Home sweet home

I am home! For 36 hours. Not in my temporary home in the arctic, not in Germany, not in a hotel room, not visiting anybody, but home where I live according to the social security system and where I keep most of my stuff. I realize most people wouldn't find this extraordinary, but I am so fed up with this nomadic life style right now and waking up in my own bed for the first time in months was heavenly to say the least. I can't wait to get back in two weeks. To top it off Fiancé moved in today. He was here for even less time than I, since he is driving the rented moving van back to the continent and finish off a few things at work before he moves in to stay. But we have unpacked some of the boxes and placed most of the furniture, so it feels like a home for both of us now. It looks so much better now than it did before and I never had enough furniture to fill the house anyway.

In an ideal world my entire focus today should obviously have been on Fiance and his moving in, but I just didn't have enough time for that. I came here last night after another long conference day and a super exhausting flight thanks to airport security and end of week travelling, and just wanted to sleep, read Cosmopolitan, eat chocolate and sleep some more. (One might wonder why he is willing to move in with this hibernating person in the first place since all I want when I am not at work is SLEEP). Alas, I couldn't hibernate all day as I am leaving for another meeting in Russia at 5 AM tomorrow morning and had a lot of things I needed to finish before leaving.

My students are waiting for the evaluations of their research projects (I promised they would have these a week ago), the study administration is waiting for the official version of the finals exam (I wrote the questions yesterday during an extraordinarily boring presentation at yesterday's conference) and I must prepare the presentation for the next meeting (to be given on Monday). It is 9 PM now and I haven't finished any of these tasks yet. So far I have done laundry, carried boxes, rearranged furniture, put up chistmas decorations (very pretty), booked a hotel room for a stop-over on the return trip, booked a ticket for visiting my parents for christmas, eaten take-away chop suey and watched a lot of TV.

I don't want to do things sloppily or at the last minute and I feel kind of guilty for not really working effectively today. But I have practically no time for breaks right now. All my free time is spent in airports or on planes or in random hotel rooms and I just can't relax when it goes on and on like that. I wish I was going to stay here and could allow myself to chill out just for tonight. Instead I am maximising my chill-out at home time by watching a very girly TV program where couples talk about love and what they value in their relationships (practically Cosmo on screen) while I write evaluations of research projects for the students and eat mint chocolates.