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.