Finally Up For Air...Although the Allergies Make It Difficult to Breathe

So Monday, I turned in my final paper for the semester and today was my last day of work in the graduate office. And thus, I am finally free to write another blog...after a month and a half hiatus. And alas, that means there's probably no one out there left to read this. Oh well, a recap of my crazily busy life is in order at least for my sake:

After my last post, my family celebrated Easter here with us in the 'Burgh. Not everyone was able to make it out, but we had a lot of fun, some REALLY good food (rack of lamb... wow!), and also nearly froze to death while cheering my brother on in a college club team bicycle race (who schedules a bike race over Easter weekend anyway?! At least it brought the family to us).

The next weekend (March 28th) I took a roadtrip to Lexington, KY to speak at another graduate conference at the University of Kentucky. This made it the third weekend in March that I spent over ten hours in a car. And what a road trip it was. Before I even left, I knew there was something wrong in my car, but I just avoided it all week before I was to leave on Friday. So, when I got my little 1995 Civic (which I rarely drive) up to 60 mph on the interstate for the first time since our move to Pittsburgh, I thought the car was going to fall apart. The whole car was shaking and rattling loudly. I stopped on the side of the road and couldn't see anything. Finally, after driving a little longer (at no higher than 55!), I started calling brothers in hopes that one was near a computer and could get me directions to a mechanic. Finally, I reached Brandon and he was able to get me to a Monro Muffler in West Virginia - yeah I drove like that for an hour! It turns out, one of my tires had gone bad. Literally, the steel cable inside the rubber of my tire had collapsed, so my tire was incredibly lopsided. Thankfully, they were able to replace the tire, and I was on my way an hour later. The rest of the trip was pretty inconsequential, but the evening drive through Ohio in my little green car while listening to my favorite songs reminded me of the many times I drove back and forth between Indianapolis and Cedarville to see Amber while I was in college. Oh, and the conference went really well too!

Which brings us to April. The first weekend in April, two good friends from Indianapolis came to visit us. So, we had a great time catching up and showing them all the cool sights of Pittsburgh (Thanks for coming Adam and Beth!).

After our friends left, and for the next three weeks, most of my time was spent researching, reading books, and writing papers. I'm not very good multi-tasking or making a little progress at a time on several papers at once. Not only, do I feel like I'm not getting anything done; when I go back to a different paper, I also have to reread everything I've done so far again to figure out where I am in my argument. So, from April 6-10, I worked on a paper on Edmund Husserl... can't say I'll be taking a class on him again any time soon. From April 7-17, I wrote on Heidegger's Being and Time - one of the most influential philosophy texts of the 20th century... which I'm sure would mean a lot more to me if I had had a teacher that new what he was talking about (he hadn't taught the class in 17 years!!!). And from April 18-28th, I finished with a paper on Emmanuel Levinas, my personal favorite who I can see myself studying for the rest of my life. So... after a semester of "phenomenologizing myself to death," at least I can say some benefit came from it... now I just have to wait for the grades... ugh...