10.56 am

Interviews have been going well. It's a bit like speed dating - we sit across from each other at a table that's rather small, in uncomfortable chairs that don't quite pull up to the table, gaze into each other's eyes a moment or two, ask some questions, then go home and breathlessly await the ring of the telephone. Despite that, I've been rather impressed by how not-horrible the process has been so far. I'm enjoying the people I talk to - one interviewer and I talked about the horrible season the Red Sox have been having, and a second interviewer and I compared notes about my favorite professor (she had him when he had just started teaching). Two others asked me what I liked to do in my spare time, noting that they didn't want to hire only the brightest and the best - they wanted to hire smart kids who also know how to have fun. Plus, I got a squishy yellow duck. It doesn't get much better than that.

11.01 am

In non-OCIP news, the boy's sister got married this weekend. The wedding was up in Sonoma, and despite a hellish drive that involved sitting in traffic for almost two hours and a flat tire, we had a wonderful weekend. I think the highlight was watching the best man, the groom, and the bride's father all start dabbing at their eyes during the ceremony. I'm still in shock that I have friends and family who are old enough to get married - two cousins and a college roommate last summer, classmates and the boy's sister this summer, and I'm sure a bunch of weddings after 3L year. As Mr. Woodhouse would remark, it is entirely unreasonable that people should grow up and get married.

Feeders

2.44 pm

The fish tank, which has been sitting in a corner of the room with miscellaneous junk in it for as long as I've been dating the boy, is now set up and going. Last week we went to the hardware store, where he bought some 2 x 4's to make a frame for the tank to rest on. Then we went to the pet store, and spent an insane amount of money on filters and pumps and a heater and so on. Insert gravel, driftwood, some live plants, and the ceramic trees that I made back in college, mix with eco-start and chlorine neutralizer, let sit for a week, then add fish.

I didn't realize setting up a fish tank was so much work. The fish we have in it now are "testers," which means that in a week or so they die and we bring the water into the pet store to see what went wrong. I am resisting the urge to give them names, but they're so cute it's hard. In another week or so, if they're all still alive, we'll pick up some cichlids. The only downside about the fish tank is that it's on top of the dresser right next to my side of the bed. Which mean that a) I don't have a nightstand now and b) if there's a you-know-what in the middle of the night, I'm going to get woken up with thirty gallons of water and some very unhappy fish in bed with me.

2.49

OCIP is coming. It's like that scene in the movie, where you hear the scary music starting up in the background, and you say to the heroine, "don't go down that dark alley all by yourself," and she does and then the monster comes out. Well, maybe not that bad. But the scary theme music is definitely starting to play. I'm narrowing down my list, especially since boy might end up with a job that would require us to be in the Bay another five years or so. Now I'm trying to figure out how much detail to go into in a cover letter, and whether (and how much) to tailor them for the firms I'm really interested in.

And it would be awfully nice to know what my schedule's going to be...