Last of the furniture

Today is the day chaps. Today, a mere five weeks after we got this house and rush moved down here, the last piece of furniture finally arrives. It seems hard to believe it has only been five weeks...in fact, I'm amazed that we've only had our sofa set here for a mere week and a half - it feels a lot longer!! I think we've done so well: furnished a full house (including curtains which I maintain was the hardest part to do on a budget), Boyfriend has been at work for four weeks now and I'm on the verge of finishing my PhD.

Honestly, days go by so quickly here. It's Thursday today and I don't feel like that much has happened this week. I've been to the swimming pool a couple of times, choir last night and had Cat round for dinner and yummy drinks on Tuesday. I've dealt with the computer crisis, worked on my paper and done some viva prep. Nothing very exciting really, but these things do make the time go by quickly.

Job applications are a large part of my life right now. The prospect of working in academia gets fainter and fainter...I've only found two jobs to apply to on that front so far, although one of them is pretty much my dream job. Fingers super crossed!!! I have applied to about ten other jobs as well though - a couple of rejections have come back from jobs that I guess I knew I was unqualified before...Editor at Oxford University Press was always a long shot. But I have applied to quite a few civil service jobs and an extremely exciting job opportunity with the RAS. This last one also has my fingers crossed - I would get to spend every day doing the best part of science: outreach to the general community. And the thought of working in a place as beautiful as Burlington House gives me major stomach butterflies. Will keep you all updated on the job front.

So back to the main point...in a few hours my dining table and chairs will arrive and our house will be complete. Thanks mummy, by the way, for buying this for us. Without your contribution and that from other members of our family, we would be sitting on garden furniture rather than our fancy new sofa. I'm so excited about having proper dinner parties, and hey, I sure have the time to spend in the kitchen at the moment, and after my viva in two weeks, I'll have even more time on my hands!! I  got bored on Tuesday actually and decided to make a spiced apple loaf just for the fun of it. Not gonna lie, it was delicious - Cat ate three slices!!

I'm actually kinda sad that the table is arriving today and didn't arrive yesterday though. It's like having a new toy - as soon as it arrives you want to play with it. But we've got plans for the next couple of days and so won't be able to eat on the table until Saturday at the earliest. Tonight is gonna be pretty good methinks - we've got tickets to a talk at the National Maritime Museum: ExtraCelestial: Astronomer’s Guide Turner Universe, which is one of the events for the National Astronomy Week. I do recommend you go to their website and see if there are any events in your neighbourhood - it's so fantastic when these national outreach events take place. But anyway, tonight we'll receive a nice glass of wine at this talk, and then find a lovely restaurant somewhere in Greenwich to grab some dinner. Certainly a more metropolitan evening than we would have had back in Preston.

Boyfriend is playing Magic pretty much all weekend, but luckily Cat's boyfriend is also away so will have lots of girly times going on. Plans are afoot to go to her fancy gym tomorrow night, and follow that up with some dinner and bad tv. And given the recent influx of good weather, things are looking good for some weekend picnicking and hiking near my house. Let's see how that goes.

I'm hoping to blog a lot more in the next few weeks. Things are gonna get pretty busy: next week we have the Maxwells coming to visit, then I'm off to Amsterdam for an epic couple of days for Marjh's hen party (Marjh being my mental academic mother), and then I come back just in time for my viva. So stay tuned chaps!!