Life is Totally Different Now!

Well, everybody is sick. Illness pervades the house. I was totally out of commission for two days this week and have been left coughing up disgusting stuff, and poor Del came home from work last night and collapsed in a pile of fever. Madeleine has been running up and down the stairs making hacking noises. Only Nicole has escaped (and am sort of avoiding her in hopes that it stays that way).

Have been meaning to blog for more than a month now, but the more I don't the more the pressure mounts and the harder it is. Luckily my cyberspace frenemy is whining again, which always makes me think a). jeez, at least I'm DOING stuff and b). if she can moan about everything online then I should probably at least update.

So yeah. How's married life you say? Well, it feels a lot like being plunged back into housematehood. I really REALLY liked living alone, and this place is tiny and full (the girls have vibrant social lives and people stay over a lot), so it's a bit hard to get used to again. The Del part is great but he's 1/3 of the housemates, if you see what I mean. But even though he works a ton (gets home about 8pm, usually) it is SO AMAZING to not have to work out Skype times and not have an imminent departure date. More Del time is always a good thing. Doesn't feel much like being married though (except that I already misplaced my ring once).

So what have I been up to? In a way it feels like it should be more, but I've been keeping busy.

1). applied for spousal visa - that took a week and a half of filling forms and locating documents and agonizing. Two weeks later the Home Office sent me a letter saying "we've sent your application to the people who take care of it. Don't bug us, don't phone us, don't contact us in any way if you ever want to see your passport again". So yeah. The waiting begins. They have mine AND Del's so we can't go anywhere (honeymoon? HAH) and, it turns out, we also can't open an ISA (tax-shelter equivalent of an RRSP) without them. So annoying - hurry up Home Office.

2). Applied for a million jobs. Okay, probably about ten. I had an interview on Monday though (for two of them) which I thought went pretty well, but didn't get the job. Was annoyed because I could do an awesome job, but I guess they were either looking for something else, or for someone whose proof-of-eligibility-to-work wasn't stuck at the Home Office for the foreseeable. (Whoops).

3). Applied for a grant for postdoc funding with my friend in Saskatchewan. We CANNOT move to Saskatchewan (it's not a hub of video game activity, how odd) but he promised we could work something out if I managed to snag it. Not holding out hope but it keeps me busy and in grant-writing practice, so…

4). Starting volunteering at the Victorian churchyard-turned-wildlife-sanctuary down the road. I LOVE this place. We get together Wednesday mornings and cut brambles off old graves. More about that later.

5). Almost (so close I can almost feel it!) submitted a paper. It's for one of those Very Special Research Topics - this one is on the Uncanny Valley, and this poor neglected paper has been sitting around for YEARS - Tyler and I collected the data in my final year of Ph.D., 2012, and I had it written and ready to go by June 2013. Supervisor never got around to looking at it and so it languished - till now, when Tyler spotted this special edition and did a little pushing. It's written and ready to go - am just struggling with annoying formatting issues and something about the abstract that doesn't sound quite right. Will give it another look today and try to get it out by the end of the weekend.

6). Working on two other papers, one review paper with Helena which keeps falling down the pile when deadlines come up, and one paper from my postdoc that I dread to look at.

So yeah, basically I'm busy and happy BUT feel like I'm totally being held hostage by the lack of a passport/work permit. Was talking to Olga, Aonghus' girlfriend from Ukraine, at the pub last night and am now counting my blessings that at least I don't have to register with the police every time I change my address or job (!), but it still is really cramping my style.