I must have pissed off the traffic gods

Life has been sucking a little bit lately, mainly due to traffic.  Long-time readers may recall that I have a nontrivial commute and that traffic in my city frequently blows.  However, if I leave early enough, I can beat the worst of it and stay relatively sane.

Or at least I could.

They started major construction on one of the other highways in my city, which has had a serious impact on many of the other main arteries.  Everything has been all jacked up such that I have to leave well before 7 am to beat the morning jam and if I don't leave work by 2:30 (unreasonably early), I'm stuck there until at least 6:30. 

I don't mind working long days when I've got something going on or it's on my terms -- a deadline, fieldwork, a really compelling project -- but I don't like feeling like I'm trapped at the lab.  This situation has increased my overall anxiety in part because it gives me less time at home for things I enjoy like blogging.

The good news is that we're going to move soon.  It won't solve my commute problem but it should shorten my drive time significantly.  And if it doesn't, I'm going to talk to my supervisor about some sort of flexible schedule, like four long days (thereby driving before the morning rush and after the evening rush and getting three-day weekends) or super early hours, or something.  I brought it up today and he very generously offered to personally facilitate a commute by public transit, but unfortunately that's not a viable option and there's no way I would impact his schedule with my shitty commute.

I really need to figure out what sort of offering will please the traffic gods.

Worn out

The past couple of weeks have been what my BFF's mom would call "fast".  When we were teenagers, she would say things like, "you've been pretty fast lately Young Lady, I think you better stay home tonight".  Being a not-quite-extrovert, this always comes back to me when I get too busy.

Work has been busy, but I think it was too many social obligations that wore me out.  I've had some lunches, a high school career fair, a few work dinners, normal social time with friends, and my sister visited last weekend with her husband and three kids.  Too much!  I really enjoyed most of these things but I was happy when more involved plans fell through last night so that Ecogeoman and I could go for a walk, order in Indian food, and watch a dvd.  Today we slept in, had dim sum, went clothes shopping for him, and ate our leftover Indian food while watching another video.

Now I think I'm refreshed enough to plow through the week.

Things I'm loving

Yesterday I discovered the Magic Eraser.  OMG.  It is teh awesome.  I deep-cleaned the kitchen and was able to get scuffs and stuff off the walls that I could never clean before.  The thing was amazing for places like the textured door handles on the fridge and oven, and pretty much everywhere else too.  And it had no odor.  Will definitely use again.

But I'm sure the thing you would much rather hear about is my ring.  We've been talking about getting married for a few years now, but it has seemed like too big of a thing to tackle, too expensive, and not urgent enough for us to actually do it.  Plus there has been some big event in our families each year that prevented us from hosting our own big event: EGM's sister got married two years ago, had a baby last year, and my parents are having their 50th anniversary this year which will get a big, wedding-like party.  Anyway, we were talking about the logistics of EGM's defense date, like how to balance the time he really needs to finish with paying more university fees and immigration issues, and we decided the time was right for us to start planning a wedding.

I didn't care either way if I had an engagement ring.  I would have been perfectly happy without one, but pleased to wear one too.  EGM wanted me to have one (a rare moment of machismo).  Because I didn't want a typical solitaire or similarly popular setting, I showed him some things I found online that I liked and didn't like.  That had minimal impact, so we went out shopping without a definite plan for how things should go.  It turned out that we both liked pretty similar styles but EGM claimed that what I liked specifically was not predictable and that he was sad that this jewelry was so gender-specific because he would like to wear it too.  At that point we decided that we would get something we both really loved.  Which was pretty much exclusively antique; there was almost nothing modern that we liked very much.  So we went to a bajillion jewelry stores, narrowed it down to two rings, and after agonizing debate finally settled on this 1920s art deco solitaire:

You can see more detail if you zoom in.  It's just right.  Very sparkly, an interesting setting with engraving and filigree, and it's a good proportion for my small hand.

So: there was no down-on-one-knee proposal, no asking my father in advance, no surprising me with a velvet box, but this was just perfect for us.  It suits our style of sharing responsibility, and we'll have a wonderful memory of shopping for this special item together, which with any luck will kick off a long and happy marriage.  I couldn't be happier or more confident in my decision to marry EGM!

Preview

I don't know why I haven't been blogging lately.  I'm going to list a few potential topics to maybe help me get back in the swing of things.

• EGM and I decided to get married, and together we picked out the most awesomely awesome engagement ring.
• I think I have finally experienced sexism at work first-hand.  I'm going to keep an eye on things before I decide if the situation represented something systematic or if it was merely coincidental.
• It has been a very nice spring, and I am just itching to get my garden started.
• Crafting emails that convey the tone I intend is apparently difficult for me.
• After being adamant that I'm not going to attend my commencement ceremony, I'm starting to think it might be a nice thing to do.

So hopefully I will find the motivation to expound on these topics very soon!