Hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving week. I am actually looking forward, as geeky as this sounds, to having the mental and actual space to spread out my research papers and do a bit of writing. I have two papers due the week following the break, and they will take up most of my time. The way I organize my papers is by laying all the research out on the bed, desk, floor . . . anywhere there is space. So things start to look pretty chaotic when I am in the middle of a writing project!

As a late-night after-writing treat, I have discovered that the screen on my window opens, and that the ledge outside the window is just the right width to hold a wine bottle! So I am able to chill my wine, sans fridge, during the autumn months . . . I just have to be careful to bring it inside to drink before the temperature drops below freezing at night!

. . . When, on a Sunday morning, you go down the hall to brush your teeth and lock yourself out of your dorm room!

This morning I was brushing my teeth in the washroom when I realised–oh shit!–that I had thrown my bathrobe on and stumbled out into the hall without triple-checking (as has been my habit) that I have my key in my pocket. In fact, I hadn’t even checked once. The key was most emphatically not in my pocket, no matter how many times I felt around in there. This necessitated a call to public safety, and then I stood around the hall in my bathrobe, waiting while the RA on duty was summoned out of bed, and made her way over to North Hall to let me back in. Trust me: I lacked the cool suave of this gentleman on the right.

It had to happen at least once. When I lived in the dorms in Aberdeen, I did it twice in quick succession about a month into my residency–once while wearing the very same bathrobe–and after that took to leaving the key physically IN the lock whenever I was in the flat. But that was a more secure environment; I have been warned by people who have reason to know that this is a bad idea here in North Hall. Expensive and/or irreplaceable things have been known to go missing.

So on a Sunday morning, when I get up and blearily stumble to the washroom to clean my teeth and wash my face, I need to remember to take my key with me. Perhaps I could just glue it to my upper arm?

At least I realized what I had done before I was in the shower covered in soapsuds!

I am relieved to report that yesterday, I received my housing assignment: a single room in one of Simmons’ Beacon Street facilities. This means that I will not have to hunt for an apartment in Boston, worry about roommates, or the commute to campus. Hooray!

The move-in day in August 31st, the Friday of Labor Day weekend, which will give me a few days to get oriented before classes start.

Two small bits of news that makes Boston and Simmons seem just that much closer:

(1) This past Wednesday, I sent off a housing deposit to the office of residence life at the college, which will put my name on a waiting list for the graduate housing (upper-class students go through room selection later this month, and following that first-year students are given housing on a first-come, first-serve basis), and

(2) The GSLIS program has finally published their academic calendar for Fall 2007. Classes begin September 5th (after the Labor Day weekend). This is good news for Dad & Mom, who are hoping to drive me out to Boston–Dad will be able to see the store through the worst of book rush before we leave town.