Well, hello!

It officially hit below freezing a few nights ago!! Ahh! But today was actually a very nice fall day- only a light jacket necessary.

Andrew and I are doing great. I've started working with my Atlanta counterparts, getting into some real work. It's a little intimidating but also exciting. I think we have a really great group and I have a really great supervisor on the Epic side. I'm AC and he's AM, so he's my direct supervisor for this customer. He guides me in the beginning and then starts training me to be an AM on my next customer, ideally. I really lucked out- my AM has been here 5 years, which means a lot of experience. Most ACs have a first-time AM. He's a really nice guy too! He's a newlywed, very kind, and funny.

He (I'll call him Tom) told me he has high expectations because my TL (boss- I'll call him Barry) said I was a really good one! That was nice to hear.

Andrew's testing away. He's found some really cool bugs that the developers liked, and some that got them really frustrated.

Andrew wants me to say that we're thinking about getting a dog soon. I'm not so sure he really means soon. But it's in the plans down the line. Things have definitely calmed down for us- most people are working longer hours and traveling, so we're at home a lot more. Plus, it'll be nice for him to have someone to cuddle with while I'm away on trips.

I'll make this a long post! This week is Madison's book festival, so we went to a few events- a poetry friend of mine from UVa is up here getting her MFA in creative writing, which is great, because she keeps us in the loop on interesting things going on at UWM. The book festival is actually not directly associated with the University, but largely supported by it. Anyway, we went to a reading by Jeffrey Eugenides, a novelist. He has three novels- The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex, and his newest which he read from, The Marriage Plot. We all enjoyed his reading and each of us bought one of his books- I'm going to start reading Virgin Suicides and Andrew's going to start Middlesex (after he finished Slaughter House 5). We got the books signed!

Then we went to dinner, just a cheap Japanese place on State, and went back for an fellowship alumnus reading. A fellowship is basically where the University pays you to finish a book and you teach one class. There was one fiction writer (we both thought he was awful) and a poet who got her MFA at UVa!! She now teaches at Virginia Tech. In the QA I had to hold myself back from asking "So, you wish you were teaching at UVa, right?" We did like her poetry, though. It was a nostalgic experience to hear her descripe so vividly the places we used to frequent. It was also a bit frightening to hear her poems on winter clearly composed during her stay in Madison... as they say in the Midwest, "Oh geeze.."

Today we did some clothes shopping. We're eating dinner now and then we're headed back out for grocery shopping. We got some good cleaning done today!

This weekend we've made some good progress- I've been really challenging myself not to work more than 40 hours a week, but it's still been a bit of a problem for us lately that all we do is go to work, watch some tv, and sleep. We used to have so much literature and philosphy to talk about! So, that's something we're working on now- Andrew's going to work on new recipes since he loves cooking so much, and I'm going to do some decorating in the apartment- we have some plans for painting! The book festival was a really great opportunity for us- we miss the academic stimulus. Like I said- we're working on the apartment- we've gotten a little too complacent with decorating and let it get kinda blah- I'm hoping to hang some pictures this week and we'll go shopping for some decorations in a few weekends- we've decided to devote the first Saturday of the month to apartment decorating! It will be fun!!

We also decided on Wedding Wednesdays! Every Wednesday we'll work on wedding planning. Of course, if something awesome comes up, we'll reschedule, but it's nice to have time planned out for it. We've been looking at alternate choices in Atlanta, but everything we've found so far is super expensive! Osthoff is just so right for us.. but we do want to be sure our family and friends can come.

More more!! On Wednesday, we went to see Seth Meyers (from SNL) do stand up- he was hilarious! And he talked to me! He asked for couples in the crowd- I raised my hand (we were second row!) and he asked how long we'd been together. We were not extactly what he was looking for material wise- he chose to focus on the couple that had been together one year and met at a frat party. It was so much fun though!

Okay, dinner is ready so I'm going to go now. I hope you enjoyed this rambling update. I've got more to come! There is a very exciting new man in my life that I'd love to tell you all about!!