New Haven bound

My life has been a pretty sweet tour of the east coast. Growing up in D.C., college in Boston, spending my twenties in North Carolina and soon, Connecticut. That's because my brilliant scientist husband will be finishing his PhD in microbiology in several months and has accepted a post-doctoral position at Yale.

J can explain it way better than I can, but basically, after many years of really hard research, research that sometimes requires these grad students to, like, stay up all night looking at tiny molecules or whatever under microscopes, they end up doing these post docs where they do the same sort of stuff for a few more years before going out into the world on their own. Most of them get really pumped about it, too. They're crazy. Honestly crazy, but God bless them.

We don't yet know the specifics - when, exactly, J will graduate and when he'll begin his new job, but nonetheless I'm very excited for many reasons. We'll be living in or near New Haven, near J's parents and hopefully his sister Megan (who should, by the way, stay up there for a while so we can totally hang out) and many of his aunts and uncles, and we'll also be living very close to New York City which is a) my favorite place in the entire world and b) where a lot of my good friends live. Then there's New Haven itself, a very hip city, and then there's Yale - Yale! I love Yale! And I'm fully expecting to get invited to some Yale parties where, besides loads of scientists who I will not be able to really talk to much about particles and atoms and stuff, there will be, by random chance, (maybe they wandered over to the wrong party by mistake - it's hard to tell who's who with academics) some people from the English or Philosophy Department who will meet me and find me pretty charming and offer me a job where I just sit around and think about life, you know?

J's not going to like this but I've been getting really excited about the Yale thing and telling a lot of people - this is the part he's not going to like - that we'll be moving soon because "my husband has accepted a job at Yale." And then whoever I'm talking to says something like, "Wow! How impressive! Yale!" and I just nod demurely, like I understand how they feel, but at the same time, it's just the level of perfection I'm used to.

I don't know how many times he has explained to me, and other people, that it's the LAB that's important - not the fact that the lab is at Yale, and I know I don't quite understand how the whole science thing works, but I'm telling you, it is really hard to say it his way, when you could, instead, make it sound like you are married to someone who will undoubtedly be winning the Nobel prize. I know, I know J, that you probably don't even do research in a Nobel-recognized field, but allow me the indulgence, just for a few more months.

The other notable thing that's occurred since my husband has accepted a job at Yale is that I've started getting a little emotional every time we do something fun, remarking how sad it will be to leave North Carolina and everything - and everyone - we love here. Our screened in porch. Our favorite restaurants and coffee shops. Winters that are not unbearably freezing cold and very long.

No doubt when our departure date grows near, I'll just be walking around Chapel Hill crying all over the place about all the things I'll miss, but I'm equally sure that the thought of a new life up north, with so many yet unknown opportunities, will get me over being sad. Also, in New Haven they have some of those great, traditional Italian bakeries that sell those colorful cookies that taste like each one was baked with maybe a full stick of butter, you know the ones, and just thinking about that, knowing the proximity that I will live to those cookies, that is a really, really happy thought.

"The Today Show," now from a distinctly horizontal vantage point

Last night after a long meeting I was covering for the newspaper, J met me at the door of our house with a glass of wine. I can't stress enough the importance of this moment, the many, many instances in which I've wished someone would meet me at the door with a glass of wine, just like on television. People in sitcoms and movies are always meeting their beloved at the door with a glass of wine after a long hard day. To have it actually happen was absolutely lovely. Wait, it gets even better. Sitting on the bed in the (clean!) bedroom was a bag from one of my favorite stores. As my birthday falls directly after Christmas and New Years, I sometimes get the shaft on birthday presents (I usually forgive people this grievous error and get on with my life). This year was particularly busy and although I got nothing the day of, J's been promising me a present ever since. Last night he made good on that promise and presented me with an adorable little tea pot, matching cups and a few different kinds of tea as a belated gift.

I was so giddy about all the wonderful stuff going on that I didn't even notice the most obvious surprise. A TV, it sounded like. A TV in the bedroom.

We live in a really small house and having a TV in the bedroom has never been easy. When we decided - about a year ago - to try and put this little TV we had in there so we could watch late night talk shows and all while drifting off to sleep, J had to pull this wooden garden table out of the carport and arrange it in the corner of the room so we could place the television on top. It looked kind of unnatural sitting there, wedged in beside the bookcase, and we didn't have anything fancy - like cable or a remote - but we didn't care.

That TV - the first TV - was a free donation given to us by my friend Max who didn't want it anymore. Since it was free and used, and who knows how old, it wasn't that upsetting when, while watching a movie one night, the television made a whirring sound and turned off. And never turned back on again.

That was several months ago and we never replaced the TV, or even thought about it, really. It was simply a truth. The television we'd clumsily set up in our bedroom died, and so now our only option was to read before bed, which is really my favorite anyway. Except when I get extremely pumped to watch Letterman, or when I'm feeling ambitious, Conan, but don't feel I can muster all the energy it would require to watch either show in the living room and then make it all the way into the bedroom - a yard away, at least - to go to sleep.

So when I realized that the noise I heard and fuzzy picture I saw could only mean one thing - that we had a new TV in the bedroom I was, needless to say, very excited. And! Get this! There was a remote, too! Which J whipped out in order to show me how he could switch between the four or so channels we get in there, just like magic. No more falling asleep with the TV on because no one could make it over to the corner of the room to turn it off! A REMOTE!

J explained that while out buying my present, he'd purchased the new television at WalMart for a very reasonable price - thought it would be nice for us to be able to watch a movie at night, or maybe the news in the morning every now and before even fully waking up. I couldn't agree more. It was a really great night. So I picked up my wine and sat down on the bed - I couldn't have been any more content - and told J what an amazing husband he was, and thanked him for my belated birthday presents, that I loved, and realized he hadn't heard me, so I told him again, "thank you so much," and he still didn't hear me, and that's when I realized there was no way I was going to get his attention in order to sing his praises or anything else, and that the romance of the night had sort of fizzled after a strong five minute stint, as he was very, very deeply involved in an episode of "Law and Order."