Dallas to New York & Halloween

In August I received an offer from a company out of New York City that seemed too good to be true and it was closer to the schools Arielle wanted to go to in the northeast. I liked my job in Dallas but we knew we would eventually move so that Arielle could pursue her PhD. It was really hard leaving all my colleagues at Comerica as we had some really good times and most days it felt like home. Once I left we were stuck in a weird limbo. I flew back and forth between Dallas and NY with my company giving me eight weeks before I needed to be moved to NY. I was living out of hotels and corporate housing, working, and trying to find a place to live in NY while Arielle was packing, organizing our move, closing our lease, and working. It was my first time in NY so it was quite the shock.

 

 

View from my Long Island City hotel.

The view from my corporate office.

 On my end I needed to find an apartment so I had Arielle fly up one weekend to help me look. Being from the west coast I required a minimum of 1,000 square feet, a safe neighborhood, and the ability to have cars. This ruled out most of the boroughs especially with the city tax and the fact that rent is crazy in NY. For example, I stayed in corporate housing on the upper eastside in a 300-350 square foot studio, which was on the first floor (this reduces the price) for $4,200 per month. We ended up looking at a few places over a holiday weekend but some of them were closed so we didn't find anything. I ended up going to New Jersey a few times and found a place that met all of our needs and wants.



300-350 sqft studio.

Corporate housing was near central park.

The weekend of the move I flew back Thursday night and ended up packing and working until 1am, got up the next day packed with Arielle, the Walkers, and friends. We got up early the next day and drove to Roanoke, Virginia in a day. Then from Virginia to Weehawken, NJ to our final destination. We were lucky to have the Walkers there to help with driving our second car and unloading all of our stuff.

We're glad to finally be all moved to the northeast and have been exploring around Jersey. New York City is too much to handle for extended periods of time but we love Jersey. Below are some pictures from a park near us.

Fort Lee Historic Park

Fort Lee Historic Park

On top of all this my new job wasn't what was pitched to me so I have been searching for a new job during this crazy move and settling in. I ended up finding a job closer to what I was doing at Comerica with my usual work benefits and I start November 30th.

Also to catch up on Halloween, we carved Pooh Bear (Arielle) and Snoopy and Charlie Brown (Dimitri). We had three kids stop by which was three more than we had last year. That has been the crazy of ending summer and fall of 2015 and Arielle is in the process of applying for PhD programs. Once this settles down we'll be excited for a break in the chaos.



 

2015 Pumpkin

Let the Holidays Begin!

With Halloween on Thursday it marks the beginning of the holiday season. As many people know I love the holidays! Some think I'm crazy as I started listening to Christmas music and my Christmas shopping in September but I just can't help getting excited for the holidays.

Today Arielle and I carved our pumpkins. We still have a few small details to touch up once we have candles in them but overall they are complete. For the last few years we have started carving more fun and challenging pumpkins and this year was no exception. We bought some nicer carving tools at my favorite food-ware store (Williams-Sonoma) this year and they actually made the process smoother and a little easier. We baked some pumpkin cookies and Arielle gave me a hard time for listening to Christmas music after all of my Halloween music stopped.

 

 

Dimitri (Owl, Moon, Leaves) and Arielle (Ariel and Flounder)

Halloween has a lot of fun memories for me as my dad "made" us walk block after block until people stopped answering their doors. When we were little we complained from time to time about walking but as we got older it was fun since we always had more candy than most kids.

Natalya as a clown and I was a cowboy.

As Halloween approaches I am pretty excited to be handing out candy to the neighborhood children. We weren't able to last year due to our class schedules. Happy Halloween and remember to hand out candy.

Halloween/Thanksgiving/Fall Semester

We've been pretty busy the past few months. The semester has been easier for me than it has for Dimitri. I am only taking 3 classes and they are all on Monday and Wednesday so I am free the rest of the week. I spend Friday mornings volunteering at an elementary school helping out in three Adapted P.E. classes and on Thursdays I am often doing data collections or in the lab working on data reduction. The rest of the semester will be pretty easy for me, I just have a couple of papers to write and one exam and then I'm done! Next semester I'm going to take 4 classes and so far they are all on Tuesday/Thursday so I will have long weekends again which is really nice, and it is really convenient for data collection since they are in the mornings and are at least a few hours.

One of the babies on a treadmill (they are usually naked).

The research project I am working on is called Myelomeningocele Intervention or MMC study. MMC is one type of spina bifida. For the study we have families do treadmill training 5 days a week for 10 minutes a day with their baby with MMC. The parents hold their baby on the treadmill and try to get them to take weight on their legs.  Every 6 months they do a bone scan to see if their bones are becoming more dense (which is a good thing) among other tests we run. Babies with MMC generally have very low bone density in their legs making them more likely to break their bones and depending on the level in the spinal cord where the lesion is people with MMC may only walk for a few years. We're hoping to increase their bone density and possibly help them to walk longer and avoid assistive devices. So far things are looking promising, but many of the babies haven't graduated from the study yet so we will see!

Dimitri is taking 6 classes this semester and can't wait to be on Christmas break. He spends at least 40 hours a week doing homework. He is currently waiting on the Master in Applied Economics program to see if they will let him do a dual masters (right now he is in Master in Financial Engineering). It's university policy that they have to see one semesters worth of grades before they can grant you a dual masters so he won't find out until December some time.

Ann Arbor by our apartment.

For Halloween this year we were really excited because there are a lot of kids in our apartment complex which meant that there would be lots of trick or treaters, BUT then we realized we're both in class until 8 pm on Halloween which meant we wouldn't be home until almost 9 pm. By the time we got home no one was out so we got stuck with all the candy. Oh well! : ) We carved pumpkins the weekend before Halloween. My pumpkin said 'Trick or Treat' and Dimitri's pumpkin was of Jack Skellington from A Nightmare Before Christmas. They turned out pretty good I think!

Our 2012 pumpkins.

For Thanksgiving my advisor invited us to her house with the other grad students, but we decided to do our own Thanksgiving since it was our first chance to do one with just us. We ended up finding a 10 pound turkey and ate around 3 pm. We made cheesy potatoes, stuffing, rolls, cranberries, gravey, and pumpkin pie to go along with the turkey and we have A LOT of left over. Everything ended up being done around the same time which worked out really good. (Dimitri's Note: Arielle hasn't liked stuffing but this year said it has grown on her lol.)

Dimitri wearing his chef jacket from Natalya.

The finished meal before we ate.

We went on a walk after we ate dinner and heard a scratching coming from the dumpsters. We walked over and looked in the recycling bin because raccoons often get themselves stuck in them when the trash isn't full enough. He wasn't in the recycling so I lifted the lid of the garbage and couldn't see it until I looked down and he was looking right at me and hissed. After a few attempts Dimitri was able to get the lid to open all the way and we put a vacuum cleaner (someone left it by the dumpster) in the corner of the dumpster so the raccoon could climb out. We thought the vacuum fell over so we went to go get a big stick from the other dumpster, but when we were walking back we saw the raccoon go down the sewer drain in the parking lot.

Today we decorated our apartment for Christmas. Our tree is up and we put lights around our back slider door. We listened to Christmas music for a good 6 hours and watched Frosty the Snowman. We also got most of our Christmas shopping done online today so we won't have to travel with everything when we go back to Spokane for Christmas.

Halloween 2011

This year for Halloween Dimitri and I decided not to do the typical face pumpkin and tried something a little different. We decided to carve Mario and Princess Peach so we found patterns online and printed them off.

They took a lot of work because after cleaning out the pumpkins we had to lay the pattern on top and poke dots all around the lines which is harder than I thought because the pumpkin isn't flat so the paper doesn't stay lined up very well. Then we connected the dots on the pumpkin and finally shaved off the correct areas. We had to shave off more than we thought so the pumpkins would glow so I shaved from the inside with a spoon and Dimitri shaved off on the outside. Both worked well but they  took forever (I think it ended up being 4 hours!).

 Me shaving off the pumpkin skin.

 Dimitri connecting the dots.

 All done!!!

 Mine glowing.

Dimitri's outside on Halloween night! We had some rave reviews... I think we'll make pumpkins like this next year!