Somethin' Bout a Truck

Big news for today: Brad got a truck!  2005 F-150.  We've been sharing a vehicle for over a year so I'm really excited for him to have this.  We also found out it's already equipped with remote start...we paid to get remote start in LuLu before we left Texas, knowing we won't have a garage right away and wanting something for those cooold mornings ahead!  So it was a pleasant surprise to have that in this truck.  I just asked Brad if he will name the truck....he declines ;)

 NY license plate...weeeeird.

He was 'done' with pictures after the first one, but I snapped this too!

A couple other things not nearly as important and awesome:

This squirrel came up on our balcony yesterday and was just chillin on the rail, I got really excited for some reason.  I was talking to Brad and looked outside and said "whaaaat?"  then immediately took some pictures.  Kind of like that dog in the movie UP..."Squirrel!!"

Sunbathing...or plotting devious things 

Brad went out there to snap this pic:

...and then he scampered away (the squirrel, not Brad).  Hopefully our squirrel friend will return.  (Is this a sign that we need some human friends here in NY?)

And also, I started a building project tonight.  That was probably a mistake.  Brad and I attempted to build an etagerie (cabinet that stands over the toilet) for one of my Waco apartments...it mostly stood up on its own, as long as you didn't breathe too heavily on it...anyway, I don't think I've attempted many building projects after that but we really need a place to hold our food (wedding-gift kitchen gadgets have taken over every cupboard).  The one Albany Craigslist pre-assembled pantry closet was taken by the time I called...so we bought a some-assembly-required pantry closet from Target.

"some" assembly. 

Brad's been working on commissions this evening, and this pantry closet has been yearning to be built for a couple days, so I took it on tonight.  The first step is to "familiarize yourself with the parts".  Overwhelming already.

But somehow, after about an hour of wrestling with screws and giving myself blisters, I have a backless pantry:

The remaining steps involve hammering...and since it's almost 11:00, I'll save that for tomorrow.  I met our downstairs neighbor yesterday on a trip from the laundry room, and she seems very nice!  So I think about her when I think about those loud hammering noises, and I'd like to start off on the right foot with the neighbors :)

The big test will be standing this thing up...that's when I'll know if it wobbles like the ol' etagerie, or if it is a building project Win for Stephanie.  Stay tuned for the riveting conclusion to this adventure.





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!