Settling In

I am now sitting in front of my newly arrived and very beautiful iMac, having just finished teaching class, and I'm starting to feel a bit more settled in. My second astronomy lecture still ended 5 minutes early, even though I thought I had prepared way past what was necessary. Oh well again. I don't think my students mind getting out a little early - it is a 1hr 15 min class after all. My students are asking good questions, and I only saw one of them on facebook during class. My physics labs yesterday went well. We were doing error analysis so it was tons of math, but they took that without much complaining. Since it's a science majors class I went through the math more quickly, which was ok for most of it, but I lost a bunch of them when it came to propagation of error. I keep assuming that science majors will get this stuff faster than non-science majors, but that's not necessarily true. Having two sections is nice because I get a chance to redo my explanations based on what the first group understood. It will be interesting to see if I get different evaluations from them.

On the home front things are also getting settled. The house is almost all painted. I think another two days or so and I will officially be able to put everything where it belongs. Yesterday I unpacked a box of bathroom items which, though not necessities, are very nice to have back again. I went to the grocery store for the first time this weekend and discovered that it was way better than my expectations and the name Stop N Shop would imply. I got to walk around my neighborhood a bit because the weather is incredibly gorgeous these days. There was a block party on the street next to me. I keep meaning to start walking to work, but last week it was rainy and this week I've been running short on time. I need to just make myself do it, especially now that I don't have to carry my laptop in everyday.

Did I mention that I just got a new computer? So pretty. Must fight the urge to play with it...

I am noticing that one downside to having a fairly full teaching load (I'm not really on a full load because they went easy on me the first semester) is that my time is pretty well scheduled out. There are many times when I really want to go home and take a nap but I can't because it's office hours or I have a meeting in the afternoon. The good thing is that except for Monday my mornings are fairly free, so I am attempting to make up for my sleepiness by sleeping late sometimes. However, sleeping late now means ~8:30-9:00, whereas that was getting up early in grad school. It's still better than having a "real" job!

I still have a whole list of administrative sort of things looming over my head (get a NY driver's license, set up a local bank account, etc.), not to mention things related to work (select and buy a telescope, plan course offerings for next semester, apply for new faculty awards/grants, etc.), and oh yeah I am supposed to do research too, but I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The most stressful time of my life will soon be coming to a close (I hope!).