The Sound of Settling

The nanny adventure officially begins on Monday, but I'm already settling in to life with The Fam (as they will be called to protect their privacy). Today I drove around Kinnelon. There's not much of it, but all the basics are covered--Target, Borders, Dunkin' Donuts. Life is good. Except I'm paranoid that my hard drive is going to crash at any minute, since a lot of people with MacBooks have had that happen recently. That's all for the moment, but much more to come once life gets interesting.

The Greatest State

I'm sitting in a local coffee shop a short walk from my parents' place sipping Americano, my tummy full of amazing Whole Foods salads. The sun is shining, people are out and about in the mixed-use shopping/apartment area. Most importantly, the mountains are right there waiting for me if I poke my head out the door and look West. It's funny what being land-locked and wedged in by mountains does to a person's understanding of what geography ought to be. I drove for 4 days through some of the flattest (though pretty in their own way) states in the union. Even though I haven't had time during this trip to go hiking and enjoy the Rockies properly, I did go four-wheeling through a pretty canyon in Colorado Springs.
Which brings me to what actually makes this the greatest state: the friends I get to see here. I visited my home church, spent a few days with Claire and Dave (including some much needed Swing Dancing at the Merc), am getting together with long-time friends from youth groups, and seeing a college friend for Indian food tonight (Erika J). There aren't nearly as many people here for me to see as their used to be, a phenomenon I also discovered in Spokane last March, but the ones I do get to see are precious to me.
Tomorrow I fly back to NJ to start a new adventure: Child Rearing. Stay tuned for my adventures as a Live-In nanny.

Master of Divinity

Momentous!

This is me, seconds before submitting my LAST PAPER of seminary.



This is me, 10 minutes from now.



and I'm spent.

t minus 26 hours

1 conclusion and some editing then another 12-15 page paper and I'm done with seminary.

62 hours . . .

. . . until my seminary education ends with a bang and the submission of my last two papers. It'd help if I could bring myself to start writing them. With 62 hours remaining that's just over 2 hours per page. I'm golden. Unless I continue to get 7ish hours of sleep each night, in which case I'm down to 41 hours. That's without eating or watching Bones episodes on DVD, both of which are rather essential. Now if someone wants to give me a quick overview of what happened in Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1958 that'd save me a lot of time. Thanks.