Heidelberg day 5: We did it
Oct. 27th, 2012 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aryanhwyWe met this afternoon with the rental agent and the landlady and made an agreement. We went through the entire contract (which took 1+ hour, and it was being summarized), which we will fill out at our leisure when we get home, and so long as we pay the first half of the deposit by Nov. 15, it's ours.
Whooo!!! I honestly didn't expect that we'd be able to find and obtain an apartment in the 5 days that we were here, much less one that is so awesome and in such a great location. I thought we'd end up in some soulless box in a suburb for the first year, and then have to go through the hassle of moving AGAIN after we found a decent place. But now, if everything suits as it seems like it should, we'll basically be on the Marktplatz indefinitely.
Today also saw the end of the workshop, which in about the last hour and a half turned from something where I wasn't sure we'd come away with anything into something that everyone, logicians and Indologists alike, agreed was quite fruitful and useful, though we clearly did not have as much time as we really need. The current follow-up plan is a one or two week intensive meeting next summer.
Since the after lunch discussion was unplanned and informal, Joel and Gwen came out to the university to join us for lunch. Gwen, as usual, charmed everyone, and was remarkably content to let me hold her while I sketched out a few final notes on the whiteboard (she's not normally content very long being held), and then she and I walked around the room during the rest of the discussion. Her walking ability has grown by leaps in the last few days; she's a lot sturdier walking holding on to just one of my hands, and once or twice she's looked as if she's making moves to taking a step or two without help. If she keeps improving as she has this week, we're definitely still on the books for walking before she's one. She's also basically mastered stairs -- we have gone up so many stairs in the last few days. She's also getting much better about going down; if I'm holding both her hands, she can walk down stairs (it took her a bit to realize that once she extends a leg over the step below, she then has to bend the remaining one in order to lower herself down), and if I'm not holding on to her hands, she's mostly learned (though I still watch her like a hawk) that going down head first is a bad idea, and that she needs to sit and then go down sideways, one leg at a time. It's inefficient going down completely backwards, since once she's gotten a few stairs down, then the temptation of all these stairs ahead of her to climb gets to be too much, and she starts going back up.
We also had another milestone tonight; those of us who are leaving tomorrow got together for dinner again, and instead of just feeding her off of our plates, we actually ordered a dish for her from the kids menu. For 3,50EUR, we figured it was worth it. It was some vegetable filled pasta in a spicy broth with shredded carrots, and she ate about 3/4 of the pasta and a few handfuls of the carrots. It was quite tasty -- I had some of what she left behind. As Joel said, she's no longer a baby, she's now a kid. :)
Whooo!!! I honestly didn't expect that we'd be able to find and obtain an apartment in the 5 days that we were here, much less one that is so awesome and in such a great location. I thought we'd end up in some soulless box in a suburb for the first year, and then have to go through the hassle of moving AGAIN after we found a decent place. But now, if everything suits as it seems like it should, we'll basically be on the Marktplatz indefinitely.
Today also saw the end of the workshop, which in about the last hour and a half turned from something where I wasn't sure we'd come away with anything into something that everyone, logicians and Indologists alike, agreed was quite fruitful and useful, though we clearly did not have as much time as we really need. The current follow-up plan is a one or two week intensive meeting next summer.
Since the after lunch discussion was unplanned and informal, Joel and Gwen came out to the university to join us for lunch. Gwen, as usual, charmed everyone, and was remarkably content to let me hold her while I sketched out a few final notes on the whiteboard (she's not normally content very long being held), and then she and I walked around the room during the rest of the discussion. Her walking ability has grown by leaps in the last few days; she's a lot sturdier walking holding on to just one of my hands, and once or twice she's looked as if she's making moves to taking a step or two without help. If she keeps improving as she has this week, we're definitely still on the books for walking before she's one. She's also basically mastered stairs -- we have gone up so many stairs in the last few days. She's also getting much better about going down; if I'm holding both her hands, she can walk down stairs (it took her a bit to realize that once she extends a leg over the step below, she then has to bend the remaining one in order to lower herself down), and if I'm not holding on to her hands, she's mostly learned (though I still watch her like a hawk) that going down head first is a bad idea, and that she needs to sit and then go down sideways, one leg at a time. It's inefficient going down completely backwards, since once she's gotten a few stairs down, then the temptation of all these stairs ahead of her to climb gets to be too much, and she starts going back up.
We also had another milestone tonight; those of us who are leaving tomorrow got together for dinner again, and instead of just feeding her off of our plates, we actually ordered a dish for her from the kids menu. For 3,50EUR, we figured it was worth it. It was some vegetable filled pasta in a spicy broth with shredded carrots, and she ate about 3/4 of the pasta and a few handfuls of the carrots. It was quite tasty -- I had some of what she left behind. As Joel said, she's no longer a baby, she's now a kid. :)
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Date: 2012-10-27 08:57 pm (UTC)My parents got married in 1948. Between then and 1957 when they finally bought a house they settled down in and have remained in to this day, they moved, lessee, from the East Coast to Madison (where my sister was born), to Oxford (the one in England)(for my father's post-doc), to the New York area (where my brother was born) to State College (where I was born) to (I think) Bethesda to D.C. sort-of-central. That's just about a move every two years. With up to three young children in tow. And that doesn't count all the cross-country trips from wherever they were to 60 miles west of St. Louis to make the mandatory grand-parental (my father's folks) trip once a year, via train. (Well, okay, so trains are easier to travel on than planes, but, still, a day's worth of baby supplies and non-disposable dirty diapers, each way, is not a small task.)
To this day, I do not know how they moved so often and still maintain their sanity and their marriage.
And I should note that while they lived in Bethesda, they made a firm vow, after all that, that the next move would positively, definitely, abso-damn-lutely would be their last, which is why they've been in the house in DC for 55 years.