catching up on the last half of the semester
Okay, this isn't how I planned to spend my Monday but it seems our new roommate stole my keys this morning and that means I can't really leave the house until she gets back. So what better reason to finally update my livejournal? And man do I need to catch up. In our last installment I was faking a discussion question on my blog for the upcoming conference presentation on blogging in the classroom. I got to hang out with Columbus peeps over the weekend; Scout cuddled with me on the hide-a-bed. And then that Monday I rocked my presentation on blogging. Small group but they had lots of questions and from a salesmen point of view I think I convinced them that blogging is a useful new approach.
I was Maleficient for Halloween and Meg came to visit and put together an awesome Swedish chef outfit last minute. Kind of annoying what a good response she got when I worked for weeks on mine and she put hers together in one visit to Michael's. But she was throwing Swedish fish at people, and folks love the Swedish fish. My friends Tony and Molly stayed with us and were sickeningly cute dressed as a bee and a flower. Tony also gets mad props for having the most comfortable and weather appropriate outfit. I want all my costumes to incorporate a fuzzy jacket in some way. Oh, and mad props to the roommate. Never sewed before but with some help from athenienne he put together a little prince coat. Of course he was still putting it together that night while i was putting on blue face paint and trick or treaters kept coming to the door. How do we always manage to make our fun stressful?
I won't go into too much detail, but finals was amazingly stressful. I was really proud of my paper on gothic literature, and because of all the research I've been able to have some really interesting conversations about Twilight. And people say there's no practical application for this stuff--pshaw! Then I went a little crazy talking about the nature of time in my Victorian lit paper as time slowly clicked toward the due date. And then I nearly killed a teammate I was working with on my final project for humanities computing. Come to find out I don't work well with others. But more props for Cord, because my computer was too slow and sulky to do the work for the project he drove me to and from the english computer lab so I wouldn't have to walk to my car in the dark at midnight.
Now, if you'd like to continue into the holidays, it began with trying to decorate the tree outside our house (hmm, about 15 ft.) without a ladder. Let's just say the lights look a little drunk, but it's still pretty. And then after all of that intense academic sweating I went into domestic/crafting mode. I baked cranberry sweet rolls and meat pies and salt dough ornaments and made wreaths for the house and put up decorations on the mantel and made Cord terribly jealous whenever I got Christmas cards. We had a game night that reminded me how fun Taboo is when you've been drinking and I finally took my car to the shop to the tune of $750 which reminded me how un-fun cars are, in general.
Meg and I drove down to the family ranch for a week, and it went by pretty pleasantly. Christmas was so warm we played croquet and went for walks with the dogs. We ate too much but not nearly as much as we have in the past. We watched A Muppet Christmas Carol and played Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble. Meg has been super-stressed over jobs and money lately but she seemed to be in a much better mood for the holidays. And the fact that Mom has a laptop continues to amaze me. Christmas presents tended toward the practical this year, which is fine with me. But for their wedding anniversary Dad got Mom a laptop, and having it in the living room meant we spent a lot more time in the room together. That might seem like a sad statement, but rather than hole up in my father's study we all took turns playing games or checked email while talking to each other and probably did a better job of family bonding because of it. Thank you, mah-jong!
I kind of thought the return to Athens would be the end of holiday hoopla, but a lot of people I know came to visit and that meant going out to eat and plotting our new year's strategy. I ended up dancing the night away at the Krush Girls with dramawench and bookwench and our friend Nathan. My roommate Cord was there, very drunk so that he could dance without being uber-self-conscious. And yes, his "ooh, we just got pizza" dance is very similar to his "i'm in a club" dance. And then a friend of a friend came up to me and tried to grind on me and said "is it sad I only know how to dirty dance?" To which I said, yes, you're sad, very very sad. jerk.
The last of the hoopla came with trying to get the spare bedroom cleaned up for our new roommate who just moved in yesterday, hence the missing keys. I need more bookshelf space, but that's why the Habitat for Humanity store rocks my world--$1 for a small 3 shelf unit. I re-organized the entire shed and caught a cold for my troubles. But that's okay because now everything has calmed down and I still have a week of vacation to read everything there is to read about Shakespeare in the 19th century. That'll also give me a chance to get to know the new flatmate. So I'll keep you posted on how that pans out... I'll spare the rest of you.
New Year's resolution: do better at updating my livejournal!