One of those days

Today was one of those days. In a good way.

I had a meeting with my advisor this weekend, excellent stuff. She's pleased with dissertation progress/direction. She liked my suggestion that will end up saving me some writing and headache. And is not worried that I have no interest in being on the job market this year. Both of those things sort of shocked and amazed me. Turns out, she's just happy that I've found a place that lets me teach higher-level courses, and that I like their teaching philosophy.

So I've been sort of soaring from that.

We got the tree up (I think Ben should do a post on it, since he nobly fought the battle of the enormous Christmas tree), and all but the top 3 feet decorated. Yeah, you read that right. We need to borrow Dad's super-tall ladder to finish off. And we need more lights. Because the tree is 11 feet tall. HA! I love it. We went out to Gran's to pick it out, then after much planning, sweat, and valiant effort on Ben's part (with some help from my brother), it's ours. We'd never have been able to buy a tree this size, I was so grateful to Gran for letting us swipe one. And while we were planning for a big tree, we did NOT do a good job of estimating its size. So that's been a surprise that caused some work and crisis....but now that we're mostly settled it's really nice to sit and stare at the lights. Reminds me of getting up in the middle of the night at Christmas-time, wandering downstairs, and settling on the couch to sleep for a while....as often as not another sibling, or Mom even, was there. It was nice. And still is.

On top of that, I got a whole pile of grading done, went ahead and knocked out this round of grocery shopping, dropped off the Goodwill donations and the recycling, cleaned the house, did all the laundry (bright and shining moment! Everything was clean and put away for a whole four hours!), and got dinner done in time for Ben to get home.

And now we've got the kids settled and we're going to watch a movie.

Pretty much the best day in ages.