calm before the storm

It's days like today when I feel a tad closer to my not-so-secret goal of living a life like Rachael Ray :)

I slept embarassingly late, spent most of the day balancing the ugly budget (thank you, random car repair bills), and plotting my weekly recipes :) I'm excited to be making Tikka Masala tonight -- I've been craving some good Indian food...

With our final orientation out of the way and my first TA assignment done (writing learning objectives and lab syllabi for developmental psych!), I'm finally getting a feel for my New Life. This term, I'll take 12 hours of classes (Stats, Intro, Cognitive Assessment, Academic Intervention), TA for two sections of Developmental Psychology (140 students!), work on some Fragile-X/Autism studies, and partake in some other random academic adventures, I'm sure... I'll be busy. Really busy. But happy :)

I'm still not a huge fan of the long distance thing, though. Cory and I had a great weekend in Charleston, too, which just made it all harder. We went down for a looong but wonderful meeting with Duvall -- they're doing our catering and flowers and decor for the wedding -- and it was amazing. I was so excited that Cory came - I finally felt like we were planning our wedding -- not just some big, pretty party. He managed to keep the meeting "us", too -- prank texted my mom, re-named ranunculus "redonkadonk", and came up with some fun ideas to make everything very Bridgette and Cory.

A few sneak peeks? We're talking about serving a few special drinks in mason jars :),using tons of beautiful patterns and prints, AND passing miniature pralienes in the middle of dancing! We're also on a mad hunt for blue sweedish fish. Anyone have any ideas?

Cory and I came back to Columbia Saturday night, and he left early on Sunday. During the week, it's like we divide and conquer -- he goes to work, I go to school -- and weekends are when we can actually catch up and enjoy each other's company. I don't get cell phone service in my apartment, and he doesn't get it in his office. When we finally do get to talk, I appreciate him a little more :)

I also appreciate him more when I do dumb things and have to fix them alone -- such as accidentally throwing my keys into the dumpster with my trash... yeah, that was fun.

Being apart helps me stay motivated to meet new people, too. Summer was so crazy that I'm really basking in quiet independence, but I know that after a few weeks, I'll be craving some new social adventures :). My grad class is really fun - very diverse, very passionate about what they do.

It's interesting, though -- I think we're all still used to putting up our best front for interviews and trying to anticipate the future. The result is a bizarre, subtle competitive vibe.. which freaks me out a bit. Our program is very "chill" (i.e. we learned about our classes yesterday -- classes start on Thursday), so we're having to let our guards down a bit. Which is good for us, I think. I'm interested to see how we all work together in classes. I'm excited to get to know them :).

In the meantime, back to quiet, relaxing, calm-before-the-storm life...