Albany

I arrived in Albany Wednesday late afternoon. Ted (my adviser) picked me up from the airport. The above was the best "Welcome to Albany" sign I could find. I know, it's kind of lame. Oh well.

While here, I'm staying with my adviser and his wife. (Who I have met several times before.) (They don't have any kids.) The visit is so far so good. Albany has a lot of beautiful trees and the area that we're staying in is very nice. It's a quiet neighboorhood with modest houses, many of which have porches suitable for my dream house with my dream porch to hold my dream porch swing.

Ted is a new faculty member at Siena College. I don't have any pictures of the campus yet, but it's beautiful. It's a small liberal arts college with only about 3000 students. We've eaten most of our meals in the on-campus cafeteria, which is actually really good food, and Ted can get us in (since he's faculty) for $4 per person. (Can't beat the price!) I don't have any pictures of campus yet, as I just today got batteries for my camera. I will soon.

Today (Saturday) we went to the Siena science department faculty picnic. It was held at a park overlooking the river, though the river was hard to see through the trees. In fact, I didn't see it until we were leaving. The food was good and I'm now determined to find a good recipe for corn and black bean salad. Yum! (If anyone has any tried and true suggestions, let me know.) This picture of the river poking through the trees.

I'm busy during the day working, and the evenings are quiet. I've gone running twice around the neighborhood (long runs too...5 miles and 6 miles), and it's great. (Since I don't have my gym, running outside is really all the cardio options I have, so I'll be doing it a lot!) I'm working to get myself on an early-to-bed-early-to-rise schedule. Last night I went to bed at 11:15. Kind of boring for a Friday night, but hey, what else am I going to do? Hopefully after Sunday I'll meet some fun people and maybe get plugged into what's going on around here. (Maybe? We'll see, I suppose.) And I'll try to keep my blog updated with things I'm doing and seeing around Albany.