radish times

So, the summer is coming to an end with a bang. Lots of things are happening here at 900 WEA in New York City. I can’t even list them in order from big to small, because they are all big.

1) Peter and I will be moving in October. We finally got the letter from our landlord asking us to move out or go to court. We sent a letter to him indicating that we don’t agree, but we don’t expect that to be effective. We really don’t want to go to court, for a host of reasons, but mainly (for me) because I can’t imagine spending all the time and energy to do it while living in an apartment I can’t fix up and work on because I will always be afraid we will lose it.

Instead of spending our energy on that, we would rather find a new apartment, a smaller one, that is ours without a doubt. So, to this end we have been exploring New York neighborhoods. The tales of our explorations could each make a LONG update. The bottom line is that after looking at neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, we finally settled on Washington Heights/Inwood in Manhattan as the neighborhood that we would really like to live in.

The area is beautiful, has a Russian population complete with Russian stores, has lots of parks, is close to the river, is relatively close to Columbia and not very much further from our offices in terms of time. And, we think we can get a very nice apartment for something around $1,100. We are looking for a one bedroom with large size rooms.

More to come on this as we get into the search in September.

2) I started graduate school today. It was the first day of orientation at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). I will be concentrating in human rights and Russia/former Soviet Republics. We got lots of information, which was confusing to some. For me it wasn’t so bad because I am very clear about what I want to study.

I will get my preliminary schedule on Wednesday or Thursday and then I will have a week or two to adjust it to just what I need. It seems that in this first year almost all my classes will be requirements. It looks like I will be taking Conceptual Foundations of International Affairs, Economics, Statistics, International Law, Russian, and a human rights practicum. Next semester will look something like that as well, except that I will be taking International Human Rights Law and one class on international organizations, like the UN (replacing International Law and Statistics).

It will be a complicated little bit of work to fit all the classes together so that I can do them all at once. The way they schedule classes is a little crazy. Instead of one class meeting twice a week, say for example on Monday and Wednesday, most classes have a main section one day and then three possible discussion/lab sections. It improves the probability that each student will be able to fit everything into his/her schedule but it also exponentially complica;es the process of figuring out what will fit!

On Wednesday I will take a Russian placement course to find out which level of Russian I should be in. I am hoping that it will be Intermediate - but I don’t know what they cover in one year of college level language. I guess I will find out this week!

I got a little nervous today about the fact that I must also work 21 hours a week. It seems that my schedule at school will be some crazy hodgepodge of times and places, so I don’t yet know how I will be at work when I need to be. But, as my sage advisors reminded me tonight, I will cross that bridge when I come to it. One step at a time.

Many concentrations at SIPA is have a retreat at the beginning of the year. So the weekend after next, I will be going up to Connecticut with all the human rights majors to begin getting to know each other and learning about human rights.

3) Peter is enjoying his new job. He started in July at a dot.com that survived called campusfood.com. The company is an on-line food ordering service. So if you want food delivered to your house from a local restaurant, you can go up on campusfood.com and order from the menus posted there. The service is focused around college campuses because those are the main places that people order food and have internet access. Peter is doing the web development.

Our offices are very close together. When I was working full-time this summer, we had lunch together everyday. It was great.

4) Peter is continuing to take pictures at all our concerts and is getting a growing number of requests to use them. We are getting to know more and more musicians and artists around the downtown jazz scene. It feels really good for both of us.