The weather is changing here, and for the first time in years I feel like I’ve really been able to enjoy Spring. In MA, March was still a month of snow and April was all rain. Down here, it feels like I’m in a postcard, with temperatures already peaking in the 70s and beautiful flowering trees everywhere. I think the trees are the biggest change. I hadn’t noticed the lack of flowering trees in MA, but now when I walk around DC I feel like I’m seeing this kind of tree for the first time.

Each morning I enjoy the views along the side of the highway as I drive in (who knew there could be any redeeming qualities to the beltway?). I’ve also started taking walks after lunch on nice days, and have been pleasantly surprised by the small parks scattered around the city. I’m even beginning to feel like I know my way around (a small part of) the city.

Last weekend we went into DC to see the Cherry Blossoms. While the day was rainy and gray, we still had a nice time walking around the Tidal Basin with Megan’s college friend Dustin.

We also toured the Freer and Sackler Galleries, which together comprise the Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art. We hadn’t even known the museums existed until I saw a metro ad about their exhibit of prints by Hokusai, including the classic Great Wave. The exhibit was very nice, and included all 46 prints that make up his “36 Views of Mt. Fiji” series (he added 10 more after the first printing). It was very interesting to read about the artist (he did all the work after he turned 70), as well as the technological advances which impacted his art. For example, much of his work features a brilliant shade of blue for the ocean, sky, or even the outlining. This dye was a new Prussian Indigo that had recently been introduced to Asia from Germany. Hokusai took not only colors, but techniques for perspective from European traditions. Combined with Japanese culture and scenery, this led to some classic results.

See more pictures.

First we had an earthquake, then we had a hurricane. Where did we move to?? Luckily we didn’t lose power from the hurricane, but people a few blocks in each direction did, so we really lucked out.

No major damage in our area, although there was a surprising amount of damage in Massachusetts and Vermont. Who knew that moving south would give us a better hurricane experience.

The craziest part of the hurricane for us was hurricane prep. After work on Friday, we drove out to my parents’ house on the Eastern Shore to help them get their boat out of the water. They’ve only had the boat a few months, and this was the first time it was leaving the water after going in. It was quite the adventure! We all now have more experience backing a trailer into water, getting a boat onto a trailer, and getting the boat all the way up the trailer. It probably would have been a bit easier if it wasn’t dark by the time we got to any of these steps. But, we succeeded!

We slept through the major part of the hurricane, since it was fairly definite that we wouldn’t get hit by the worst part and it passed over us in the middle of the night.

I wonder what new natural disaster we’ll have here in MD. I suspect flooding, since it has rained almost every day for the past month. Apparently MD is way over its usual rainfall amount this month.

Well, Maryland just keeps getting more and more interesting.  Today we have an earthquake! Talk about the unexpected.

I was in my office when I felt a small vibration.  Since construction has been happening at our building since before I even interviewed there, I assumed it was related to machinery moving in the hallway.  But there was no rolling noise, and it didn’t seem quite right for that.  It also lasted probably a good 5 seconds without change.  Then suddenly it was a lot stronger! Everything was rattling, the floor, the walls.  At first I wondered if our building was about to collapse because something had run into it (like a bulldozer or other heavy construction equipment…not that such a thing really makes sense).  I jumped up and went to my office door, because I realized that it was probably an earthquake.  Honestly, I had no idea what I was supposed to do.  An earthquake didn’t make much sense!  I’m glad I don’t have anything on the walls, because I’m sure something would have fallen.

Then the shaking stopped, and suddenly everyone is out in the main hallway (where my office is, conveniently).  So I opened my door and everyone was proclaiming that they had felt shaking too. Many people wondered if it was an earthquake!  It was quite the commotion of faculty and staff.  I went back to my computer and immediately went to Twitter.  I posted something, immediately after saw another post, and then the posts really started flying.  I guess I don’t have many VA people on Twitter since I didn’t see any posts before my own.  But there were enough earthquake posts from VA and MD in the span of a minute that it seemed pretty likely that we were right.  I went back to my colleague’s office where she was googling for news and said that Twitter seemed to be confirming that it was an earthquake.  Then the tech guy told us that USGS reported it to be an earthquake! Now that is real confirmation.

I have to say that the rest of my afternoon was spent on Twitter and Facebook, both posting and reading about the earthquake. Did you know you can let the USGS know that you felt an earthquake, and let them know how strong it was? There was a lot of buzz about the earthquake, some jokes, and good news of no significant damage.  Here are some of my favorites so far:

• DC Earthquake Devastation (Joke)
• USGS Info on this quake
• USGS What People are Saying
• USGS VA’s largest ever earthquake
• Seismograph at Virginia Tech
• FEMA Blog on Prepardness

The worst part of it for us in MD was the resulting traffic.  I waited until a bit after 3 to leave, and it still took me an hour and a half to get home.  The MARC trains aren’t running this afternoon, and the Amtrak trains are going 15mph between DC and Baltimore.  Luckily Tim had to drive to work today and won’t be coming home until late because of orientation outside of DC; otherwise, I’m not sure how he would get home without a 3 hour commute.

Well, we are finally getting settled into our new house in Maryland.  I really love it as we have more space than we did in Amherst, the layout is great, and we have (mostly good) color on the walls!  The location is great in that we are close to many highways so running errands and driving to work is easier than it could be otherwise.  The neighbors we’ve talked to are pretty nice as well.

We also live close to a high school.  You can’t see the high school from our house, but just past a few other rows of houses.  Apparently what this means is that we can hear marching band camp!  I’m all about marching bands, but I’m not sure how I feel about hearing them from my home office.  I am psyched to get lots of work done today, but it’s very distracting to hear random scale-like playing (it’s like they keep playing the same simple measure over and over again), the block keeping time for marching, and the director telling them what they are doing wrong over a loud speaker.  I guess this is what August is going to sound like.  The drive to Baltimore to work on campus doesn’t sound so bad when I’m this distracted!  Too bad both our living room and office are on the side of the house closest to the high school.  Maybe I can work in the kitchen?

Other than the band surprise this morning I think the house has been working wonderfully for us.  I am looking forward to finishing moving in, and really getting settled into a (yet to be determined) routine.  Eventually I hope to be able to invite over everyone we know in the area (maybe not at the same time)!  But that needs to wait until unpacking is finished.

Well, we’ve decided to blog again like we did for the wedding.  A lot has changed since we got married, including finishing our PhDs and finding jobs in Maryland!  We think this blog will be a nice way to chronicle our new adventures in professorship and living in our new state!  We hope you all enjoy keeping up to date with our lives!  Hopefully we’ll have lots of wonderful pictures to share as the years go by.