a long pause

It’s been a long time since I’ve writ­ten, and a lot of things have hap­pened in the mean­time.  The rest of my time in Europe was WONDERFUL.  It was so good to be with Carl, and the trav­el­ing was a lot of fun.  I flew home (that was an ordeal) at the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber and start­ed my job a week lat­er.  I was excit­ed about my job before I start­ed, and it has turned out to be even bet­ter than I thought it would be.  I work with great peo­ple who sup­port and chal­lenge me, the sub­ject mat­ter is sur­pris­ing­ly inter­est­ing, and I get to do things that big firm asso­ciates don’t see until their third year.  Also, I went to Mia­mi this last week for a con­fer­ence on asbestos med­i­cine.  Six of us went from the office — I only went because one of the attor­neys could­n’t at the last minute — and it was a nice com­bi­na­tion of edu­ca­tion­al lec­tures (includ­ing a video of a extra-pleur­al pneu­monec­to­my — yuck), net­work­ing, and relax­ing (most­ly on the day before the con­fer­ence actu­al­ly start­ed).  I had a great time, and I felt real­ly lucky to go.  Asbestos is a com­pli­cat­ed area, and so get­ting the chance to learn more in a focused con­text was real­ly good for me.

In oth­er news, Carl moved home a few weeks ago.  It’s so good to be back togeth­er.  Wed­ding plans are gear­ing up, though there is still a lot to take care of.  We’re also just try­ing to sort through the house.  Between the two of us, who lived alone for three and four years, we’ve accu­mu­lat­ed a lot of things, many of them dupli­cates.  We have more tup­per­ware (in a gener­ic sense) than any­one should ever need.  I also picked up the ves­tiges of my youth from my mom’s house about a month ago, mean­ing all of my child­hood books, year­books, jour­nals, stuffed ani­mals, my baby blan­ket and bap­tismal blan­ket, and assort­ed items like a music box from my grand­moth­er and a salt-cov­ered rock from the Dead Sea.  That is all now added to the pile of things to sort through.  It is lit­er­al­ly a pile, sim­i­lar to a small hill, though much more frag­ile.  I start­ed to go through things today, but I did­n’t get very far, because I start­ed read­ing my jour­nals from high school.  Oh my good­ness, those were dra­ma-filled years.  I’m very glad I’m past those years.

So in clos­ing, life is good, and I’m enjoy­ing this jour­ney into real adult­hood.  Oh, and Carl and I got Motoro­la Droids a week and a half ago.  Awe­some.  We love them.