Danielle Blog

pants shopping & change in weekend plans

From the title of this post, you might think that I have another dreaded shopping experience to relate. For those of you who have been reading for some time, you will recall the various posts about this.

But I have happy news to relate this time! I went shopping after work yesterday from about 6:30-8:00 pm. Yes, it really did take me an hour and a half, but that is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar better than my usual 3-4 hour experience trying to find pants (and sometimes still coming up empty-handed).

I found a pair of pants – dressy & black – that are a) appropriate for professorial-atire and b) probably the best fitting of all time! woooot wooot!

Where did I find these magic pants? Once again, they are from Dress Barn.

Having pants to wear on days when I’m in the lab is a much, much better option than wearing a medium-length skirt and trying to find closed-toed shoes that don’t look completely dorky with a skirt. I will continue to plan a shopping trip to find decent clog-like or some other super comfy style of shoes for wearing with a skirt for when the lab isn’t using anything spillable. Honestly, I feel much safer wearing pants in the lab when working with solutions.

But get this, pretty soon I’ll have my very first lab coat that has my name and degree on it! I’ve never had this before, and it is very exciting!

I also get a) business cards – which is another first for me and b) a permanent (engraved) magnetic name tag to wear at school functions – another first. Well, that is if you don’t count the name tag that I wore as a teenager when I worked after school and during summers at Hardees.

Anyway, I suppose to some, these are sort of frivolous things. But I really like these kinds of indicators of permanence.

I’ve had so much stuff going on this week that I don’t even where to begin. Suffice to say that it is exciting to have everyone reporting back to school, but the work load has also increased dramatically. I will have to fall back into my “old ways” by working on stuff for school for most of the weekend. That means that for the first time in about 3 months, I’m not going to spend the weekend with Texas Seestor, Trainwreck, Munchie, and Skoochie.

Munchie (M) has been asking all week about when I am coming back to their home. And for most of the week, I had planned to be there from Friday night (after M’s bedtime) to Sunday morning when I leave for church. So Texas Seestor and Trainwreck have been telling her Saturday. I guess each day, she also says something like, “Today is Saturday!” And then they have to tell her something like “noooooooooooo, today is Tuesday.”

But as of Thursday night, I realized that there is just no way I can swing a visit up there and still get all of my stuff done. Texas Seestor and Trainwreck had to break it to her yesterday (Friday) morning and I guess she was very, very upset and insistent that I was still coming to visit. Thus ensued Trainwreck and Texas Seestor to brainstorm a solution, and they have decided to drive the 50 minutes down to my apartment after naptime to go swimming at my complex, and then go out to supper. We are all hoping that this will help smooth over the change in plans. It just breaks my heart to hear how she has been asking all week about me and then to hear how upset she got.

I’m also looking forward to seeing them. To be quite honest, it is really hard for ME to not see them this weekend too. I had really wanted to get to see them most weekends. But this week has been rather unusual in that my entire day has been booked with meetings from start to finish. So, I’m hopeful that I can go back to seeing them for one day each weekend. Or at the very least, for part of the weekend.

And with that, I need to buckle down and fly through my prep for the coming week’s lectures! See you on the flip side!