Oh yes, here I am.

If you read this blog to find out meaningful and current information, you have probably been very disappointed as of late.  Yes, I have been busy.  That's because I enjoy making life-altering decisions during busy periods of my life and then frantically trying to figure out how to make it all work.

In this case, my life-altering decision was to adopt a dog.  Today is the one weekiversary of her adoption, in fact.  So far, things have been going well.  I did have a bit of a freak-out moment after my first day leaving her at home that resulted in me taking her down to my parents' house for the extended weekend so that I could avoid leaving her in her kennel as much as possible.

This leads to the second part of this crazy equation:  school resumed this week.  To clarify, my classes this semester are all on the weekend.  In my grad program, weekend classes do NOT meet every week, but for a total of eight sessions in the semester for five hours each.  This means for seven more weekends between now and mid-May, I will be spending the hours of 5-10 p.m. on a Friday night and 12-5 on a Saturday afternoon learning all sorts of magical things about old books and archives. 

Please don't take my tone as negative - I am actually very excited about these classes.  They represent the first semester that I have been totally free of my required core classes and are both in subjects that I find interesting.  Although both courses have reading and writing requirements, I honestly do not anticipate that they will cause an undue amount of stress.  This is good because I will need all the extra stress I can find to deal with my new living situation.

I suppose the real question everyone wants to ask is "so how IS Lena?"  To answer, I say that she is just about as close to perfect for me as any dog could hope to be.  She is sweet, playful and mostly obedient.  I hope that by the time our monthiversary rolls around that our routine will be even more solid.  I am looking forward to the day that she can be left out in the house and the kennel can be put away.  I am looking forward to warmer days and sunlight that sticks around later so that we can enjoy more outdoor time. 

But for now, we're just getting used to our new lifestyle and figuring out what works best.  Hopefully next time I write I will have more interesting happenings to share.  For now, just know that we're doing fine.