Happiness is...

• Knowing that every day when I come home from work there will be a group of boys and girls across the street playing handball, cursing each other out as they play but then going home as the best of friends. What fun it is to listen to their taunts and jeers.
• Being able to trust the weather report, and not wonder if the fog or the ocean wind will mean a 72 degree day is actually going to be very cold, or wonder if the report being given for your city is actually for all the areas surrounding your city.
• Feeling like an adult when I have to get dressed like a professional each and every day (save casual Fridays)...and yes Meghan, get my nails done once a week
• Having an outlet for my civic anxiety by volunteering for the Obama campaign yesterday to register voters. An interesting experience - everybody I asked outside the CVS Pharmacy I was standing near said they were registered to vote, except for two people who I got to register. Everybody was pretty emphatic in saying they were registered; you can tell this election means a lot to people, whomever they are voting for. One woman, with a British accent, said that yes she was registered, and that "If Obama doesn't win, I'm leaving the country". Another group asked me if I was volunteering my time in doing this, and I said yes, to which they said "hey that's pretty cool...thank you for your time". I got thanked a few times...made me feel good.
• Having a partner who is willing to wake up first thing Sunday morning and do my house projects with me...and then walk me to yoga class.
• Finding a book club to join. We're now reading The Girls Who Went Away. I haven't met the ladies in the book club yet, but via email they sound very nice. I found them because they were advertising on Craigslist for new members and I guess I met their criteria. It's a bit strange to do this through Craigslist, but I did find my very dear friend Karen on there in Miami...so hopefully this is similar. Just to be sure, I'm having Hasan come with me to the first meeting, since it's in one of their apartments...have to make sure there are no axe murderers.
• And lastly...Happiness is knowing my birthday is coming up! HINT HINT people.

Road trip pictures!!!

Here they are...

(pardon the fact they are all separate - flickr.com was having issues on my beta version of IE)

Yosemite

Drive through Utah

Arches National Park

Dinosaur Museum (right when we entered Colorado) - This is a good story. When we were at Arches, Hasan told me about how when he was a kid, he watched this Reading Rainbow episode that was all about some place where you could go see real live dinosaur fossils in the earth. He couldn't remember where it was in the US, but just remembered he'd always wanted to see that place...guess the historic significance and learning we were doing at Arches reminded him of it. Anyways, not 15 miles into the drive into Colorado, we see this sign that says "Dinosaur Museum - Exit 5 miles"...and we were SO excited! Could it be, could it really be? So we got off the highway, and went to check it out. Turns out that whole area has lots of excavations and museums that you can go see the dinosaur fossils and science. Unfortunately the one thing that he remembered from his childhood was closed for visitors, but we still had a great time. I love serendipity!

Driving the midwest

Chicago

The first week

I finished my first full week as a Philly resident, in our new apartment, at work at NutriSystem. What a week. On Friday we got the keys to our new apartment, with some internal Hasan/Anita bickering along the way to boot! :) Saturday it rained like crazy because of remnants of Gustav or whatever. I mean it was raining SO hard you couldn't see but a car or two ahead of you at times. And the thing is people in Philly are not used to driving in that weather. Me, I've driven in Miami - one thing I can say about Miamians, they do know how to drive in crazy tropical rain. But Hasan and Iwere determined to get moved into the new place so we made a couple of trips to bring stuff from his place to our new place in the rain. I wish someone would have taken pictures of us tag-teaming bringing stuff from the car to the apartment in that weather! It was worth it though - that night, we had such a good night's rest in our new place - it was so quiet. Too quiet actually.

Work has been great. The first couple of days were weird. Everything about the company felt so foreign that I actually got bored in some meetings - bored like you do when everyone around you is talking in a foreign language. But midweek, I took the day off as the movers arrived with my things and when I went back, it was completely different. I felt like I was finally getting my tentacles into things and having ideas about real stuff. So cool! The only drawback is the commute. It's only about 20 miles, but it's 20 miles of street traffic (red lights). And with these crazy ass Philly drivers, I have to be so alert the whole way through. (Facts about Philly drivers: they freely run red lights, they tailgate like no place I've ever seen, they slow down to about 15-20 mph at a Stop sign...meaning they don't ever actually stop, pedestrians do not have the right-of-way, and signaling is an unneeded activitiy to them. I actually had a van enter an intersection, when everyone in his direction was stopped at the red light, and then honk his horn at me repeatedly to get out of the way as I was crossing the street - can you believe???)

And this weekend, I worked like a madwoman to unpack and arrange everything. I think it's funny how I get this quality from my mother where I can't rest until things are done. I also was just so anxious from being transient, and also seeing so much stuff and realizing we have very little closet space. My friend Hillary said admonishingly that it had only been a couple of weeks of transience, but she just doesn't understand that to an obsessive organizer, a couple of weeks of lack of organization is like an eternity.

But now everything is arranged, and I went to my first yoga class at my new gym on Sunday...and my ship is sailing smooth.

I'll be picking up photos tonight from our road trip...stay tuned!