This and that

In answer to the questions from the previous post:

I deal with video and photos in my work quite frequently, so of course I had the cat, dog, and husband each sign waivers allowing me to use their pictures (in perpetuity and including use in mediums not yet invented) for publicity purposes of the Styling with Renee Michelle brand.

We have, indeed, blocked off a door with the couch. (See the picture from last week.) The bedroom has two entrances - one through the hallway and one through the living room. They were both convenient, but the only way to put the couch in the living room was to block the door. This may turn out to be inconvenient in the long run, but now I am so busy dodging the piles of unpacked boxes that one closed door is, in comparison, an easily ignored annoyance.

The purpose-built couch stayed in Miami. I knew that there would not be room in my new office for the couch (because it has a wall of windows, which I love even more!) The other postdoc in the group gladly took possession of it; luckily, she is not especially tall, so she can nap on it too. In fact, she also gave a home to my painted couch as well.

In other news, my husband and I discovered that, during the three years we were away from Maryland, the state has adopted new license plates commemorating the War of 1812. (See picture here.) As one of us is a pacifist and the other was on the losing side of this war, we're mildly disgruntled. But note that we weren't annoyed enough to actually spend money on one of those fund-raising plates that we could have had instead.