine yesterday and they both felt a little rough today, but I think they are feeling better now. Second, on Wednesday we drove to Pensacola and watched a hockey game. I went to a couple of hockey games about 25 years ago, and I forgot how much fun they are. I will definitely go see more games next season. Finally, at the beginning of May, I will be adding a new addition to my little family.

At work we have a message board, and a lady posted that she has six kittens that need homes. April has been wanting to add a new female kitten to her home, so I sent her the lady's contact information and she sent an inquiry, but she didn't get a response, so today I reached out to the lady and they started texting back and forth. April sent me some updated pictures that she got, and I fell in love with this little girl. I asked Dan if I could get her and he finally relented, lol. We may get to go meet them on Sunday afternoon. I haven't settled on a name yet, but on my short list is Charlotte (Charleigh for short), Olivia (Livvy), and Theadora (Teddy). I was also considering Delilah, Dinah, Bella, Chloe, Kiki, and Thomasina. Maybe when I see her, I'll just know what her name is. Right now, her name is "Eclair." :D

Well, that is about all I have for now. With my track record, I'll just say that I will see you all again in about six months, lol.

I PASSED

I thought I would come by to let you all know that I passed my dissertation defense and only need to make minor revisions to my proposal. I need to add a few details to my abstract and a couple of documents to my appendices, and then I will resubmit it to my chair by this weekend. The next step is to start working on my IRB application. I imagine that it will not be approved until after the first of the year, but that is fine. I do not plan on doing much between now and then anyway.

I realized that I forgot to mention that we decided to refinance our mortgage, and we closed on the new loan today. When we closed on our first mortgage 2 1/2 years ago, our interest rate was 4.75%, and I was able to get it down to 2.75%. We also went from a 30 year to a 15 year mortgage, and our payment will only be about $150 more a month than what I was paying. Oddly, we did not have to bring any money to closing--in fact, the title company is going to mail us a $500 check on Tuesday. It does not make any sense to me that we had to borrow money to pay ourselves, but I guess that's an extra $500 I can put toward my principle in February.

I think that is all I have to say at the the moment. Tomorrow is Friday, and I get off work at 3:00, so Dan and I will probably grab an early dinner and then watch Christmas movies. Sunday I would like to try to get my office painted and my house cleaned up so it's in order for Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas to all of you!

Defense Day

I am off work today because at 5:00 I am going to be defending my dissertation proposal. I was supposed to do it last Thursday, but I was not ready. I am nervous and will be happy when it is over, but I am pretty sure I will pass. The next step is my instituional review board application and then I will put my survey together and send out the link so I can get my results. After I have about 200 survey replies, I can run my statistics, write up my results, defend my dissertation, and be finished with school forever!!!

Other than that, there is not much going on at the moment. There is a lot in the works for after Christmas, though. I got my new countertops a week ago, and they have really brightened up my kitchen a lot. My old countertops were black granite. Apparently they were very popular in the early 2000s. I hated them because they always looked dirty and I could not find things I set down on them. It's like the item would get sucked into a black hole. My new countertops are white quartz with a gray pattern. After I take my Christmas tree down, we are going to rip out my floors and lay new vinyl planks down in the whole house. We already ripped carpet out of two of the bedrooms. Only my bedroom still has carpet. After we get the floors laid, we plan to paint, but only because I am not 100% sure of about what color will go best with the flooring I have chosen. If I can nail that down before we lay the flooring, then I might paint first, which would actually be better. We bought a sprayer, so that should make quick work of it. After those two big projects, there will just be small projects to do, and after I finish my dissertation, for the first time since 2014 I will not have anything big hanging over my head. It will be nice to have weekends to just go do fun things and not think about how I should be writing rather than playing Animal Crossing or cleaning my house.

Christmas is 10 days away and I feel like I have not really done much to prepare for it. My tree is up and I have decorated the inside and outside of my house a bit, but I have only bought a couple of presents. I bought April an Animal Crossing Switch and Dan wanted Game of Thrones DVDs. Ben will want money, and last year I bought Matt an Amazon gift card that he never redeemed, so I will regift that to him, lol. I also bought my nieces an Amazon gift card last year that their dad did not redeem, so guess who will be getting another regifted gift card. I bought my mom an Amazon gift card when I went to visit in October, so she is taken care of. Those are really the only people I need to buy for. I pretty much buy what I need when I need it, so I do not ever know what to tell people I want. I prefer just to enjoy the company of my small family. I will host Christmas Eve at my house and April is hosting Christmas dinner at her house. She is very proud of her new home and loves when Dan and I come to vist. She and Ben are making it really cute. I am glad that they get along so well.

Well, I really need to go and study. My defense is in eight hours and I want to be very well prepared. I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed Christmas!

Lots of News to Share

I have become the worst blogger in the world. I am sorry I didn't update sooner. Life just stays super busy and throws me surprises left and right. After Hurricane Sally, we had a few other threats, but everything stayed to the west (poor Louisiana!) Eta was a potential threat, but it looks like it made landfall in north-central Florida and is now heading out to the Atlantic. Hurricane season officially ends in 18 days, but with the way 2020 is going, I wouldn't be surprised to see storms forming right up until New Year's Eve.

In other news, April and her boyfriend broke up shortly after Hurricane Sally, and she decided to buy a house. That has been a whirlwind. She found a really cute house not too far from where I live and put an offer on it, but the seller was not really ready to sell and so he tried to give her the run-around to buy some time. She wasn't having any of that and instead put an offer on a house three or four doors down that is the exact same floorplan but is brand new and a bit less expensive. The only disadvantage to the new house is that the driveway is steep, much like the driveway we had in Belleuve. The upside is that we don't get snow here, so she will never have trouble getting into her garage. She also had to buy a refrigerator and will have to buy window coverings. Today at 9:00am was her walk through and she will close next Friday at 1:00pm. Understandably, she is happy, sad, and stressed all at once. She really loves her boyfriend and she wanted to marry him, but there are some issues that she just couldn't see past, so she decided to make the break. I think it is a good thing to be honest. He is a really nice guy and I like him, but I never felt that he was right for her. She wants to stay friends with him, but it is doubtful that they will since they will not see each other very often.

April has always been very financially responsible, so this big purchase also has her pretty stressed out. I suggested that maybe she could have Ben move in with her, but she was not excited about that idea after living with him in the apartment they shared last year. Let's just say that he is not a very good housekeeper. She started rethinking things and finally decided to ask him to move in with her late last week, so once again, Dan and I will be empty nesters as of next weekend. It really is the best situation for everyone. April and Ben can share expenses because if they each lived alone, they would be stretching themselves financially. Ben has a steady paycheck now, but he is at the lower end of making of living wage. April can afford the house, but she, too, would be stretched, so this is a good answer to the problem. I have already spoken with Ben about being a responsible roommate, and April is giving him some creative license with the house in an endeavor to give him the feeling that it is his home too. I think that as long as Ben holds up his end of the bargain, everything will work out fine.

Going out looking at houses with April really gave me the itch to do some remodeling, so I hit that head on. The first thing we did was replace my old refrigerator and stove (FINALLY!) I bought a refrigerator over a year ago, but it was delivered banged up and dusty, so we sent it back. After that I just kind of gave up. We also had to replace our HVAC system because there was a leak in the coil area that was spilling water into Ben's room. The timing was a bit unexpected, although we knew that eventually it would have to be done. We also had to replace the hot water heater because it has been acting up for some time. I finally got tired of not knowing whether I'd have hot water or not and persuaded Dan to replace it. Yesterday someone came to measure my counters because I want to get rid of the black granite countertops in my kitchen. It's not that I utterly hate them, but my whole kitchen was dark: black appliances, black countertops, and darkish cherrywood colored cabinets. On top of that, the living room floor is a darker-colored wood color, the front door had a stained-glass looking film on it for privacy (which I removed yesterday), and my back porch is screened in, so I do not get a ton of light in my house. After the beginning of the year, we are going to paint the walls and replace all of the floors except the bathrooms. Dan is thrilled to have such a big project coming up (she says facetiously, lol). I keep telling him that we can hire someone, he insists on doing it himself. Ben said he'd help, and I will do what I can, so I hope that it goes fairly smoothly.

So that is about all of my news except for one new piece that I got about three hours ago. My employer is making my position permanently remote, so I will not be going back to the office! It was very welcome news, but I have to admit that it feels a little weird to know that this is permanent. It is definitely a good thing, though, because one of my coworkers moved to Illinois a few months ago, and I think she was very hopeful that we would be allowed to continue working remotely so that she would not need to find a new job. I think that this covid thing has demonstrated to a lot of employers that people can work from home and remain productive. I think that it probably also helps with retention, and it definitely helps with expenses. People are going to save money on clothes, gas, and going out for lunch, and fewer people driving to work every day will help with the environmental footprint impact. I am not sure if all departments are going to be allowed to work from home, though. My director started advocating for us to work from home before covid, so the fact that we have proven we can do it likely helped her cause.

Well, my lunch break is over, so it's back to work for me. Based on my blogging record, I might as well wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year right now, lol. Love you all!