Wow

So, I've never really liked the cycle and pace of academic school years -- you know, the being crazy crazy crazy busy, then stopping abruptly for a bit, and starting over.  My job here might end up being an improvement over this normal university rhythm, but, well... not quite yet.  As you might be able to tell from my longer-than-usual delay on writing, it's been super busy.  I think it's mostly because the classes I am teaching/co-teaching were originally designed by a sociologist with the humanities-like tendency to assign several hundred pages of reading a week per class (I had had a say in the syllabi too, of course, but I had forgotten, I think, what it takes to read so much at once).  And so, I've been kind of drowning in reading the last two months. 

But I think that if I'm smart in writing my syllabi for next semester (agricultural policy class and research methods), I can make it a bunch more manageable.  At least that's the goal.  Because I don't mind working, but my sticking with this job for any length of time is going to be somewhat contingent on finding a better balance than the probably more typical academic-y-ness of working just about every evening and weekend...  I'll let you know how it goes.

Aside from the workload, though, I think my job is actually pretty good.  It's hard to say because it's still new, but so far, it seems about a million times better than my last job (which wasn't bad, but ended up being kind of boring and pointless-feeling a lot of the time) -- the stuff I'm doing is more interesting to me, and more interesting to the people I work with, the people I interact with are interested in somewhat similar things, or at least things that are more of interest to me, and so it's probably just easier for me to see the point of what I'm doing on a daily basis...

And even though for the last 10 years I kind of sought out being the lone "person thinking about social/societal issues" in a sea of natural scientists, it's really nice not to have to play that role here at all.  There's a lot of interest in and potential for hands-on stuff alongside the book learning (applied classes, farm campus work, travel courses (?)), and people collaborate and brainstorm together a lot, which was something I had hoped for other places but rarely saw (at least not in the way I might have liked).  Not to say it's perfect or anything, but there's potential.

Meanwhile, I had promised you in previous posts a view of our place from outside -- we're the second floor of windows in the house on the right in this picture.  Down the block is a nice park with a playground. 



And I've attached a video of Eytan walking around mostly because it shows a lot of the layout inside.



So, it's very nice, although I think have to stick with my last assessment of ultimately probably too urban for us... I'll keep you posted on the more-rural-place-to-move-to-next-summer search.

You may also have noticed above that Eytan was kind of excited to be walking around in shoes.  He has in fact gotten quite adjusted to shoes, and really likes putting them on and taking them off, especially if they are about 15 sizes too big.





Other recent developments include taking our hands or holding onto our pant legs to lead us places he wants to go, and as previously, continuing to get along pretty nicely with Timber, pulling his tail and kindly offering to share his pacifier.



Eytan also continues to be super excited about anything that looks or seems like a phone (which is interesting, because while Mike and I do talk on the phone, it's not super often -- but it is, I suppose, something which rings and we go to it, a compelling sequence in and of itself).  So we often end up leaving old (unconnected) phones around the house for playing with.  The following is one he picked up at a friend's when we visited Minnesota for Thanksgiving.

Below are a few more pictures from that trip.  The backstory to them is that the jumpsuit Eytan is wearing was Mike's from when he was little, and Mike was trying to get a parallel picture to one he has of his grandma holding him in that jumpsuit.  Eytan wasn't quite ready to sit still for it, but this was one attempt.

And he (and we) did get to spend some time hanging out with bunches of relatives and friends.

What else?  I guess a lot of the rest of what we've been doing has been continuing to adjust and settle in.  We've gotten used to buying eggs again rather than getting them from our chickens, and have found a way to bring our food scraps to the farm campus of my school to compost rather than have to adjust to throwing them out.  I'm probably used to the fact by now that when I go running and hear a rustle beside the path, it's more likely to be a squirrel than a snake. 

Eytan's front tooth (which had been pushed back up into his gums a couple of months ago when he fell face first onto a bucket as we were packing to leave Wenatchee (in a scary bleedy episode where we had thought it had been knocked out until the dentist did an x-ray and found it hidden back way up there)), has been coming back down quite nicely into its normal spot.  He has also started daycare twice a week, which has let him hang out with more kids and let Mike have a little more time to work on things on his end.  Mike will be taking classes in January and then ideally starting some more official yet-to-be-determined school program in the fall.

Although Mike and Eytan have probably seen a bit more of the city than I have so far, I have done a little bit of Pittsburgh area exploring through work, primarily agricultural/food tourism on class field trips -- one to a pig/cow farm, and a coffee roaster, and a lamb farm (which turned into a surprise visit to a slaughterhouse in West Virginia, which freaked out a few of my especially vegetarian students -- see third photo below).

So, what else can I say?  I guess there are pluses and minuses so far of life in Pittsburgh.  There are aspects that are certainly more convenient than living in Olalla Canyon -- eating Thai food on occasion (even takeout), for example, or walking to a supermarket, or having universities nearby where Mike can go back to school, or having much much much shorter flights to anywhere east of the west coast or mountain region. 

But I would say on the whole, "quality of life" is probably not as good here as it was in Wenatchee -- in terms of open-space, traffic, affordability, access to medical care, etc. (the care itself I think is better here, probably technologically and knowledge-wise several years ahead of Wenatchee, but the beaurocracy of having to wait forever in crowded waiting rooms and having the office misplace your appointment and not be willing to do much about it and having to go from one department to the other trying to find lost paperwork feels like a long way from showing up at the doctor's office where you know everyone, and being in and out in 20 minutes -- I guess the moral of the story is that if you have something requiring serious or complicated medical attention you're probably better off being here (which I guess is why in Wenatchee they would send you to Seattle for that), but for routine care I'd choose Wenatchee hands down). 

I guess, in short, I miss our old digs.  There are definitely parts I don't miss -- work, other odds and ends -- and those are probably many of the reasons why we came.  But there are times where a geographical transporter machine would come in handy :) :).  But, kind of along those lines, we head back to WA next week, and again next summer for lingering grant commitments.  And who knows, perhaps with some workload management at my job and a potential move outside the city proper, Pittsburgh will grow on us too.

Meanwhile, one second-to-last bit of news, which I will as usual bury deep in the middle of a long post, is that assuming all continues to go well, Mike and Eytan and I are all expecting the arrival of another kiddo in early to mid April (well, Eytan may or may not quite be expecting it per se, but...).  We are excited, and so far all seems good on that front, as I am just starting not to fit into normal clothes any more.  Ah well.

Last but not least, I'm leaving you with a few more Eytan videos.  He has gotten super fond recently of music, and has figured out that when you put a CD into the big brown box (or more accurately ask someone taller than you to do that), music comes out.  The dancing started as back and forth swaying whenever there's any sort of recorded music or people singing...

 

...and has recently become more complex.

The most recent move, as you can see below, is a squat, which is always better when someone else does it with you.

So that's it for now.  Hope to send you more pictures and updates when we get back from trip west.