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. :)

Take Note! - Brady

Today, August 18th, 2013, is the first day I ever thought, regarding my dissertation, "This is impossible."

From what I hear there are many, many more days like this in my future.

Now if you don't mind I'm going to throw in the towel for the evening and cook out on my balcony with Kevin and my sisters.

I was in HAWAII - Brady

Yesterday (yesterday!) I was in Hawaii. I've dreamed about visiting Hawaii more than I've dreamed about going just about anywhere. And it was even better than I hoped it'd be. I said to Kevin multiple times during our week there, "This really is paradise."

Because I could write a book about my trip, I'm limiting myself to a top ten list of Hawaii memories. Here we go, with photos.

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Favorite Memory #1: Our first night in Honolulu. Discovering the fabulousness that is Waikiki Beach and drinking my first Mai Tai.

Favorite memory #2: Getting my first Hawaiian lei. Kevin bought one for me that first night. They're heavier, prettier, and smell stronger (in a good way) than I expected. I also learned that many, including the lei pictured above, are made out of plumeria, which was one of my favorite Bath and Body Works scents as a teenager. :)  Never actually knew what "plumeria" was before.

Favorite Memory #3: Exploring the Diamond Head area of Honolulu. We did a post-conference hike and a pre-conference visit to the farmer's market at the mountain's base. Such a beautiful area, and the market was fascinating - lots of fruits and other foods we don't have in Chicago.

Favorite Memory #4: Visiting Pearl Harbor and finding the memorial stone for the submarine Kevin's grandfather served on. The story goes that he was released for leave when his first child (Jane, Kevin's aunt) was born, and while he was away the sub sank. It's so strange to think that if things had been just a little bit different - if Jane had been born a few weeks earlier or later - Kevin's grandpa likely would've died, Kevin's dad would never have been born, and Kevin never would've existed.

Favorite Memory #5: My first sip of iced coconut water. We were driving along the beautiful North Shore of Oahu for an hour or two (in a convertible - amazing), and the sun was getting to both of us. We stopped at a stand that pulled fresh coconuts off ice, hacked off the tops, and stuck a straw in. It was one of the most delicious, refreshing things I've ever tasted.

Favorite Memory #6: Hawaiian music and hula. I guess I always thought of both of these art forms as kind of cheesy, but when I heard the music and saw the dancing in person, I was surprised how beautiful they both were. I've been listening to Hawaiian style music non-stop since I got home. And by the way, the hula dancer in this picture is a former Miss Hawaii! Her name's Skyler, and she introduced herself to us afterward. I kind of wanted to be her best friend.

Favorite Memory #7: Once we got to Kauai (after a close call with a very delayed flight and a lot of confusion about what room we were supposed to sleep in), we got settled in a beautiful apartment overlooking a small cove. I loved going to sleep every night to the sound of the waves, and I REALLY loved watching all the sea turtles that gathered on the rocks below us!

Favorite Memory #8: The Na Pali Coast. Oh my goodness, never have I seen a place quite so beautiful. We hiked, snorkeled, and explored sea caves here, and also took a sunset catamaran cruise to see the mountains from the water. My new life dream is to come back and do a multiple day camping trip on the beaches here.

Favorite Memory #9: Exploring little towns in Kauai. We stayed in Koloa, which was adorable, but my favorite by far was Hanalei. You drive up and see these gorgeous, green mountains and a perfect waterfall right in the middle. It supposedly inspired the land of "Hanalee" mentioned in the song "Puff the Magic Dragon."  This is where I'd like to stay the next time I visit Hawaii. 

Favorite Memory #10: Having this guy along for the trip. He took time off work to come with me, entertained me on the long flights, let me practice my talk on him, and was rarin' to go for fun once my sessions let out for the day. He also is the one and only reason we didn't miss an entire day of vacation in Kauai - his quick thinking and polite demeanor got us on a flight that left at 5:30 p.m. rather than one that left (delayed) at 10:30 at night. So grateful for my job, so grateful for my family, so grateful for the opportunities I have to travel.