As the semester closes...
I gave my final exam today, and despite it being held at 8 AM when class normally meets at 10, I think everyone showed up. Eventually. Now I get to grade 6 short answer questions 107 times ha ha ha FML and its dedication to good pedagogical assessment.
Nevertheless, I'm in a good mood because Mr. Z is coming home tomorrow. :D
He's been spending most of the semester at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, for which I'm super proud of him. He's been there for 3 weeks, here for 1 week, there for 3 weeks, etc., all semester. It's been great for him to be at "Math Camp" with a lot of the people he regularly collaborates with, and he's enjoyed living there. I traveled out there for Thanksgiving and got to see the place; it's pretty, including a little forest with hiking trails and a canal path and a cool little bridge (pics at the bottom).
We've done all right being apart; we dated for seven years before we got married, and about four of those years we were living several hundred miles away from each other (back in the dark ages where you couldn't see the face of the person you were talking to on the phone and you had to pay more to call long-distance.) So we've been joking that it's just like grad school all over again. But I'd forgotten how so many basic things are hard to get yourself to do when it's only you in the house: preparing meals, exercising, leaving the house on the weekend, getting to bed at a decent hour, keeping the place clean...all those kinds of self-care things are so much easier to do when you and someone else are watching out for each other.
On the bright side, we somehow acquired the new habit of making pancakes or waffles on Saturday morning, and I hope we keep that up once he's back. And soon we'll take off for Christmas with his family and then two weeks on the California coast where it's just the two of us 24/7, at the end of which we'll probably be ready for him to go back to Princeton, LOL.
But I'm glad he's coming home. <3
Nevertheless, I'm in a good mood because Mr. Z is coming home tomorrow. :D
He's been spending most of the semester at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, for which I'm super proud of him. He's been there for 3 weeks, here for 1 week, there for 3 weeks, etc., all semester. It's been great for him to be at "Math Camp" with a lot of the people he regularly collaborates with, and he's enjoyed living there. I traveled out there for Thanksgiving and got to see the place; it's pretty, including a little forest with hiking trails and a canal path and a cool little bridge (pics at the bottom).
We've done all right being apart; we dated for seven years before we got married, and about four of those years we were living several hundred miles away from each other (back in the dark ages where you couldn't see the face of the person you were talking to on the phone and you had to pay more to call long-distance.) So we've been joking that it's just like grad school all over again. But I'd forgotten how so many basic things are hard to get yourself to do when it's only you in the house: preparing meals, exercising, leaving the house on the weekend, getting to bed at a decent hour, keeping the place clean...all those kinds of self-care things are so much easier to do when you and someone else are watching out for each other.
On the bright side, we somehow acquired the new habit of making pancakes or waffles on Saturday morning, and I hope we keep that up once he's back. And soon we'll take off for Christmas with his family and then two weeks on the California coast where it's just the two of us 24/7, at the end of which we'll probably be ready for him to go back to Princeton, LOL.
But I'm glad he's coming home. <3