About Me

Ithaca, New York
MWF, now officially 42, loves long walks on the beach and laughing with friends ... oh, wait. By day, I'm a mid-level university administrator reluctant to be more specific on a public forum. Nights and weekends, though, I'm a homebody with strong nerdist leanings. I'm never happier than when I'm chatting around the fire, playing board games, cooking up some pasta, and/or road-tripping with my family and friends. I studied psychology and then labor economics in school, and I work in higher education. From time to time I get smug, obsessive, or just plain boring about some combination of these topics, especially when inequality, parenting, or consumer culture are involved. You have been warned.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Paging Passenger Hazelthyme

Sooo, by now, my loyal readers (yes, all 3 of you) have probably assumed I've given up on blogging. If you know me, and we've already established that I don't exactly have a faceless mass of internet-only followers, you know I haven't given up on reading. On the contrary, I've gone through more books in the past month and a half than I usually go through in, well, 2 or 3 months. (It's already been established that I'm a card-carrying book and library need.)

Blogging, however, has taken a back seat lately, as my life's changed pretty radically. In short, I've been working in Boston since mid-May (and in northern Ohio for a few weeks before that), coming home every other weekend and living in hotels and a well-located efficiency apartment since then. The job's an interesting one that's taught me more about my field and myself, and I've fallen hard for Boston (while feeling a bit disloyal to NYC, in whose shadow I grew up and which I've always stubbornly and probably undeservedly claimed as My City). The obvious, elephant-in-the-room drawback, of course, is that my family's still back home. My bleary-eyed breakfast table conversation with my husband, Filbert, takes place via text message. In 3 weeks, I missed 2 school concerts and an honor society induction; for the latter, Filbert couldn't get out of work either, so we had to ask Twig's best friend's parents to congratulate her and drive her home. I'm watching our new kitten grow up via Skype, during my daily check-ins with Filbert and Twig.

The experience hasn't been all bad, of course. As I keep saying in Real Life conversations, if I have to be stuck away from home in a small, dark apartment, I couldn't ask for a better place than Boston. Work is around the corner, and I'm across the street from a park and a T station. I not only don't have, want, or need a car with me; I haven't even bothered with the T except to get to and from the airport every other weekend. Instead, I walk. After a few aimless weeks of drowning my loneliness in Trader Joe's trail mix and the restaurants of Chinatown, and gorging myself on Law & Order reruns. I found WalkBoston.org, and I haven't looked back (well, unless it's to remember what street I'm on or make sure I really meant to take a right there).

At some point, I'll finish editing all the travelogue photos I've been taking on my phone (thank you, Snapseed -- best $5 I've spent in a while!) and establish a presence on one of the photo sharing sites. Heck, I'll enliven my LinkedIn profile and maybe even use that newfound enthusiasm for my work to get my job search back into gear (because as cool as Boston may be, I don't want to live away from Filbert and Twig indefinitely. The 3 of us relocating here, or to NYC, if the right opportunity arises? Well, that's a whole 'nother ball of wax.)

For now, though, I'm about to start turbo-logging everything I've read since I started hitting the road. More a list than real reviews under the circumstances, but hey, ya do watcha gotta do.

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