Moving

We're mostly settled in the house next door now. It was one of the easier moves we've ever done. Two Men and a Truck helped with the heavy stuff and I spent too much time (more than I estimated, anyway) ferrying smaller loads after they left.

Fitz has spent much of the past two years here in this house playing with Henry, so he knows it better than we do. He's still pretty nervous though after having seen his furniture go from one place to another. He watches me from the window when I run next door, afraid, apparently, that I'll just stay over there.

Michelle's been studying hard the past couple months and having a pretty good time doing it. After all the reading and quizzing and practice tests she'll take Step 1 tomorrow. I'm really proud of how much she's learned in the past two years. Medicine is heavily fact-based, so there's no getting around memorizing vast quantities of information. It's nearly the opposite of the kind of learning you're expected to do at Georgia Tech, so she's verily versatile.

It's weird how you settle into new routines. After classes and the NBME exams wrapped up six weeks ago, we committed to waking up early (Step 1 starts at 7am and we normally wake up at 7:40). TLC has been playing The Little Couple in the morning, so that's our go-to wake-up show. We're out of the house before the Today show starts.

Michelle spent most of the summer in one (well, a couple) of the small group rooms. Things worked out nicely and she was able to keep a room to herself the entire time. A couple weeks into studying they kicked her out of the room she had "decorated" (and cleaned) so that they could do some summer seminar. She moved three doors down and settled in.

She kept a small candied apple candle from Bath and Bodyworks in her room and had the best-smelling room. Food, dust, and who knows what else left some of the other rooms stale. I liked walking in with a bag of lunch and getting a breath of the Purell + candy combo.

After sitting for eight hours a day she wanted to stand. I found a door at Lowe's for $5 and brought that in along with two plastic crates so that she could have a big standing desk. We ate a few Mellow Mushroom pizzas standing at that.

I snuck Fitz into her room one day so he could see where she was going. He's a good dog and didn't try to get out of the backpack. It wasn't meant to carry him but he trusts in the choices we make for him. He poked his nose out as I neared her hallway to get a whiff of the surroundings.

In the afternoons when I went to pick her up I'd often bring him and let him run in the courtyard between Pav III and the parking deck. He started running to the sliding doors to wait. He's quick with things like that.

We've been eating a lot of Moe's (the new salsa has revived our interest) and pizza. In this new house, we're also cooking with gas again. We went a year without it (even during the winter months) and used space heaters. The AGL pass-through charge is a rip-off, keeping our bills last year at minimum $35 (event with near-zero gas usage).

One of my new favorite things is a Cuisinart espresso maker Michelle found for me on Foundary. It's sturdy and makes real espresso. It cost $20 more than the steam-pressure one I was going to buy last year.

I should mention that the tree in this yard recently fell across the fence into our old yard. Thankfully the car was moved from its usual spot, else it would have been crushed.