Summertime and the living is easy, fish are jumping and the cotton is high

School has officially ended for the semester! I won a grant to get paid to do research over the summer (woo!) and start meeting with my research assistant a week from next Tuesday. Meanwhile I'm taking a 4 day weekend this weekend before I have to go in for a workshop all day next Tuesday, and may or may not come in to work another day that week to work on some other research projects. I'm making good progress on several projects and hope to submit 2 articles to journals and another to a conference by mid June.

I talked to my mom this week for her birthday for about half an hour. She gave me a recipe for bbq chicken wings for a party I'm having for my own 30th birthday in a few weeks- my first "grown up" party where we will have a bunch of colleagues over with their spouses and kids, along with a few other people including hopefully a fellow OTD Blogger who lives near bye and a few profs from other departments/universities. . The last party I had (besides my wedding) was my 25th birthday party and that involved a bunch of grad students and friends and beer and a crappy grill we found in our backyard. This one will involve great food and birthday cake and an actual real grill and real lawn furniture vs. sitting on a short wall in an alley full of broken glass and in seats in a tiny backyard that had lots of poison ivy!

Meanwhile while talking to my mom we figured out my party is actually on shavuot, ha! But she didn't really say anything. Nor did she say anything mean or snarky when I told her (when talking about my upcoming party) that I asked everyone to bring a side dish for my party- which clearly will not be kosher. No, she actually was like "that's a great idea, cause side dishes are always such a pain to get together, that way you only have to focus on the main dishes!"

So yeah.  That seems to be going well.

Today I transplanted the little pepper plants I grew from seed into the ground outside, I've been hardening them off for the past week. I also planted green beans and jack o lantern pumpkins in the backyard.  Tomorrow I'm planting the potatoes, and maybe I'll take some pictures.  It's been in the high 80s and 90s the past week or so, summer has come to the south.

My party is in a few weeks, and my (otd) brother and his girlfriend are coming to visit the week before that on the way back from a motercycle trip to New Orleans (my brother is a biker and has traveled all over the east coast/the southeast on his bike). On the day of my actual 30th birthday B and I are going to wake up early, take the dogs, and drive several hours to an island right off the coast that is dog friendly, and spend the day on an island beach before driving back home at night. Trashy novels of some type may be involved. Or maybe a that Barabara Erenreich book that's been on my nightstand for months because I never have any energy to read for fun during the school year with all the reading I do for school.

It's summer!  Time for research, and relaxing, and not having to speak in front of a crowd again (with the exception of a conference here or there) until late August!