Our Apartment

We've really enjoyed our apartment complex so far...it's set back a bit from the main roads, with lots of trees, and fellow residents seem to be friendly :)  (haven't met our neighbors yet!)  Here's a grand tour of the apartment, as it was when we first walked in:

Walkway to the apartment door

Walk inside: coat closet, and stairs...

Walk up the steep stairs to get to the apartment...

Turn right at the top of the stairs: living room, view into the kitchen and dining room

From the living room, to the right is the patio (pretty trees outside)

 To the left of the living room is master bedroom, bathroom, laundry closet, second bedroom with bath.  Here's a peek into the master bedroom

Looking into the kitchen (too small for all our wedding-gift kitchen appliances!) and the dining room 

Second bedroom (love that both rooms have walk-in closets...we're making full use of those!) 

One more look into the dining room from living room.

...a little boring right now, no?  But we love the spacious layout and I'm looking forward to getting it all pulled together.  Right now it's pretty much a mess, but maybe I'll post some pics whenever we get it organized and get decorations up!

Side note: having a moving company move your stuff is definitely the way to go.  We're spoiled this time because it's reimbursed by the company, but for the future when it's on our own dime...I may see it as a necessary expense.  Loved not having to haul all the furniture and boxes up those stairs.

After the movers brought it all in, reassembled the furniture and were on their way, we had a moment to just sit there amid all our stuff and I...definitely got teary-eyed.  I haven't had much time to think about the move, leaving behind all our family and friends in Texas, etc., so maybe that was one of the first times it really hit me.  I definitely miss our people back home already, but I need to focus on our new adventures and all the experiences we'll have up here.  And of course, there are phones, Skype, planes...we can still stay very much connected with our Texas family!

Plenty to keep my mind occupied as we try to adjust to life as New Yorkers this week.  I start next Monday and we still have plenty of little tasks to do before then!  We visited a Southern Baptist church on Sunday and it felt very similar to churches back home.  Went to a Sunday school and the people were very nice -- several of them had Texas connections themselves!  In other news, Brad's looking at getting a vehicle of his own...he has it narrowed down to a ranger and a couple of F-150's...I'm excited for him to have a truck again after we've been sharing a vehicle for over a year!  I'm sure he's excited too :) 

Oh, I guess I should talk about the weather since that's a big difference up here...actually, when we got in on Thursday I think it was 102...maybe a couple degrees hotter than in TX even!  But this week, it's supposed to be in the 60's and 70's...meanwhile, FB friends are posting pics of the forecast for the week: 100+ temperatures mostly.  So for this week at least, I get to be smug :)  but I know it'll be a rude awakening come October/November...we realllly don't know what we're getting into with this snow stuff.

Plenty of updates to come as we become New Yorkers, but I'll leave you with some fun pictures from the unpacking process.  The movers used sooo much packing paper (naturally, they don't want to break our stuff since they'd be held responsible) and rather than dispose of it as we unpack, we decided to build a giant mountain out of it in the dining room, just to see how high it could reach.

Easily amused.

We're Here!

Well, we've made it to our new apartment in New York!  We arrived last Thursday and we've just been getting settled in.  Boxes are mostly unpacked...still have a ways to go with the organizing/decorating but I'm happy with our progress for only having been moved in for five days.

Since my last update...I had my dissertation defense!  I wasn't too nervous for the presentation part (we've had to do so many presentations in the program that it's "old hat" now) but for the "Q&A" with the committee afterward, I didn't know what to expect (guests leave the room and it's just you and the committee members, they can ask anything about your presentation/dissertation contents/whatever).  It didn't turn out to be very scary at all...then they sent me out of the room to "deliberate", then my advisor came out and shook my hand, saying "Dr. Doherty"...pretty cool :)  So, I passed...still trying to get all the paperwork cleared with the grad school to be able to really say I'm official and graduating in August, but basically the hard part is behind me.  I've been a student for 20 years, so it's weird to be entering this next phase in life...with a Big Girl Job.

Some pictures with my friends/fam who came to the defense:

"Fat Kids Club"...all defending this year, I'm proud of us!

After the defense, it was a week o' craziness trying to get our things for the move pulled together (thankfully, there wasn't MUCH work to do since the movers packed everything as part of our relocation package!)  The weekend right before we left, we headed to Hearne to see Brad's dad's side of the family...his grandma (Mimi) turned 80 this past Saturday, so we missed her big birthday bash by one week :(  it was good to be able to see her before our trip!

Monday was the big packing up day...it was a little awkward to just sit on our couch and watch the movers take care of everything...I wanted to help out with something, but it's all up to them.  We had Whataburger for lunch...last time for awhile :-/  They arrived around 9 in the morning and didn't finish up till 8 pm!  A big part of that was trying to fit the mattresses...they had 3 other households loaded into the same van, so we were the last on, and they underestimated how much stuff we have...whoops...they ended up wrapping up the mattresses in all sorts of waterproof things and putting them on an attachment off the back of the truck.  This took awhile.  We finished cleaning the apartment and just stared at them while they tried to figure it out.

Anyway, we finally go on our way and just made it to Dallas that night.  Slept in and got on the road late the next day (this was a general theme for our road trip...) We had time for just one "fun stop" along the way, so we went to the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.  Also in Nashville, we did a Hotwire Hot Deal for our hotel, got a great deal on a 3.5-star hotel, and all they had left with a king bed was the "hospitality suite"...that thing was seriously bigger than our apartment that we just moved out of.  It was glorious.  Too bad we only spent about 8 hours in that hotel!  Some pics from the trip:

 It was our mission to load up on Shiner before we left TX...little did we know, there was a whole string of dry counties along our trip on 30 heading out of TX!  We learned this little bit of trivia: the Texas side of Texarkana is a dry county, while the Arkansas side of Texarkana is in a wet county!  Thank goodness the Arkansas side carried Shiner beer.

 Swanky hotel room in Nashville.  This place was great.

 Wall of gold records at the Country Music Hall of Fame

Yummy Nashville BBQ



 Finally in New York!

Our apartment door :)  So exciting.

It was a long couple of days for the drive but we saw some pretty scenery along the way, and LuLu held up beautifully!  (aside from having to get gas every 250 miles, bah...)  Check out the next post for a Grand Tour of our apartment :)

LuLu

Okay, quick update while I'm here thinking about my blog...the other big piece of news (aside from, oh, defending my dissertation tomorrow and officially earning the Ph.D.) is that we recently got a new car!  I had had dear old Martha, my yellow VW Beetle, for almost 10 years.  She was my first car when I turned 16, and my dream car at the time :)  It was a little hard to say goodbye, but we sold her to a family friend, so I know she's in good hands!

Martha: Then and Now

Brad and I have been looking at Carmax for some vehicles with 4WD (for handling that lovely snow up there!), I found a 2007 Ford Escape that fit our budget so we snatched it up about a month ago!  Her name is LuLu:

I love her so far and it's been awesome to have some ground clearance!  Now that I'm used to being higher off the ground, I don't want to go back to driving a car for a long time :)

The gas mileage is not so awesome (since she's in 4WD constantly) but it's livable.  We'll be trekking across the country in this baby next Monday (or Tuesday...the moving company is being annoying all of a sudden).

Anyway, lots of happenings since I had last posted in March but those are the highlights!  And now...hopefully...once I've earned my doctorate and we're on our way to being New Yorkers, I'll be able to keep up with this more!



Final Countdown

Well, I failed to give a big update after our apartment-hunting trip in April, and then life became a whirlwind of trying to get this dissertation finished up!  For the past couple of weeks we've been on our "farewell tour" with family and friends, driving to various cities in Texas to see everyone before the big move.  Right now we're at Brad's mom's house, watching the Baylor baseball game (sic 'em bears!) so I thought it'd be a good time for a blog update, finally.

First of all...on our week-long trip in April, we found the perfect apartment!  We visited 9 different complexes, decided on one, and the night before we were supposed to go sign the lease I changed my mind in favor of a different one (the closet space was the deciding factor, ha!)  Here are some pictures from our trip.  It was neat to experience Albany with Brad for the first time (and really, it was my first time to explore, too, since my interview trip was very short and with a singular purpose!)

Pretty tree outside of our hotel.  We saw a lot of these

Interesting bedding at the Hotel Indigo

Pecan Pie!  at Grandma's pie shop

Here are some pics around our apartment complex of choice!

This is the sitting area inside the apartment office.

View when standing outside the office

Our building!

Our building!  Just four apartments within the building (I think).  Our door is on the right!

Driving on a side road in the complex

Our complex is called "The Woodlands" :)

Pretty park where we ran a few times, I'm sure we'll be coming back here a lot!

View of (I think the NY capital building?) from inside the NY State Museum

Tulips at Washington Park in Albany.  They were all gorgeous.  They had been planted in anticipation of the upcoming Tulip Festival (although I heard most of them died before the festival, sad day!)

The buildings on this street were interesting to us (looked like they were all smooshed together)



Some observations about our trip:

• The people we encountered were a lot nicer than we had heard they would be!  (maybe it was because most people we talked to were getting paid for something -- waitresses, hotel clerks, etc.)
• It's cold.  Well, the day we got there it was 91 degrees, but the following weekend it was rainy and in the 30s/40s.  We had only brought short sleeves and light fleeces, so this was kinda rough.
• Mexican food exists in Albany!  Certainly not like the abundance of tex-mex places we have down here, but we were able to find a couple that we enjoyed.
• I can get just as stressed out driving up there as I do down here.  Always the same!
• Many beautiful parks and vibrant colors in the flowers.  Everything was green.  It will be a beautiful place to live.
• We still have NO idea just how cold it will be in the wintertime.  It's smart of my company to get us up there while it's still warm outside :) ("lure us in"!)

Anyway, I'm so excited for the move.  I'm really going to miss our family down here...I've had a couple teary moments already...but it will be such a neat adventure for us.

And since I was so lazy about keeping up with my blog, now we're just a week away from the move and I'll have lots of fun updates coming soon about our new life!

My Hero

It's 1:48 AM and I'm waiting on a particularly long WinBUGS run, so I thought I'd tell a story about how Brad is my hero.  (I'm delirious, major work on Chapter 3 is due to the advisor tomorrow, perfect time for a blog post?)

I have a highly irrational fear of bugs.  In the BF 442 I was known for my fear of crickets...one night I heard a cricket in my room, but couldn't see it, so I slept on the living room couch.  Roomie Anna even got me a "cricket net" for a birthday present so that I could hunt them more diligently.

Anyway, the bugs are starting to really come out now that it's warming up, and I've heard that one effect of our mild winter was that not very many bugs got killed off, so this is bad news for Stephanie.

Our apartment complex provides washer/dryer hookups in all units but no washer/dryer (although this complex is so superior to my college apartment experiences, I do think this fact is dumb) and Brad and I decided to utilize the on-site laundry building rather than buy a washer/dryer for our apartment and not know what to do with it when we move.

I had four loads of laundry last night, so I trekked the basket out to the laundry building, flipped on the light, and immediately started getting creeped out.  People don't really care about keeping the laundry building door closed, so bugs like to make it their home.  I saw spring bugs on the wall and what looked like a daddy long-leg...I loaded up one washer, looked back at the wall and the daddy long-leg was gone.  I frantically searched the floor, thinking it was surely on its way to crawling up my leg, but I was safe for the time being.

When I came back later to switch the clothes to the dryers, major freak-out time.  Flipped on the light and this time a giant moth got all excited, and started flitting all over the room.  I did my best to run wet clothing from washer to dryer, four times, but several times the moth was in my face and I definitely jumped and screamed like I was legitimately being attacked.  I'm surprised no one in the nearby building came out to see what the fuss was about...maybe they were just laughing at me from their window.  At one point I also saw THE DADDY LONG-LEG FLYING AT ME, at which point I realized it was just a very, very large spring bug.  As soon as I managed the clothing I raced back to the apartment, came in panting, and told Brad "you HAVE to go get the laundry when it's ready.  I can't handle it.  The bugs." 

Brad of course has had experience with my phobias, and talked me through the whole "You are 500 times bigger than it, what is it going to do to you?" but I wasn't having it.  "It flies in my face!  And that's creepy!"

So he agreed to come with me to pick up the laundry when it was ready - not to get it for me, because "I should face my fears", but at least he came along.  He opened the laundry room door and turned on the light, and I did this awkward hunched-over run past the outside lamp...loaded all the laundry up as fast as possible, and all the while he had his eyes on the ceiling, swatting at any moths or other creepies who tried to come close to me.

Then I awkwardly hunched-over high-tailed it out of there. 

It's such a silly thing, but he was my knight in shining armor, battling away the creepies so that I wouldn't launch into a full-fledged panic attack due to a moth TOUCHING MY ARM.

I like my husband.

From now on, I'm doing my laundry in the daytime.

Gearing up for Albany

Yep, it's been awhile since I posted last, blah blah blah :)  More of the same around the Doherty household... two weekends ago we went up to Mesquite for a friend's fundraising dinner - he's raising funds for a deer farm/wounded warriors wilderness therapy ranch.  Seems like a really neat concept, hoping he can get it off the ground!  Other than that we hung out at the house a lot with Brad's mom & brother, playing Draw Something with each other (new iPhone app obsession).

A couple pics from the dinner:

Handsome husband (in his official JMAC-JT Deer Farm apparel)

Jared and Kay-Lee both hate veggies, so we made them try all the roasted veggies on the plate.  Eat your vegetables, kiddos!

Let's see, what else...March Madness, that's exciting.  At this point both our men's and women's teams have advanced to the Sweet 16!  Sic 'em Bears.

Our biggest news right now is that I've scheduled the apartment-hunting trip with the company's relocation service.  We'll be flying up to Albany for a week on Sunday, April 15!  Can't wait to get up there, let Brad see the area for the first time, and find the right apartment for us.  We'll also try to fit in some fun things :)  like a second honeymoon?  I've been looking into going to see some horse races in Saratoga Springs, woo hoo!  Even though we'll have important work to do (Brad might also visit some colleges), it'll feel like a vacation.  And we need it!

Albany, here we come!

That's all for now...I'll be back, probably in like a month or two ;)



Happenings

Hmm, remember how I said in my last post that I wanted to keep this current and not just check back every once in awhile?  Well, I'm becoming That Girl...maybe when I have a big-girl job and I'm not peppering in dissertation wherever it fits in with my schedule, I'll be better about this!

So, a quick recap on the past few weeks (well, month...)

At the end of January we went to the Baylor men's basketball game vs. Texas with David.  We got free shirts...always a plus.  They had everyone don the shirts at a certain time so that we would 'neon-out' the Ferrell center.  It was nifty!   Also, we won :)

 Exclusive embarassing photo (didn't make it to facebook)

 Oooooh

Alright so, on to February...once again I took part in Big Sis Rev activities for AXO.  So neat to see our little turtle family grow again!  Ashby, Jess, and Hannah are such sweeties, too.  I teamed up with Brooke to make them a basket during Basket Week, too...I cranked out the Pinterest recipes: funfetti rice krispie treats, puppy chow cookies, candied (green!) popcorn, and Nerds cupcakes!  Will be sad to miss out on this tradition next year...but maybe it's time for me to stop being the "creepy one" (Brad's term for me) who keeps coming to AXO stuff even though I've been out of undergrad for 4 years (whoa!).  Hey, what can I say, love my Alpha Chi girls.  They don't seem to mind my creepiness, haha.

Brad and I have been going to Canyon Creek Baptist Church here in Temple, and we've made some good friends in the "Newlyweds" Sunday School class.  In February we threw a baby shower for Johanna!  She had her baby girl last week.

 The baby in the pic is Caleb...with his sweet personality and little chubby cheeks he makes me think I want a baby...then I remember that I'm REALLY not ready to be a mom.  Exhibit A: I almost passed out and had Scott & White's ambulatory services called over when I was in the blood lab.  NOT because I was having blood drawn.  Because Brad was having blood drawn, and I was simply in the same room with it.

That turned out to be a really long caption for this picture.  But seriously...

On February 18, Brad and I went to Round Rock to see my dear friend Brandi get married!  (actually, we technically drove to Round Rock the night before...in crazy-insane thunderstorm that really made me fear for our lives as I trudged along in my little Beetle.)  The smidgen of rain on the wedding day didn't stop it from being a lovely ceremony!  Love this pic of Brandi and Todd, so happy!

Last week I attended the Presidential Scholars luncheon.  Based on my GRE scores coming into grad school, I was selected for the Presidential scholarship, which adds significantly extra monies to my annual stipend.  We have these banquets every year to honor the scholars and, well, see the Baylor president.  Also, those in their final year of the scholarship are asked to give a few remarks.  That was me this time...they also changed the formatting so that the final-year people would be sitting at the head table with the president, his wife, and some other important folks.  Eek!  Brad and I actually got to meet Ken Starr in the fall, he was very friendly and was willing to take a 'sic em!' picture with us, so it actually wasn't intimidating at all to be at this luncheon.  My 'remarks' went just fine, and it was a nice opportunity to express just how much Baylor has meant to me in these past seven years.  I'm gonna miss it...

 Two of the other pres. scholars in the stats department, me, and the dean of the graduate school

This brings me to last weekend (almost caught up!)...I had been looking forward to that weekend for quite awhile!  My roommates from junior year, "The 442", decided we needed to have a reunion girls' weekend, and this was the weekend that worked for us.  We made the trip to Waco to see Baylor's SING together!  I adore SING; as someone who is challenged in any sport involving a ball (they seem to gravitate with high velocity to my face/gut) I was way more excited about participating in SING than participating in intramurals when I joined a sorority.  Well, and having been on dance team for 6 years, I just love performing.  AXO made it to Pigskin the year before I rushed (if you don't understand what is meant by 'SING' and 'Pigskin'...google it, I'm too tired to explain) but we hadn't made it since then.  But, this year AXO had an awesome 'juke box heroes' rock & roll act, and they made Pigskin!  I was so so proud - and so glad I got to see the winning act. 

Aside from the SING excitement, we ate at some of our favorite Waco restaurants, went to see The Vow, and did some SHOPPING (Dillard's sale = amazing!)  It was so so good to catch up and laugh with these girls...being married is way cool but every girl needs some fun times with her ladies!

The 442...coordinating in purple.

Phew!  All caught up.  Aside from fun weekend activities, I've been...dissertating.  Sometimes I get anxious about it because I'm behind on the 'fuzzy guideline' my advisor gave me for getting chapters done this semester, but he still has faith that I'll get it all done in time, so I'm trying to have that faith in myself!  (and back it up with putting in the work, of course!)

It WILL get done...If not, I don't get that big-girl job and the big adventure of moving to New York with my husband.  So...it WILL get done.