Mona Update - Kelly

Miss Mona has been living with us for a little over six months now and Nate and I have to agree- while it hasn't been the easiest few months she is a fabulous addition to our family.

As some of you might now she had some pretty big health issues that developed right after we brought her home that resulted in a major surgery over the summer followed by pretty extensive follow up care. But we're happy to report that a week ago she got a clear bill of health and is as happy as can be.

Mona is a totally different dog than Lucy- she's super curious (there is absolutely no hiding when someone new comes over even though it takes her awhile to realize even the strangers that come in to our house are going to be nice to her), she's super responsive (all you have to do is say "no" loudly and her ears will be down, eyes, closed, curled up on the floor...), and she's SUPER cuddly (Lucy will tolerate being pet for a few minutes- Mona would literally stay next to you all day if you'd let her!).  Somehow their personalities seem to compliment each other perfectly- I think they're both happier dogs because they're companions.

Mona is also IN LOVE with Nate... seriously, he can do no wrong.  If he leaves before me in the morning Mona will roam our apartment (which isn't that big, mind you) for a good 20 minutes before she'll give it up that he's actually gone.  And you've never seen a happier dog than when he walks in the front door after being gone- even if it was for 15 minutes.

Even though two dogs can be a bit crazy at times (the poor squirrels in our neighborhood likely have post-traumatic disorder from our little angels terrorizing them... ) we couldn't be happier about Mona being a part of our family. :)

New Favorite Bar - Brady

I've got one. Last night Kevin and I decided that Molly needed somewhere to show off her new haircut. (The groomer put pink bows on her ears which I had mixed feelings about and which Kevin took one look at and said "Humiliating." He doesn't think Molly is a pink ribbons kind of gal.) Here are the best pictures I could get, so you have a visual:

Anyway, we'd heard about this bar around the corner called Jake's Pub that allows dogs to come in. We had a blast this summer taking Molly to dog-friendly patios so I was excited about finding a place we can bring her along to in the winter. I didn't really get my hopes up, though. I thought it might be awkward and crowded and stressful or that she'd misbehave or annoy people or never settle down. I had planned to take her on my own while Kevin was at a work happy hour but kind of chickened out and settled in for a quiet evening at home. At the last minute, though, Kevin texted and asked if I wanted to meet at Jake's, and we went for it. It was fantastic.

First of all, there was hardly anyone there, and the people who were ooo'd and ah'd and made a big fuss over Molly. Second, shortly after we arrived another dog named Mika came in. Mika is a regular, apparently, and her owner encouraged us to let Molly off leash, saying the owners and bartenders didn't mind at all. It was a fabulous decision. Molly and Mika wrestled, ran around, ogled the pool balls, and only caused a little bit of trouble. (Molly kept going behind the bar and looking for toys - we had to lure her out with popcorn every time.) She greeted everyone in the bar, and they all petted her and told her they liked her ridiculous bows. AND, for the humans in our family, Jake's carries local and seasonal beers on tap and plays good music.

It was the most fun I've had at a bar in a long time. I've had a rough couple of days, and for a few hours I was 100% happy hanging out with my dog in a bar. I think I know where I'll be spending many a winter night this year.

Rocktober - Brady

I always feel like there's way too much to pack into October. It's such a great month with such great weather, there are awesome October-themed foods to eat (Oktoberfest beer, pumpkin everything, sweet potato everything, apple everything), and you actually welcome - because you're not tired of it yet - cool mornings and evenings. Here's a little bit of how we made the most of it. 

GRRACE's Rescue Romp:

GRRACE is the organization we used to find and adopt Molly. Every year, they hold an annual picnic, and about forty beautiful Golden Retrievers take over a barn at the Lebanon, Indiana fairgrounds. We had the best time. Everyone kept saying they couldn't believe we drove all the way down from Chicago "so Molly could have a play date," but we couldn't believe they thought we'd miss it! It was also Kevin's birthday weekend, and although he now knows what he'll be doing on that Saturday for the rest of Molly's life, I don't think he minds. :)

A small taste of the chaos.

Kevin's birthday donut, on the drive down.

The Chicago Marathon:

We looooove watching The Chicago Marathon when we're in town. There's something so inspiring about it. 

The front-runners.

Molly taking it all in.

Coffee and pastry stop down the street.

Several hours later, the not-front-runners pass by as we have brunch.

Camping at Starved Rock State Park:

Wow. We just barely summoned the energy to squeeze in one more camping trip this summer and it was worth it. We had beautiful autumn weather, somehow finagled the prettiest campsite, and beat the crowds to the trails. I had trouble deciding which of our many pictures to include here.

Trip to Portland, Oregon:

Another one with too many pretty pictures to choose from. We flew out to Oregon to visit Kevin's aunt and uncle, to see my cousin and his family, and just to check out a city we'd heard so many great things about. It exceeded my expectations. We ate incredibly well, the scenery was beautiful, and the people were friendly. We can't wait to go back. 

And now it's November, and we're home, and we will be home for quite some time, settling in for the holidays and then for winter. It's getting dark by 5 p.m. now and it feels like there's a little less to pack in. Just lots of time for reading, watching movies, sitting by the fire, getting lots of work done, drinking coffee, and eating comfort food.

Never Say Never - Brady

Life in Chicago has been plugging along. It's been a gorgeous fall full of beautiful leaves, camping, apple cider donuts, hot lattes, and runs with our now much more energetic puppy dog.

It's also the time of year when people in their last year of graduate school start to think about the job market. Academic positions are posted almost a year in advance of the start date, so before you even have substantial work done on your dissertation you have to start strategizing about what you'll do when it's finished.

When I started graduate school, I swore there was no way I would take more than five years to complete my program. I initially aimed to finish in four, a year early, actually, which obviously didn't work out. However, now that I'm faced with the realities of the life after school I've begun to understand why you might stretch our your studies for an extra year. It's hard, as you might imagine, to feel ready to job applications and interviews when you don't have any study findings yet. And I still don't feel totally ready to say "Yes, we're staying in Chicago for sure" or "No, we're open to moving other places."

It's funny how life works. You think you have things all planned out...you have a list of things you'll absolutely never, ever consider doing...until you do.

After talking to Kevin, to my fellow grad students, and to my advisor, I've decided, basically, not to decide right now. My strategy is to continue to work as if I'm going to graduate in June or August of this year. However, right now I'm only applying to jobs I'm really excited about - jobs that would be perfect. For example, a position in the department of education at a liberal arts school outside of Chicago opened up a few months ago, so I put my name in for it. I'm also considering applying for what's called an "Education Pioneer" fellowship which would mean a year or two of working with a school district or charter network as a data analyst and researcher. But I'm not doing the full-scale, send-my-resume-out-to-any-job-that's-remotely-related-to-my-interests search that a lot of graduating students do.

If next fall rolls around and I haven't found anything, I can stretch out my dissertation a bit. Do more complicated, in-depth data analyses. Present at more conferences. Add an element to my study. And I can look for jobs again, this time being less picky.

I'm not entirely comfortable with this plan. The no-nonsense part of me says, "You've been in graduate school for over FOUR YEARS already. Finish this up, get out, and get a real job." Six years seems like an indulgent amount of time to spend getting a PhD. But the fact is, Kevin and I aren't open to me doing a national job search. So since I'm not 100% flexible on geography, I'm trying to be flexible in any other way I can. And giving myself a potential second year to wait for the perfect job to be posted and for me to be in a better position to get it is one big-time way to be flexible.

Life In Chicago, Fall 2013 - Brady

You know, the tagline for this blog is "Three Sisters and the City of Chicago." But I feel like every time I drop in to post, I write about some trip I've been on.

That has happened, I think, because it's a little bit what Kevin's and my lives are like in the summer.  As much as we love days in the city, we end up leaving almost every weekend - to go to Lake Wawasee, to Denver, Michigan, etc. This year we consciously tried not to fall into this pattern, but it happened anyway.

So now it's the first fall weekend here in our beautiful city and we've predictably followed the second half of our yearly routine. We get fed up with packing and unpacking and never feeling caught up with the kinds of chores you only get done during weekends in your house and one of us insists on a full Saturday and Sunday at home - no commitments. This usually happens at the end of September or beginning of October (check), we marvel on that Friday night how amazing it is to not be going anywhere (check), we are reminded how great a place Chicago is to be (check), and we spend the next two days working and cleaning and doing all of our favorite neighborhood things like the outdoor Green City Market, a nice long run, and coffee at Intelligentsia or Bow Truss (check, check, check, check, check).

So in the spirit of enjoying being home, here are a few little things about my everyday life that have been particularly nice recently.

- Baking. Last fall, totally out of the blue, I kind of got into baking. I made carrot bread and pumpkin bread and cinnamon bread and regular bread, blueberry muffins, lots of cookies. I got the itch again the other day and made some...wait for it..."browned butter, sea salt, nutella chocolate chip cookies." They were excellent, I must say. Kevin says they're the best homemade cookies he's ever had. Then we had all this nutella sitting around so I HAD to make a nutella pound cake, right? I think going forward, though, I might focus on choosing slightly, um, healthier baking projects. It got kind of ridiculous last fall and winter.

- My new desk. When the veteran grad student in my office finished her dissertation I, as the new senior advisee in my research lab, got to move to her HUGE, next-to-the-window desk. This isn't a great photo - I took it with my cell phone - but my new space is spectacular.

- My snuggly dog. As the weather's getting cooler, she's getting much more willing to cuddle with Kevin and me. (She's also getting much more energetic...morning walks have been interesting the last couple of days. Let's just say she and Kevin have a game called "Let's run crazy!" and sometimes Molly wants to play it with me and I have trouble keeping up.) Here's a picture of her the other afternoon when I was trying to get dissertation work done.

- Chicago theater. Have I talked about how Nate invited Kevin and me to be his special guests for the opening night of his play? I probably have, because I'm obsessed, but he did. We got to use his "comp seats" and then go out for drinks after the show with all of the actors and IT WAS A CHICAGO DREAM COME TRUE. I love theater in this city and really want to somehow become more involved and this made me feel like a big shot for a night. Plus, the play was really great - and Nate was excellent in it. I performed with Nate in high school, and I thought it was neat to see how good someone can get when they make acting a career. Here's an illegal picture I took in the theater of his name in the program.

- Grad school. I passed my proposal defense back in July, so I'm officially ABD ("all but dissertation"). I actually applied for a faculty job a couple of weeks ago. I'm co-teaching a class this fall. My dissertation is slowly humming along. Life at work is stable and good, and I know things will change fast as I move toward the end of this program, so I'm trying to enjoy the quiet and the routine right now.

So that's what "real life" has been like recently. We'll be around the city much more in the coming months...looking forward to enjoying the perfect fall weather Chicago usually gets, getting back into the swing of things as the school year starts, watching the Chicago Marathon, re-doing our bathroom, welcoming family for our annual Vegetarian Thanksgiving and family Christmas shopping trip, and celebrating the holidays. I'm always sad when summer ends, but this weekend has been the perfect way to get excited for everything that's to come.

Labor Day Dogcation 2013 or What I Like About Denver - Brady

Kevin and I have a big group of friends who all live out in Denver, so we get out there pretty often to visit - at least twice a year for the last couple of years. (Sometimes I skip the wintertime trip, though, so I can travel to Siesta Key to visit my grandparents. Call me crazy, but I like 80 degree weather, palm trees, tropical sunsets, and reading on the beach better than I like picking my way slooooooowly down a snow-covered mountain in rented ski boots.) This summer, since our Denver friends all have super cool dogs, we decided to drive out rather than fly so we could take the Molly Monster with us to meet her Colorado cousins.

What did Ms. Molly do, you ask?

I'll tell you in pictures.

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She fetched tennis balls in the backyard with her buddies.

She hiked.

She camped.

She ran around off leash and swam in a mountain lake.

And she slept. 

We left Denver at 6 a.m. yesterday morning. It took us 16 hours to drive home. She was so tired from all of her adventures that she slept through the entire car ride. We got home at 11 p.m. and were in bed by 12. She slept from then until this morning at 6:30. When she came back from her walk, she slept again from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m. with only one trip outside to break it up. And she's sleeping now. Think she had fun? 

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Kevin and I had quite a bit of fun ourselves. Denver is a really different city than Chicago, and it's neat to kind of step into a more relaxed, outdoorsy, R.E.I.-clad life for a few days. This trip in particular, mostly because of the dogs, probably, and because many of the couples we know have recently gotten settled into homes of their own, felt very comfortable and very easy. We knew our way around a little bit better. We made our own coffee. We walked to the 7-11 to buy toilet paper and to Sprouts to buy groceries. We sat in our friends' backyard, and I nursed an upset stomach from a long, hot run on their couch, watching Mad Men. We had a big family-style dinner on their deck and drank far more beer at home than we did out at bars. Like I said, comfortable and easy and certainly a place I look forward to visiting for years to come. 

Summer 2013 - Kelly

It's been a long, long time since my last blog post (over two months, in fact!) and a lot has been going on!  Here are a few random thoughts and updates from the summer:

Living with Nate- As I mentioned on here earlier this summer Nate and I moved in together at the beginning of May and honestly it was the best decision ever.  Not only is he a fabulous cook and roommate but day to day life is just so much more fun now that we share almost all of it.  Sure we've had a few things to work out but it has been absolutely fantastic.  We love our apartment, we love our neighborhood, and we love living together.  If you haven't been up to visit us you should definitely do it soon!

Mona (& Lucy)- I also mentioned earlier this summer that we added a second dog, Mona, to our home shortly after moving in.  We've been dealing with some pretty intense health issues with Mona pretty much since we adopted her but the end is finally in sight.  Mona & Lucy love each other and it's really fun having two little beasts running around our apartment.  Mona might be the sweetest dog I've ever met when she's just around Nate & me- we're still working on the rest of the world seeing that but we're confident it will happen soon.  :)  We're excited to start obedience training this fall when her health issues are under control!

Yoga teacher training- In just a few weeks I'm starting a 10 month yoga teacher training at an awesome little yoga studio in our neighborhood.  It's a pretty huge commitment (5 hours of classes a week from mid-September through the end of June) but I am so excited about it.  I'm pretty sure I'll want to teach part-time when all of this is done and I'm pretty pumped for the whole process.

New blog!- I also started a new health and life blog I'm pretty excited about.  I'm still working on finding my cadence for posts and get in the groove of giving it adequate time and attention but you should definitely check it out!  http://dailynourishment.tumblr.com  

 I feel like there is SO much more to share but that's a good start.  I hope everyone has been enjoying their summer as much as we have- I'm sad to see it go so soon but always get excited for fall awesomeness. :)