Silly Economist Moments

When you spend every waking moment with your nose in an Econ book or processing data for regression equations, you tend to forget that the rest of America doesn't think like you.  For example, I was walking out of church the other day and spied this bumper sticker on a fellow parishioner's car:

My first thought - I'm not kidding - was that R-squared is a measure for goodness of fit in a regression equation.  And then I wondered, what could be going on with R-squared in 2012, is a new measure coming out?  This is really going to be something to talk about in my Econometrics class.  Oh wait, never mind, that's a campaign sticker...

It Just Got Interesting

In case you missed the social media posting, JD and I are having a baby in early March.  These past  13 weeks have been exciting and overwhelming, with every emotion in between.  We have prayed for a long time to be blessed with children, and it is still hard to believe the time has arrived.  As far as the first trimester went, I count myself fairly lucky in the symptom department.  Besides a little fatigue and food aversions, I never experienced morning sickness or weight gain.  In fact, all this baby wanted to eat was salad and fruit for a very long time, so I am ten pounds lighter thanks to this picky eater.

In the meantime, I am trying not to stress too much about the due date.  Isn't it every PhD student's dream to have a baby in the middle of the semester?  Ideally, I would be able to find a nanny to take care of the baby at our home for the last few weeks of the Spring semester, and then I will have the summer to be home with the baby.  Once the Fall semester hits, we would put the baby in day care.  I have a few leads on nanny possibilities, but it seems like such a big decision.  I don't even know how to take care of a baby myself, how am I supposed to hire someone to do the same?

By the end of the second trimester, I would like to have the nanny selected, nursery decor ordered (at least part of it - we are waiting on the gender!), baby registries completed and a few projects around the house completed or almost completed.  I tend to procrastinate, so I need to stay on top of this list while attending school, working a graduate assistantship and cultivating my research topics.  Here's to checking items off my ever-growing list in the next few months!