Stephanie starting work = silence on the blog.

In case you were getting concerned about the severe drought on the blog, I wanted to reassure you that we are still alive.  We have not, however, done much of anything blog-worthy in the past two weeks.

I started work on September 13th and have been going non-stop since I set foot in the office.  As a result, our routine consists walking or running with Cooper, eating, sleeping, and working (sometimes even on Saturday and Sunday).  The hours have been pretty insane the last couple of weeks, but I LOVE the work.  I have honestly never liked a job as much as I like this one, which is very reassuring after suffering through three years of law school and the bar exam to get here.  The hours will get better as I get more efficient and when the court gets back up to full strength.   The docket is unusually heavy right now because we are short three judges--the House and Senate can't seem to get it together to approve the nominations.

We did manage to squeeze in a few fun things in the midst of everything else--dinner with an old friend and her new husband last week, dinner with new friends this week, a very disappointing historic home tour, and shopping for bicycles.

Some of the houses in Alexandria are positively drool-worthy, so we figured that a historic home tour would give us a chance to see the inside of a few of them without continuing to steal glances as we pass by on walks with Cooper.  Most of the houses on the tour had been horribly remuddled--this is a term I adopted from my parents and they generally use it to refer to a remodel that has gone wrong.  The houses lacked the period details that we went on the tour to see (e.g., original flooring, molding, windows, doors, and hardware), and one of them even had bobble-head dolls on display.  If you collect bobble-head dolls that is your own business, but people don't pay to go on a home tour to see that kind of thing.  It was a big disappointment. 

Bicycle shopping, on the other hand, was much more fun.  Pictures will be posted when I settle on a bike, but this one has temporarily captured my heart:  Electra Coaster.

- S