Things are good

It's been a little over 8 months since B moved in and a little over 5 months since we got engaged (and our wedding is 5 months from tomorrow, so I guess this is the halfway mark of our engagement!). Which is weird, as it still feels really new. On January 12th it'll be our 2 year anniversary.

Last night B picked me up from work, we got burritos at Q'doba, came home, ate, watched current_tv, and just hung out. And B was all "This is awesome, I get to do all my favorite things, I have my favorite food and my favorite people and my favorite tv channel and my awesome kitties and everything is perfect!"

Things ARE perfect. I have complete freedom in my life to do whatever I want (which mostly involves q'doba burritos and current_tv), and I have an awesome partner who likes to do the same things that I want to do, and with whom I feel like I have a true partnership of equals. I'm on my way to an awesome career, I earn enough money to be comfortable with some extra for fun things, and people are starting to pay attention to my research (my schools' research newsletter just wrote a story about my latest journal article and I got a lot of emails from people requesting copies of it!). I'm spending next week at B's parents for christmas (yay, presents! good cheer! cookies!), and then when we come back a couple that we are close friends with (who live far away) will be coming to visit for 4 days around new years (yay, friends!). There's a possibility that another far away couple we are close friends with will be coming to visit too.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Oh yes, life isn't perfect, me and B have our issues and problems (what couple doesn't, really). But overall, in general, things are farkin awesome.

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In other news, I'm around 90% sure I will be spending a 6th year in grad school, and have been making arrangements for funding and such. This makes me infinitely less stressed out.

I talked to my adviser yesterday and afterwards he sent me this email:

Good talking with you today. I'm glad that you are planning to stay in graduate school for another year. I do feel that it will be best in the long run. And your upbeat attitude is the right approach (of course that is easy to say but not always easy to do).

Why wouldn't I be upbeat? I'm not super thrilled about any of the schools I still have a chance to get a job at this year (2 schools left) since I don't want to live in the NYC area, where they are both located (lesson learned for next year's job market). I wasn't originally planning to go on the job market this year anyway (but was talked into it by advisers). And knowing that I don't have to finish my dissertation by August whilst also planning my wedding and working on other research projects has suddenly taken this huge burden off of me.

I have a whole extra year! I can totally do that! And I will get to make progress/hopefully finish a whole bunch of other research projects as well. This is great news! I basically just got a one year extension on my PhD! And I have full funding (including health insurance) to boot. :) That's a lot better off than many people right now.