Vacation, moving, and getting ready for school

Vacation was great. I did a lot of stuff, saw a lot of people, and had a lot of fun. Highlights include: Lauren's graduation picnic, riding the Portland Century, special dance at Tuesday Blues, and several episodes of hysterical giggling over nothing in particular. I"m not going to recap the whole vacation because most of the people that read this blog were there.

I am now moved into my new home in Rochester. It's an adorable house recently bought by Jordan and Jess. He's a second year med student and she's an elementary music teacher. They're both really sweet and we get along great. Jess and I spent the afternoon shopping and admiring our respective book collections. I've already taken a few of hers and given her a few of mine. I've also spent a lot of time playing with Heidi, Jess's cat. Heidi is also very sweet and quite friendly. She's not up to sitting on my lap yet, but she's often found exploring my room or sitting in my windows. My room is huge, about twice the size of the previous one, and they funished it for me with a bed, dresser, and desk. I've got some more organizing to do, but I'm making a lot of progress on it. There's an enormous wooden headboard leaning on one wall that I can do anything I want with. So far I've considered covering it with hooks and using it to hang stuff, or maybe sticking a shelf on it, but I'm open to suggestions.

Yesterday, after the one hour it took to move my stuff, Paul and I went hiking at Mendon Ponds. I didn't realize until visiting that website that they have a raptor rescue facility there. I'll have to check it out some day. Too bad I'm too busy to be a volunteer, I could actually put my hawk glove to use again. The park is beautiful, I can't wait to see it when the leaves have changed color. After we got back, and I took a nap, we wandered over to Sarah's to visit with them and the kids. They left today for a friend's farm so this was my only chance to see her before classes start. The kids are adorable and crazy, as usual, and Sarah was stressed out as usual, but we had a good time anyway. Then I came back to my new place (less than a 5 minute walk!) and started the unpacking process. It's a long process, and still very much in progress. I'll post pictures once things are a little more sorted out here.

Tonight I think I'm going to play board games with Paul and some friends that I may or may not have met yet. Tomorrow will be more unpacking and organizing and probably involve going over to the hospital to buy my books. In the meantime I'm going to make some dinner and try to get through some of my growing stack of reading material. It's so fun having friends with good book collections!