Big News

So the big news is that we have had an offer on a house accepted. Hurrah!!!!! The one slight hiccup in this process is that John has not actually seen this house yet. Mum and dad came and saw this one with me and we all loved it and did not want to lose it so we tried to lock the guy down in an offer while we could. The American system (for my British friends) is much like the English one where you have a short period of time after the offer to get the house inspected etc.. during which you can withdraw for a very small penalty ($50). So if John hates it, it is not the end of the world.

I will post pictures if this house becomes OURS!

It is a lovely 3 bedroom-2 bath, which is under a mile from campus (hello lovely commute). I am so excited that we might have our first house. We would close in under three weeks so this is a very quick sale. Eek.

My office

Have I mentioned that my new office is wonderful? I probably have, well I know I have. The last few days have only seen the wonderfulness increase as so far this week the following have been delivered:

• 3 bulletin boards
• 1 white board (for my extra room - my main office already has 2)
• A printer
• Software for my lovely computer
• A 1.5 TB external hard drive
• 3 bookcases (hurrah!)
• 2 chairs - I was not expecting these, this brings the office chair total to 6, which seems slightly excessive.
• 1 table for my microscope when I buy it

I can now bring all the boxes that remain at home and put things on shelves. Might even post pictures when it is all together and organised... well when it is all together anyway.

Yum

John bought me some gluten free chocolate chip and pecan biscuits last night. I just had one. It was delicious. That is all.

The new job

Right so I shall take a minute before lunch to blog about the new job. I feel like I am starting to get settled in now, but then it does not take much to throw me off track. I am haunted by the feeling that any day now someone is going to walk into my office and tell me it has all been some kind of cruel joke and they never meant to employ me. The feeling that I am playing at being a Professor is a prominent one. However, I do love it here. TCU seems like a fabulous place to work and study. The more I learn about the university the more I realise how lucky I am to be here. But enough of the abstract thoughts let's deal with some facts.

1. My office here is bigger than my last flat. It is still in need of some bookcases, I am getting a little tired of my books being on the floor but they are on order and with all the space I have there is really very little room to complain.
2. A lot of the faculty eat lunch together every day. This is nice. It makes me feel welcome.
3. I love being back on a campus and this campus is great as there are not the mass amounts of undergrads around that Tennessee had (my fellow TN grad students will understand this one).
4. The nameplate on my door says Dr. Mayne and people keep calling me Dr. or Professor. Today I got an email to Professor Rhiannon. It made me laugh, overall it just seems silly and I feel very old.
5. There are so many meteorites here to play with. I need to spend more time playing with them.
6. I am taking just about every course the university offers at the moment. It is scary how much I have to learn.
7. I love my job.

Scolded

I received an email today pointing out my recent blogging inadequacies and thoroughly scolding me for them. I apologise. I do feel like I have been busy but I have not been busy enough to justify not sitting down for five or ten minutes every few days to write a little. Blogging is one of those things that is so easy to put off till tomorrow.

So what have I been up to?

Well obviously we moved to Texas. John and I are now residents of Fort Worth. John is only here two weeks a month though, the rest of the time he is still in DC so he can keep his current job. We are hoping he'll find something here soon as, quite selfishly, I want him here as I miss him when he's gone. I am now in the throes of my job at TCU and I love it. It is all a bit overwhelming and deserving of a blog entry of its own really so I won't go on about it here.

The last two months have also seen me attend three weddings in the UK (well one was a vow renewal but it counts as it was the wedding they never had). I felt so fortunate to get to all of them and had a wonderful time at every one. It is so interesting to see the personal spin every bride (and groom) puts on their big day. I actually only just returned from wedding number 3 last night. I went to the UK for the weekend - not something I would recommend but totally worth it to see the people involved become husband and wife.

Right well I will probably expand on all the points above in future blogs... well I intend to but let's see if it happens, no promises. For now I need to go and teach.