The Christmas Recap, Part III

I am writing this shortly before I leave for Omaha to spend the New Year with Daisy and her family; we're making the trip tonight, as a snowstorm is supposed to hit tomorrow here in Kansas and we'd like to get out of here before that happens. It's going to be a long night, and we will more than likely get very little sleep during it, as the drive back up to Omaha will take at least five hours. Once we get there, her family is doing some sort of "New Year's Eve party" food thing, with finger foods and her sisters visiting and everything, so I'll finally get to meet everyone and mingle for a few short days. This also means I have to re-prep the house for the cats, since I'll be gone yet again.  I'm looking forward to it; Daisy and I have been together for almost six months now (well, officially/unofficially/who cares, we've been together, etc) and I've not yet been able to make it up there for one reason or another when the opportunity arises -- mainly because of school and work issues. So, with that in mind, I'm going to try to knock out another entry of the Christmas Recap here before I leave, and won't be able to write again until around the 2nd, when I return to Kansas and not only finish that story, but will tell you all about my visit with her family.

Cool? Okay. So, let's continue.

The third day I was back home was December 23 -- last Sunday, a week ago today. My parents had plans for that day; they'd arranged a Christmas party for friends and family at a lake house restaurant in the area, and (for once) it had stopped snowing for a bit in Morgantown. The sun, actually, had briefly come out -- we were between snowstorms. Draco had moved off, and Euclid was yet to move in. I'd tried to call my friend Brittany the day before to invite her, but couldn't get her. She later sent me a text saying she'd be unable to see me when I was in this time around, as her plans were booked solid through the holidays. I did, however, reach my friend James, who was there even before we were.

My parents said there would be, roughly, 25 people at the party. I'm not a big fan of parties and big gatherings in general, to be honest with you; you folks already know that if you know me well. I'm not exactly a really social person, and hate being forced into social situations. However, this wasn't as much of a party for me as it was a holiday gathering with all of my parents' friends, most of whom have known me for twenty years or so, and those who didn't know me weren't really on my radar anyhow. Therefore, it didn't really bother me as much as it normally would have -- especially since my brother was there with me, as was James. And it really didn't bother me once I had at least two full pitchers of Yuengling in me. No, that's not a joke.

The gathering was nice. It was good to see my brother and James, as well as some of our long-time family friends. It lasted about three hours, which was just the right amount of time without it dragging on too long or becoming tiresome. We dropped my brother off at his apartment afterwards, and then made a quick trip to the grocery store to get stuff for our Christmas Eve dinner, which would take place the next night. Mom wanted not only a ham, but a prime rib as well (my parents eat very classily). I would later talk her into making the prime rib after Christmas, but I'll get to that later, of course. With nothing else to do for the evening, and the snow slowly moving in, we relaxed at home for the rest of the night. I introduced my mother to Daisy via Skype, even though I couldn't get the camera to be really bright enough to see us in my room. I would later fix that, and introduce both of my parents to her in a proper fashion (read: where Daisy could actually see and talk to them both). Mom ended up going to bed early, and after wrapping my parents' Christmas presents, I eventually passed out myself, only waking up in the middle of the night to turn off the light and TV in my room. Believe me, if there are two things I miss in my current life of being poor and living on my own, they're 1) having cable television, and 2) having cable television in my bedroom. I have had neither since I moved to the midwest in 2006.

Then again, with the current state of television, it's not that much of a loss. This is why I never turn on my TV here at home unless I'm watching football.

Anyway, I digress.

The next day, of course, was Christmas Eve -- and we had lots of plans for that day. My mother woke me up by banging on my door early, at around 8AM. She wanted us to be able to leave the house by that time, but of course, that never happens -- both me and my dad take a while to get up, awake, and ready before we leave the house. Time was a luxury that day; we were scheduled to go see my grandmother that morning, then have lunch with my godparents as it was the only day they could do it over the entirety of the holidays (even at their old ages, they have plans at Christmas). As a result, I was able to briefly say hello to my grandmother and give her a hug and her Christmas presents before I had to spend half an hour in her bathroom -- I'd been hurried out of the house that morning so quickly that I'd been unable to, ahem, take my morning constitutional. I'm sure I don't need to go into any more detail than that.

Merry Christmas! Shitter's full!

Ahem. Anyway.

We spent a good two hours at my grandmother's; she was delighted to see me, as always. I told her in her Christmas card (which I mailed a few days before I flew out) that her present from me would be my physical presence, with a surprise! added to the end of it. Mind you, this is the first time I've actually been home for Christmas since 2005, so it was a treat. My aunt and uncle came down to see me while I was there, and after they left I went next door to visit with my other aunt and uncle and their two daughters (and two new kittens they had as well, kittens which I wanted to smuggle inside my coat and steal away to take home).

After we left, my mother called my godparents when we were on the road and arranged for us to have lunch at Eat'n Park. For those of you unfamiliar with Eat'n Park, they're a chain of Denny's-like restaurants based in Pittsburgh and scattered around the area back home. I haven't eaten at one in years, and I missed it; my parents, however, were less than enthused, but it was Christmas Eve and there were few places that wouldn't be crazy-crowded. I was enthusiastic because they have an awesome buffet bar...until I got there and it was being cleaned out because "it's Christmas Eve, and we're closing in two hours." Well, shit. Eat'n Park is usually a 24-hour establishment, much like Denny's or IHOP or anywhere else of that nature. I ended up ordering a burger of some sort; I can't even remember now, really, what was on it, probably because it was just average at best and it wasn't what I had my heart set on. The lunch with the godparents was very nice, though; I only get to see them every other visit or so, and I wanted to make sure we did it this time because it was Christmas, and they always give me a card and a $100 check for my birthday/Christmas. That was money that, as I am on the winter break from school right now, I sorely needed. I still have most of that money, by the way. I cashed the check right before I came back home to Kansas. On the way back up the mountain, we stopped at the Shop 'N Save grocery store in which I worked for a long time after college, as I always go up there when I'm home to say hi to the ladies who work there -- because all of them miss me dearly.

Let's step back for a minute and just take in all the places I'd gone and things I'd done since I'd gotten off the airplane in Pittsburgh four days earlier:

• Had lunch with Wayne and Jane
• Had gone to no less than four different grocery stores/shopping complexes
• Had one big Mexican dinner with the parents
• Had a big family/friends party at a lakehouse restaurant
• Had gone to visit my grandmother/aunts/uncles
• Had gone to lunch with my godparents
• Had stopped to say hi to the ladies at the grocery store.

Ladies and gentlemen, I was totally burnt out by this point. Not only that, but I was totally done with social interaction with anyone but my parents and their animals. That may not sound like a lot, but over the course of less than three days, it's a crazy amount of things to do and places to go. I was not only physically exhausted, but mentally drained. I didn't have much patience or ability to deal with anyone or anything else over my trip, honestly -- I was so stressed out and sleep-deprived that I got blisters on my lip again, too (which usually only pop up under said circumstances), and had to stop at the drugstore to get a bottle of L-Lysine, which knocks them out fairly quickly...provided you take enough of them. I just wanted to be done with everything; I had a constant dull headache and backache from not getting enough rest/downtime/etc since I'd been home, but I didn't tell my parents because I didn't want them to feel bad. After all, everything they were doing, they were doing for me. That's also why my memory tends to be a bit hazy about everything that happened and in what order -- there was so much going on.

It had been decided by that point, in a mostly-unspoken form at least, that my mother and I wouldn't be attending Christmas dinner at my dad's parents' place; the timeframe for said dinner would be altered a bit, and only about half of the normal family attendees would be able to be there anyway, so we opted to stay home. My dad always goes, and my mother went up there for Thanksgiving anyway, so it wasn't a big deal that I wasn't going (even though I was there and in town for it). After all of the interactions I'd had with various places and peoples over the course of the previous three-and-a-half days anyhow, I was too burnt-out to be able to have a good time anyway had I gone.

That night, my parents prepared the ham for Christmas dinner, and I passed out on my bed -- with my computer up and running, at that -- for a few hours until Mom woke me up and told me dinner was ready. We ate, and she went to bed early so that she could get up early. I stayed up a good chunk of the night, mainly because I'd slept beforehand, before finally passing out around 3 or 4. And that was my Christmas Eve.

In my next post here, which I hope will be the last of the recap series, I will tell you about Christmas (good) and its aftermath (fucking horrible). Until then, my friends, I shall be in Omaha with Daisy and her family, spending the New Year together with all of them. Take care, my friends, and I'll catch you in 2013.

The Christmas Recap, Part II

Saturday morning, the 22nd (read: a week ago) was very nasty. The remnants of Draco had left my area back home a mess -- once it had started snowing on Friday night, it didn't stop, and the storm moved through the area very slowly. Meanwhile, south and west of us, Winter Storm Euclid was ramping up and getting ready to hit.

However, not much could be done -- no matter the weather, my parents and I had a mission: to finish Christmas shopping at all costs. My dad had not yet finished his shopping, and as it was the Saturday before Christmas on Tuesday in between two major winter storms, this was the only time we really had to get anything done. So, upon getting up that morning, I logged on to Facebook and said that if anyone wanted to see me and could dig out of their homes, I'd be out and about shopping that day.

The roads were horrible, much worse than the night before. The snow was still coming down pretty hard, and -- as I said, it didn't stop. I made the remark to my mother that Daisy would love living in West Virginia, as it never stops fucking snowing there for about four months out of the year. Mind you, I lived in West Virginia until I was 23, and on top of a mountain for almost ten years of that -- this is a fairly accurate depiction, most of the time, of the winters there. When I was in high school, for example, there were years where we had a full month off of school because of snow days -- snowstorms hitting one after another after another. It was and still is customary to have three feet or more of snow on the ground at any given time in January or February.

But, again, I digress.

Draco hadn't hit my parents too hard, though it had hit them much harder than it hit here in Kansas. I estimated about 8 inches or so on the ground, as it was above my ankles in my high-top basketball shoes I wore home (simply because they were thicker, had good arch support, and I knew I'd be walking a lot in them). And in that, we got into my dad's Envoy and made our way into Morgantown for shopping.

I had my own mission that day; I only had to get a few things. I told my parents that I wanted to go to Gabe's to see if I could get any WVU-branded clothing, and I needed to find a sleeve/case for the laptop Daisy had given me, so that I didn't get it all banged up in my backpack. That's all I needed; my parents' Christmas gifts had been taken care of, though I wasn't opposed to picking up something else for them had I been able to find something else (I did pick up a Captain America shirt for my dad, actually). My mother needed to go to the local Giant Eagle (a grocery store) to get stuff for Christmas dinner, and my dad needed to finish his shopping, so for the most part, I was tagging along with them.

I found a lot in Gabe's; I ended up getting my mother two jackets (to add to her Christmas presents total) and found about five or six shirts/sweaters for myself, one of which was a cardigan that ended up being too small, which I gave to my dad. Mom bought me two of them to make up for the cost of ordering one of my dad's Christmas presents for her with my credit card, and I wore two of them home yesterday to save money on shipping them to me. With my laptop in my backpack with me, the amount of things I could bring back home was rather slim.

However, I did not find a laptop case. All I wanted was a simple neoprene sleeve with a zipper and handles, and a little padding. In desperation, and fighting off scores of holiday shoppers, I found one in Kmart, unpriced. I didn't care how much it was, because I needed it -- it was either that or get my new, expensive laptop banged up and possibly damaged in my travels. I should've checked the price first -- it was nearly $40. Luckily, I'd already gotten some Christmas/Birthday money, and used that to get it -- along with the smaller present of a six-pack of Coke in glass bottles for my parents. We then went to the mall to get my sister a coat for Christmas, and then had Mexican for dinner before heading back up the mountain.

We had planned, mind you, to visit my grandmother that day. However, we knew how bad the roads were at home, and that they would be much worse out where she lived (about forty or so miles to the west, on top of another mountain of her own). We called her and told her we'd reschedule for Monday, Christmas Eve. There wasn't a whole lot we could do about that with the snow, and we were hoping that by Monday, the roads would be more clear and less awful. The only reason we'd gone out at all that Saturday was because we needed to do shopping -- otherwise we wouldn't have left the house at all.

That night, I fixed the issue my computer had with Skype by downloading and installing the older version as a band-aid sort of measure for the time being. It worked for the moment, which was good. The laptop has a built in camera/mic, as most newer machines do, and Skype on Linux doesn't like it; I had to disable the "automatically start my camera when a call starts" feature because every time it did, it crashed my machine. Don't ask me why, because I don't know. Even after I upgraded from 12.04 to 12.10 a few days later, the problem still persisted.

So that's the story of my first full day back home. Between flying in on Friday and running around all day on Saturday, I was already exhausted. Coupled with the fact that I am not used to my old bed back home, I wasn't sleeping well, either -- my back was killing me from that and being unable to sit at an actual desk and use the laptop. I could never get comfortable, and when I did, my parents' furnace is so nice that I would quickly get too hot. But, I was home with my family, Christmas shopping was finished, and I still had a lot more to do before the trip ended...

The Christmas Recap, Part I

First off, let me say that I have returned from West Virginia unscathed, safe and sound. It was an...interesting trip, to say the least. But, I'm fine. The car is fine. The house and the cats are fine. Everything is as it should be, and I immediately ordered $60 worth of Papa John's pizza when I got home. No, I'm not kidding.

This is going to be a long series of posts, much in the vein of when I visited home over Spring Break and recapped that time. A lot of my trip is a blur -- not because I don't remember it, because I do, but because I was so exhausted the vast majority of the time I was back home. I've been basically on-the-go ever since the semester ended two weeks ago, and only now do I have a bit of true downtime, some relaxation time, some breathing space. Even when I'm home visiting my parents, and even if the weather is horrible (which it was, but I'll get to that), there is still much to be done and even more to be written about here. So, what I'm telling you is to sit down, get a cup of coffee and a sandwich, because this is going to be a long and descriptive journey through the events of this past week, in rough chronological order.

Ready?

Okay. So. Let's start.

As most of you know, December 20 was my birthday, and that night, in the overnight hours, I had to leave the house to catch my planes back east at 6AM the next morning, the 21st.

I couldn't sleep that night. No, really, I couldn't. It's not like I didn't try. I went downstairs and tried to sleep for hours, maybe dozing off for about 20 minutes at a time, but always waking up before I could get any rest. After a while, I finally just got back up and said fuck it, there's shit I need to do around the house before I leave. I was planning to leave the house no later than 2:30 AM, as it takes a good chunk of time to get to the airport, and I always have to drive carefully and use my GPS because I can never remember the way. I made a checklist of things to do, and as I did them, I crossed each one off the list. Close the bathroom door. Lock the garage. Ready the cats' food/litter/water. Turn down the furnace. Etc. I got all of them done, and by 2:30, I had given the cats a brand new scratch pad covered in catnip, three new toy mice, three huge bowls of water, four bowls of food, and two sparkling clean, fresh-litter-filled litter pans. Now, if my cats weren't idiots, they could survive on that for probably three weeks if they wanted to. I always over-prepare for a trip when I have to leave them alone. I don't like to do it. But this time, I would only be gone for five days, and they've been alone for up to ten or eleven before. I was confident that they'd be fine.

I also forgot to mention that on the night before my birthday, Newton had gotten a snowstorm. This would be the snowstorm that was, at the time, the remnants of Winter Storm Draco as it traveled east. When it hit here, it dumped a few inches of snow and ice on the area, making everything not protected indoors or otherwise treated with salt a nightmare. So, when I readied to leave the house in the middle of the night, I started the car, turned on the defrost/heater at full blast, and then proceeded to clean off the car itself -- a task that took a good fifteen minutes. Mental note: the next time it's going to snow, put the goddamned car in the garage beforehand. This entire time, the car was running/warming up/defrosting.

I should also probably mention here that the Monte Carlo is temperamental when it comes to really cold, nasty weather. If it's below about 25 degrees outside, she doesn't like it. Oh, she'll still run and perform admirably, but she doesn't like it. This is probably the reason why, when I got back into the car once it was warmed up and cleaned off, the "Low Oil" light was on.

Sigh.

My car is very important to me, as you folks know. If she tells me something's wrong -- especially after I spent $1400 on her in September to get her all fixed up again -- I tend to listen to her. However, sometimes lights go on and off on the dash for no real reason. Again, the car is old, and has 225,600 or so miles on her. In another few weeks, she'll be due for an oil change, if she's not already. Knowing I wouldn't have time to deal with the oil problem until after I got home from West Virginia, I went into the garage before I left and got the funnel, rag, and the extra quart of oil I keep in there for just such an occasion, and put it in the backseat. If the light was still on by the time I got to the airport, I would remember to add the oil to the car before I drove it home a few days later -- but for now, it was too cold and too dark to mess with it in my driveway at 2:30 in the morning, especially since the downstairs light burned out and I have not yet replaced the bulb.

So, I bid my house and cats adieu, and left for the airport. The light stayed on the entire way there, and I made the mental note to add the oil once I got back home. I parked the car in long-term parking at around 3:25, got the ticket for it (which I would need when I got back home) and took the shuttle bus to the airport.

Wichita's Mid-Continent Airport is very small. Very small. And nothing happens there in the middle of the night. The place was deserted, save but for a few passengers who had arrived as early as I had. I sat outside in the cold smoking cigarettes to pass the time -- the cold didn't really bother me too much, as I had planned in advance to dress warmly. To save space in my backpack, which also held the new laptop Daisy had given me for Christmas, I was dressed in layers -- three shirts, two pairs of pants, and three pairs of socks, not to mention my thick peacoat. I was glad that I'd dressed warmly, and was even more glad once I got back home -- but I am, again, getting ahead of myself.

I went to check in at the self-service terminal, and typed in my ticket number. Nothing. I typed in my itinerary number. Nothing. I typed in my reservation number. Again, nothing. Hrm. Something's not right here. Any of those numbers should have worked, especially the reservation number. Two girls approached the machine next to me, and couldn't get theirs to work either. Okay, good, so it's not just me, I thought. Still, without check-in, I couldn't get my boarding passes and thus could not go through security when it opened up.

This was a bad thing, needless to say. I took out my phone and looked at it, debating on calling my parents in the middle of the night to have Mom give me any and all numbers on the actual paper tickets, as all I had was the printout of my itinerary (which, really, should have been enough, as it's been enough in the past). Mom had the paper tickets in her possession. However, I didn't have to do this -- when the counter opened up at 4:30, I went up there, told the lady working there that I couldn't get my boarding passes to print, and she looked up my flight and printed them for me. Crisis averted. I did not know, though, that this bit of trouble would be an omen for the rest of my trip to come.

I went through security next; security at Mid-Continent is surprisingly detailed and intricate compared to most other airports I've flown through. As you may recall, when I flew home over Spring Break, I was "randomly selected for additional screening," and had the wand passed over me, had my shoes swabbed, all of that. Despite their level of detail, however, they're fairly quick. This time, as I had my laptop with me, I had three different tubs to run through screening -- one for the laptop by itself, one for my bag, and one for my shoes, coat, and everything in my pockets (keys, wallet, Daisy's necklace, phone, etc).

The laptop and the tub with all of my pocket stuff went through just fine. My bag took forever. I arched an eyebrow at this; all I had in the bag were a few changes of clothes, my DS and camera (with the chargers for them), some cigarettes and a lighter, and my electronic cigarette in case it was too cold to smoke outside while I was home. Everything else -- my parents' presents and the like -- I'd shipped home earlier in the week so that I didn't have to carry it.

"I just want to run your bag through again so that I can get a better image," the TSA guy told me.

"Yes, of course," I said, without a thought. And they did. Then they ran it through a third time. Then they pulled it aside and asked me if they could open it.

"Sure," I said. I had nothing to hide.

They pulled it over to a table, and the lady examining all of it told her I had to keep my eyes on her to see everything that she was doing. I wondered what had tripped their radar, so to speak.

And then I remembered the electronic cigarette. I'd put it in a hard plastic case so that it wouldn't get crushed, along with its charger and two cartridges. Fuck, I thought. This isn't good.

Mind you, I'd purchased said electronic cigarette in West Virginia the last time I visited home, and had flown back home with it in my bag then. I waited. Sure enough, the lady examining my things took out the case, swabbed it, and then opened it to peer down inside.

"Electronic cigarette," I told her.

"Ah," she said, seeming relieved. She closed it and stuck it back in my bag, and said I was free to go, that they wanted to check it because it looked strange on the scanner. I told her hey, that was fine, I was glad they were so attentive, etc, and I left to go to the gate.

Hah, they thought my eCig was a bomb, I thought, and then realized about halfway to my gate that whoa, that could've gone a lot, lot worse than it did.

As an aside, when I left the house this morning, I left the eCig at home to be mailed back to me by my parents with the other stuff. I wasn't going through that again.

At the gate, I turned on my podcasts in my ears and zoned out, until a very large man in a leather motorcycle jacket approached me and asked if the seat next to me was taken. He looked like a heavy metal Santa Claus -- long, white hair and thick white beard down to his chest, and clad in leather from head to toe. He must've been in his mid-seventies. I told him that the seat was his if he wanted it, very nicely (as I greatly respect people who, in their old age, wear jackets like mine), and he sat down. It wasn't until the flight was boarding, and they called for first class and priority customers first, that he got up and walked to the counter -- and I saw the large, embroidered Hell's Angels logo across the back of his jacket. Bitchin'. He immediately got much more respect from me at that point; for some reason, I felt much more at ease knowing that we'd have a Hell's Angel on the plane if anyone decided to start some shit.

The flight to Chicago was fine; I was seated next to a 78-year-old man named Maurice who provided me with pleasant conversation the entire time (read: he wouldn't shut up). I didn't mind this too much, but really I'd just wanted to sleep. The flight into Pittsburgh I had the seat/row to myself, and I was able to doze off a bit...until the landing, that is.

Y'see, remember that snowstorm that hit Newton the day before my birthday? When I landed in Pittsburgh, it was hitting there. I got to experience the same storm twice in the span of two days. We landed in the middle of it, and while it wasn't bad then, barely the tip of it had moved into the area. After looking around for my parents for a while, I finally found them -- and we made our way to Red Robin to meet for lunch with my friends Wayne and Jane -- something that has become a new tradition every time I fly into town. It was a great lunch, if a bit rushed -- the snowstorm was getting worse and worse by the minute, and was reaching near-whiteout conditions in Pittsburgh. All of us decided to cut short our socialization time in favor of getting home alive and in one piece. I did get a very sweet birthday card and present from them, though -- a card from their cats, and an Amazon gift card with an attached, sarcastic note to "buy my own shit." This was incredibly sweet of them; Wayne and Jane know they never have to do anything for me or get me presents (or anything like that) for any holiday or birthday, but they do. Always. Especially around Christmas. We bid them adieu, and because of the snow opted not to do any shopping or hanging around the area but instead to go straight home, as the snow wasn't hitting in Morgantown yet. That would soon change.

On the way home, we stopped at the grocery store and stopped to get pizza for dinner (yes, different pizza than the ones I ordered tonight); there's a place in town called Pizza Al's, which makes perfect New York-style pizzeria pizza. Every time I'm in town, I must get it. It's not a want, but a need at this point. I can't get it out here. I can't get anything even remotely like it out here.

Mind you, at this point (about 6PM) I was burnt-out; I'd been awake for about 36 hours straight, minus whatever light dozing I did on the airplane, and I was at that stage of exhaustion where my body was achy and tired, yet my mind was still awake and primed for action (so, sort of like I am right now, honestly). I ate pizza and drank beer once we got back to the house, and was finally, finally able to relax somewhat. My parents' cats and their fourteen-year-old dog were happy to have me home again, and I returned to my childhood bedroom to see that nothing had even been moved since I was there in March, with the exception that my mother had washed the blankets and sheets on my bed prior to my arrival, since the cats go in there to sleep. My box with their presents in it had arrived a few days prior, and my mother had made me a birthday/Christmas stocking, which contained a few gift cards, some coffee and candy, and a bag of jerky. Half-delirious from non-sleep, I spent an hour that night trying to get my wireless to work on the laptop Daisy had gotten me, to no avail. Couldn't tell you what was wrong with it, but it would not connect to my parents' network. My Dad eventually plugged in an ethernet cable and ran it over to my room so that I could use the internet. This, however, tethered my computer to my room (which, in retrospect, is no different than it is here in Kansas, nor is it different than the computer I had when I was still living there).

After I finally got it working, I downloaded all the updates to my freshly-installed copy of Ubuntu 12.04 (I'll write more about that process later) and called Daisy on Skype to let her know I'd gotten there okay. Skype kept crashing on the laptop -- crashing so hard that it shut down and rebooted my system every time I tried to use it. At this point I was so tired that I told her I'd try to fix it in the morning, and eventually just passed out as the snow finally began to hit our area quite heavily.

So that is the tale of my trip back home -- the actual journey there, anyhow. You folks have no idea yet of all of the other stuff we went through over my journey, though some of you have gotten some bits-and-pieces details of it from me over the course of the past week. Like I said, it was...interesting. But further details will have to wait until the next few posts here.

Birthday Number Thirty: Leavin', on a Jet Plane...

Today, I am thirty years old. At this exact minute, actually -- I was born at 6:22 PM, and that is the time when I'm typing this, ironically enough.

Twelve hours from now I will be in the air on my way back home for Christmas. In the meantime, I have to first sleep, shower, and finish readying the house for the cats while I'll be gone.

I wiped the HD of the new laptop Daisy bought me for Christmas, and have installed Ubuntu Linux on it. That was an exhausting, needlessly frustrating process. I live-blogged most of it, but that post will have to wait until after I get home as I do not have enough time to work on it and insert all of the pictures tonight. My backpack, even with my clothing and small electronics in it, is big enough for me to take the laptop with me, and I plan to do so if possible.

Now on to the bad news.

Last night we got a snowstorm here in Kansas. It dumped a little less than three inches on me here in Newton, but it didn't get warm enough today to melt most of it off. That means when I leave the house in the middle of the night, I will have to be extra careful not to hit any black ice as I drive to the airport. Hopefully the interstates will be clear, and it will be a straight shot to the airport. This isn't that bad, except that the flight I'm taking home will be flying into Chicago first...at roughly the exact time the storm hits there. By the time I get home from Pittsburgh tomorrow night? The same storm hits my house and family in West Virginia, giving them/us anywhere between 8 and 14 inches of snow (or so that's what's predicted, anyway).

Yes, folks, I get to experience the same winter storm three different fucking times.

I am not happy about this, and have made preparations for every outcome possible -- the cats will have more extra food, water, and litter than usual (in case I get stuck back home for an extra day or two because of flight problems), my credit card is paid off so that if I have to, I can order a replacement plane ticket back home, and I paid the rent this afternoon, early, so that it can get in the mail tomorrow when I leave.

Update -- this is what the Weather Channel says for my parents back home as of right now:

... WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM EST SATURDAY...
* HAZARD TYPES... FREEZING RAIN... HEAVY SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW.
* ACCUMULATIONS... 10 TO 14 INCHES OF SNOW. ONE TO TWO-TENTHS OF AN INCH ICE ACCUMULATION.
* TIMING... ONGOING FREEZING RAIN ON THE RIDGES AND RAIN ELSEWHERE WILL CHANGE TO SNOW LATE TONIGHT. SNOW INTENSITY WILL INCREASE FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND NIGHT.

...son of a bitch!

All I asked for -- ALL I ASKED FOR -- was that this shit not fucking happen while I'm goddamn traveling.

Yes, I did just use four different swears over the course of three lines in my blog. That's how pissed/frustrated/stressed I am.

Seriously, let it snow all it wants in either place once I'm safely back home and in my house with the cats, but right now? Stop, weather. Just stop it. For some reason the weather almost always has to be shitty over the holidays. All I want is a peaceful trip without weather complications, and it doesn't look like I'm going to get that; if my parents get that much snow, I'll be wracked with stress and will be unable to relax or have any fun. And, additionally, that much snow will snarl basically any plans of going out or being social with family and friends while I'm home. We'd planned family dinners and get-togethers, and all of those things will more than likely now be canceled due to the weather.

This is yet another reason I'm bringing my new laptop with me. If I'm going to be stuck in the house and unable to go anywhere or do anything when I'm at home, I will at least have a computer to keep me occupied -- and a new computer at that -- one I can mess with and get apps for to kill the time. That will at least keep me from going fucking nuts. I love my parents, I do, but tell me...would you want to be cooped up in a house with your parents for four days in a snowstorm? I don't either. When I go home I actually like to, y'know, do stuff while I'm there.

Anyway, I'm getting off track. The point of this post is that, as I don't really like to type on laptops that much, you won't see another post from me here (at least, probably not) until after I safely return home from West Virginia. If possible, however, I will be updating my Facebook and Twitter while I'm home, barring anything catastrophic happening. On that note, happy birthday to me -- I'm getting off here, taking care of the cat stuff, and am going to bed for a few hours before I have to get up and drive to the airport in the middle of the night.

Finances and Follies

Countdown to 30th birthday: two days
Countdown to flight back home: three days

My day has been consumed largely with math. This is highly irregular on at least three fronts: 1) I hate math, 2) I am an English major, and 3) the semester is over now.

This afternoon I paid my car insurance (courtesy of my Citi Simplicity card), and am now insured through June 28, 2013. I could've paid it in installments, but that proved to be more of a pain in the ass than it was worth. I paid off my Citi card a few months ago and haven't used it since -- now's as good a time as any to put a balance on it and pay it off again at my own pace. Six months of car insurance is $288.50, which upon telling Daisy, she called "cheap." She pays much more for insurance on her Hyundai.

It's cheap enough, I guess. It would be cheaper were my car a normal car. I've mentioned here before that my Monte Carlo is insured through Geico, who -- even though the car is seventeen years old and is rapidly approaching 230,000 miles -- still classifies it as a sports car, as it is the Z34 model and not the standard model. I also have a mid-level coverage plan, not a full-coverage or bare-minimum plan. Still, my insurance drops by about $5-10 every time I re-up it, so in about 2,000 months...

Anyway, that's done. I have the new insurance cards, which will go into my car the next time I drive it -- probably tonight, as I need to make a run to Walmart to get cat food, cat litter, and cigarettes, amongst other little things. I'm not going to get a bunch of food, as said food will just sit in the refrigerator while I'm gone. I only need the essentials until I get back home, which is good -- because the rest of my budget isn't going to be incredibly awesome for the next few weeks anyhow.

I get paid on Friday, the day I fly out. This is good, because I need to send my rent check a little earlier this month (probably on Friday, when I leave), since Christmas is coming, banks are closing, and I'll be out of town. While I could technically wait until I return, I'd rather not -- if something happens in the interim, such as my flight(s) home being delayed due to weather (or something along those lines), it would cause problems. Better to send it out now, before I leave, so that all of my proverbial ducks are in a row. Everything else has now been taken care of; the only bill that may arrive while I'm gone is my electric bill, and I'll have almost a full month to pay that once I return home anyhow. After Friday, I get my last paycheck for the fall semester on January 4th, which should tide me over until my student loans come in.

Oh, about those...

Sigh.

I got an email yesterday with updated policies detailing academic progress, and how students must complete 67% of the credit hours they attempt, etc etc. I have an incomplete this semester. This is not my fault; this is because my thesis hours, all six of them, count as one class split between two semesters. That means that even though I've successfully completed them for the fall, I'm only half-done with them, and the "I" for incomplete I will receive is nothing more than a placeholder grade. Because I have that "I" on my report card for the moment, however, with three classes this semester, that means I've only successfully completed 66% of them, not 67%. Yes, it's an automated thing, and yes, it's something that doesn't and shouldn't matter once everything is reviewed, but those little things that don't matter are the things that end up royally fucking you when it's time for your financial aid and student loans to re-up in the spring, if the financial aid people aren't made aware that they need attention to avoid catastrophe and/or for me to avoid financial ruin.

Mind you, I already sent them the exception form almost two weeks ago now that says why I won't be enrolled as full time in the spring, even though for the English department, six hours is classified as full time for graduate school. I wrote about this before, and sent the form over so that all of my bases would be covered and so that I shouldn't lose any of my financial aid eligibility. This afternoon, I sent a long email to the financial aid office explaining all of this (again), and got a reply that said the email I'd received about academic progress was a generic email sent to everyone to let them know that those policies had been updated. Okay. The other thing the reply said was that the financial aid office couldn't answer any specific questions or issues over email, since it would violate federal aid policies, and told me to either call or come in to talk to someone about it if I had any specific questions.

Hm, I thought, that's not gonna work right now. I leave town on Friday. The university's offices shut down on Christmas Eve, and stay closed until the 2nd. Also, my phone has been turned off for over two weeks now, as I have no minutes left on it. What am I supposed to do in this situation? I could, of course, waste the gas money driving down there and back to talk to them for five minutes or less...or, I could do what I actually did.

I sent a second reply stating that I understood they couldn't answer any specific questions or discuss my account info with me via email, and said that I'd be out of town until after Christmas. What I did request, however, was that my original email explaining everything be forwarded to the person who works on those sorts of things for student accounts, so said person would be made aware of my situation and would more than likely be able to fix it by the time I got back after the holidays are over.

Very smart of me, no? I thought so.

I got a confirmation about an hour later, CC'ed to me, that said email had been forwarded to said person so that she could work on it. I also got the name and email address of said person so that, in about a week and a half, I can either call or email that person directly (or she can contact me, conversely) and find out if there's anything else I need to do. But in the meantime, they are on the case, so to speak.

As I told Daisy, I don't know why it's so hard to simply graduate successfully -- just let me take the classes I need, get the financial aid I need, realize the situation when it comes to credit hours and the like (because every English graduate student does the same thing) and let me bow out of the university system peacefully with degree in hand come May. I am not the first, nor will I be the last case of my sort that they have to work on and fix things for. I shouldn't have to worry about this stuff or have to send emails reminding people that yes, I'm no different than any other grad student who is ready to graduate and must get an exception or two here and there so that they can keep teaching and surviving without becoming poor and destitute. All of this should be done behind the scenes without my involvement -- they should realize how this works for people like me by this point.

Also, I read some news story about the fiscal cliff drama (whatever that is) saying that if tax rates aren't fixed by some point, employers will be forced to cut paychecks during the week of Christmas instead of the first week of January, as they have no clue what 2013 tax rates will be or something like that. Okay. I'm fine with getting my paycheck a week early; bring it on, government. Just get it fixed before I get my first paycheck in the spring, and I won't care.

So that's what's going on right now. Bills are paid, money is a little tighter than expected (but not by a crazy amount), and I'm flying home in three days.

Oh, and there's a snowstorm set to smack Kansas tomorrow.

No, that's not a joke. The Wichita area isn't supposed to get much, but it'll snow just enough to snarl the roads and keep me on constant lookout for black ice on my entire drive to the airport very early on Friday morning, something I'm not necessarily looking forward to. Let it snow like hell after I get back from West Virginia, but in the meantime, weather, lighten up a bit, please? I mean, it was 60 degrees today. It's nice outside. Why you gotta ruin it, weather? I thought we were friends.

Das Loot

Countdown to 30th birthday: three days
Countdown to flight home: four days

Daisy has now left; she should be arriving safely back in Omaha in about two hours. I always hate to see her go; I am immediately lonely and listless when she returns home after being here for a few days. I adore her and miss her, the cats adore her and miss her, and the house is quiet once she's gone. I mean, it's usually quiet anyway, but it's much more quiet when she's been here and has left. It's times like these when I begin to realize how alone I really am out here in the midwest -- but that loneliness and listlessness will soon disappear when I go to visit my parents at the end of this week. My excitement for the trip is slowly building, coupled now with the excitement that I have four days in the interim (counting today) that I really don't have a whole lot to do -- I can relax and rest up a little while I prepare to travel. And really, those are my plans. I'm not going anywhere I don't have to go, I'm not doing anything I don't have to do, I'm just going to catch up on sleep, take care of minimal shopping and household stuff (like paying the rest of my bills and the like) and I have to prep the house for the cats to be warm, well-fed, and safe while I'm gone for a few days.

But really, that's not what this post is about. This post is about our "Christmas."

As you folks probably already know, because I'm flying out to my parents' for Christmas, Daisy and I decided to do our own Christmas early. I wrote about this a bit in my last post here, what with our dinner and all, but I didn't get to our gifts (because we hadn't opened them yet). We now have, obviously, and I took pictures of the haul. Behold -- below, you shall see what I received:

Doesn't look like a lot, but trust me, it is. I've number-coded all of it for you so that I can explain it all fully:

1. The memory foam pillow Daisy got me for my birthday. It doesn't have a pillowcase on it yet -- the instructions (because, yes, apparently some pillows need instructions) say to "wash before using" and to let it air out for a few days before use to eliminate the foam-rubber smell from the memory foam itself. I'm not going to wash it, but I have been letting it air out since I opened it on Friday night.

2. The king-size electric blanket Daisy got me for my birthday to go along with the pillow. It's microplush, very soft, very thick, and machine-washable. I was thrilled. This will definitely help on those really, really cold mid-winter nights when the temperature drops into the single digits here in Kansas. Oh, believe me, those nights are coming...and I'll be ready for them.

3. A really nice St. John's Bay hooded sweatshirt/jacket that Daisy's mother got for me. Daisy has one exactly like it, so now the two of us will match when we wear them together. I might wear it home over Christmas, as it's oversized and will allow me to wear more layers beneath it. Daisy's mother is awesome.

4. A blue, Beatles "Abbey Road" t-shirt that Daisy got me. Note: this was one of the few gifts I knew she'd gotten me, because I purchased a "Let It Be" shirt at Target while we were out shopping on Saturday, and she hastily told me she'd gotten me a Beatles shirt, but she thought it was different, so that I wouldn't end up getting the same one she'd gotten (she didn't remember what the design was on the one she'd gotten for me). Very thoughtful. I love it.

5. An Old Navy collared pocket t-shirt, in denim blue, from Daisy. You can barely see it in the photo, as it's layered between the Beatles shirt and the other one, but it's nice. I love Old Navy stuff, but it's near-impossible for me to get anything there since I can never find anything in my size. Might wear this back home for Christmas as well.

6. A button-up plaid casual shirt from Old Navy, from Daisy. Daisy knows how to pick out the stuff I like, it seems -- and I also noticed a pattern: "I like you in blue," she told me. "You look good in blue." Fair enough; I agree. I put this one in the closet until it's warm enough for me to wear it, as it's thin and button-up.

7. The first of the two big, expensive presents, a Hamilton Beach ChefPrep food processor from Daisy's mother. Daisy must've told her at some point that I needed a food processor (as all I have is a blender right now) so her mother got me one via Amazon. This could not have been cheap, and I was stunned -- this was so something I would have never seen coming, and didn't. But, I do need it. I've been unable to do a whole lot with the blender; having a food processor now will make a lot of cooking and food prep much easier than before. Again, let me reiterate -- Daisy's mother is awesome.

8. "Fall In Love" ground coffee, in "Caramel Nut Delight" flavor, from Daisy. I've not yet tried it, but it smells heavenly. I told Daisy a long time ago that one of the most wonderful, easy go-to-gifts for me is coffee of some sort, any flavor but cinnamon or amaretto (both make me ill). It appears she took that to heart. The girl has a fantastic memory.

9. Ah, so it's come down to this, the big-big gift that I knew I was getting, but did not want to reveal it until I knew exactly what it was. That unassuming cardboard box contains a brand new Toshiba Satellite Pro laptop. Daisy got it from Amazon as a Black Friday deal, as long long ago I told her that the only thing I needed was a new laptop because the old one I use at work (and leave in my office there) is eight years old and slowly dying. That laptop was probably more than everything else on the couch combined, but it's the one big thing she wanted to get for me. I opened it up and checked it out, but I haven't turned it on yet or messed with it, so I don't know the specs of it. All I know is that it's a 15.6 inch laptop and that it has Windows 8 on it (which will immediately be wiped off of it in favor of Ubuntu Linux on its first boot). However, it's obviously going to be much more powerful than the eight-year-old secondhand laptop I currently have on my desk at work. I would take it with me to West Virginia to mess with it and play around with it, but it's a huge pain in the ass to get laptops on and off planes these days -- so I probably won't play with it until I get back home. Of course, I can't tell you how grateful I am to get a new computer from my girlfriend -- I certainly didn't expect her to actually get me one when I told her, half-jokingly, that all I really needed was a new laptop. The fact that she did, and basically told me she did (I was going to tell my parents that's the only thing I wanted/needed if they wanted to get me something for Christmas, and she stopped me from doing so) is mind-blowing.

"Wow, Brando, a new laptop!" my mother said this morning in an email. "She must really like you!"

Yes, yes, she does.

I also forgot to include possibly one of the coolest things of all -- a DC Comics coffee mug, with all of the popular characters on it in little checkerboard squares. I forgot to include it in the photo as it is currently being washed prior to use.

I, of course, got Daisy an assortment of stuff large and small, but nothing like a laptop. I enacted, very early in the shopping season, the plan that I called (in my head) Operation: Nerd-Up-The-Girlfriend, or ONUTG for short. Once I put ONUTG into effect, I realized that I wouldn't be able to just do that, as it would be small-scale (and I knew by this point that she'd gotten me the laptop). Here's a list of things -- what I can remember, anyway -- that I got for Daisy:

• The Firefly complete series DVD set
• Superman: The Movie, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, and Superman Returns
• The first three discs of Young Justice
• The Rocketeer
• Blade Runner: The Director's Cut

I figured those would be good to start her off with -- a bunch of movies and shows that she needs to see. I did, however, get her some other, non-nerdy stuff as well:

• A full-length bathrobe
• At least four pairs of gloves and one pair of mittens
• Two scarves; one blue and knitted, and the other brown plaid and fleece
• A kit which will allow her to buff and shine her fingernails and toenails with an electric buffer and tooltips, plus nail health cream (she loves this stuff and paints her nails all the time in eccentric patterns, so I knew she'd like it)
• A pair of really soft fleece pajama pants with multicolored snowflakes on them
• Two beautifully tie-dyed tank tops for her to wear (and work out in) at the gym
• A box of other Christmas gifts that she is not allowed to show her parents until after I give her parents their own gifts, as there is a running theme involved with the entire set of them.

That last part is true; it's nothing scandalous or anything like that, but I don't want her to ruin the surprise for her parents, and I won't be giving them their own gifts until I go up to Omaha for New Year's. Long ago I planned a theme for the three of them -- Laura and her parents -- and I executed said theme well, so there are a few presents she has to keep hidden from them for the next two weeks or so, or otherwise can't tell them about, otherwise her parents will know exactly what said theme is and what I've gotten them. I did, however, send her parents a sweet Christmas card last week telling them that I'd see them soon and would arrive in Omaha bearing gifts once I got back from West Virginia, so that's a plus.

Then again, shortly before we fell asleep last night, I told Daisy that if for some reason my plane crashes going to or from West Virginia, she could keep the computer. Oh, and that her family would be the proud owners of an extra car, as well, since it'll be parked in the lot at the airport -- but they'll need to get the only key to it off of my plane-mangled body.

"Why not just...leave it there?" she asked.

"You know they charge six dollars a day for parking, right? So it would rack up all of those charges, those fees, and they'd be in my name because my plates and registration are on it, and....look, just go get the car, okay?" I said, laughing.

"I'll also make sure your cats are well taken care of," she added. In the dark, I couldn't see her, but I could sense she was rolling her eyes as she said that.

So that was our early Christmas. It was really fun and relaxing; I'm glad I was able to spend some time with her without having to worry about responsibilities, about how many books I had to read or papers I had to grade, or setting an alarm to wake up really early, or anything like that. It was wonderful. I slept until 9 this morning, got up and came upstairs, and she slept until 10 before I went back downstairs and we went back to sleep together for a mid-morning nap before she left. Lazy, peaceful, and loving times like that are all I want out of life, really.

Wreck the Malls

Countdown to 30th birthday: four days
Countdown to flight back home: five days

Daisy is here. Right now, she is still asleep, as it's 5:23 AM. I myself awakened around four, with heartburn/acid-reflux-like troubles (more than likely brought on by our rather unconventional Christmas dinner; it appears that Tofurky does not like me very much).

Today will be our Christmas, once she awakens in several hours. I wrapped her gifts last weekend, as you know, and when she arrived on Friday she had the backseat of her car filled to the brim with gifts for me -- I wish I were making that up. Two of them were birthday gifts, and the remaining seven were Christmas gifts of all shapes and sizes -- two of which, apparently, were from her mother, who sent my gifts down early.

She wanted me to open my birthday gifts Friday night before I went to bed, so I did -- and I was not disappointed. I mentioned in my last post here that she had ordered gifts from Kohl's -- yes, the department store -- which were my birthday gifts. She ordered them from there because, as she told me, "those things I ordered go together." Okay. I was mystified at what she could've gotten me from Kohl's that she couldn't have gotten cheaper from Amazon, but okay. They were two big packages -- one very heavy and smaller than the other, and one large and light. I was stumped.

The large, light one was a really nice memory foam pillow, like the one she uses. I laughed, not only because I love it, but because she has a good memory herself -- when she comes down here, she brings her own memory foam pillow because my pillows aren't the same/are too soft or hard for her. I told her a long time ago, months ago, that I secretly hoped she forgot to take her pillow home with her after one of her visits because it was so squishy and comfortable. She remembered this and got me my own.

The smaller, heavier one was, and I'm not kidding, a king-size, thick fleece electric blanket for my bed. No wonder she had to get it from Kohl's -- I've done searches on electric blankets on Amazon. They're not cheap, folks, especially in king-size. This means she probably got a really good deal on it on the Kohl's website. That's a really high-end purchase. I was really impressed and very happy -- I've been wanting an electric blanket for years. It gets really cold downstairs in the bedroom in mid-winter, no matter how much I run the furnace. I have an old, quite drafty house.

Now, mind you, the two of those birthday gifts probably cost more than the entirety of the Christmas gifts I got for her and her parents combined, and possibly more than the cost of the gifts for my own parents thrown in there. I ever-so-slightly began to feel a bit like I hadn't done enough for her. And that's just the birthday gifts -- I already know what my big Christmas present is from her (I sort of, through a few different ways, helped her pick it out), and I know that one gift cost more than everything else I've gotten for everyone this holiday season. Yep. It's that big. It's also sitting on my bedroom floor about eight feet from me, wrapped up. I won't unwrap it until later this morning. Again, I'm also not going to reveal what it is until everything is done, though some of my and our mutual friends already know what it is as well.

As an aside, of the seven gifts remaining, one of them I already opened because she wanted me to -- four different kinds of vegan beef jerky. I've already eaten them all. I also know about the big one, and she told me one of the smaller ones yesterday while we were out shopping (which I'll get to, soon) as I purchased something similar. That leaves five gifts -- three from Daisy and two from her mother -- that I have absolutely no clue what they could be. This is good. I like to be surprised.

Of course, once I moved them into my room, my cat Sadie immediately thought they were all for her, and positioned herself amongst them in the sun:

I later emailed this picture to my parents, and posted it on Facebook and Twitter as well. The presents in front of Sadie are from Daisy, and the ones on the left are from her mother.

Daisy also baked me a vegan mocha tiramisu birthday cake, and brought it with her on a heavy glass cake platter. We put thirty candles in it -- almost setting ourselves on fire, because thirty candles is a lot of heat/flame, and she took pictures of it and me in front of it with the candles lit with a hurry-up-and-take-the-picture expression on my face because the candles were rapidly melting and were running down onto the cake. As for the cake itself, we haven't tried it yet -- that's going to be our breakfast this morning. We intended to eat part of it last night as dessert after our Christmas dinner (again, which I will get to) but we didn't -- we went to bed early. We'd had a long day.

That long day entailed getting up, bumming around the house for a while, and then around 1PM leaving Newton for Hutchinson. Hutchinson is 30 miles west of here -- it's a straight line west, actually, and the city in which the Kansas State Fair is held. It also has a decent shopping district, including a somewhat decent mall and a large Target store, two things which Newton lacks. Wichita has two nice malls and a few different Targets, but it's not worth the hassle fighting traffic and trying to find them (because I don't know where the malls are) when it's easier just to go the back roads to Hutchinson and get roughly the same shopping experience.

The trip was fun, but was largely unsuccessful. We took Daisy's car (it's better on gas mileage, and I paid her for the extra gas anyhow), and she was able to find a few gifts for family members and a few cheap clothing items for herself, but I didn't get anything at the mall itself, which was disappointing -- usually I can find some nice clothes and/or other items at JCPenney or Sears, but this time around even their clearance shirts and pants were $20 or more, which is mostly ridiculous. I was hoping to get Daisy something else, something sweet that she could pick out, but she told me she didn't want or need me to get her anything (which she always tells me, and especially around this time of year I've learned that I will now mostly ignore that). The only things I bought were at Target, and they were two t-shirts, some soda, and green beans/cranberry sauce for our Christmas dinner. And we didn't even end up eating the cranberry sauce. Daisy's feet were killing her from the mall-walking by the time we were done in Target, so we just came home without doing anything else or going anywhere else, and I was fine with that. I didn't want her to be in pain, and it was getting late anyhow. We didn't get back home until after 7, and immediately started cooking dinner.

Daisy had brought down the Tofurky name-brand tofurkey, which I'd never seen before. It comes in a little box, wrapped in a tight plastic wrapper similar to what you'd see a ham wrapped in. The "roast" itself was about 6 inches wide by 8 inches long, and was stuffed with rice and bread stuffing (which, we later agreed, was pretty awful). Even though it wasn't real meat -- mostly tofu, vital wheat gluten, salt and other seasonings, basically seitan -- it still took 75 minutes to cook in the oven at 350. We made mashed potatoes and I heated up the green beans, and had ourselves a wonderful little Christmas dinner while watching Community.

As for the Tofurky itself? Eh, it wasn't bad. Very salty, but turkey-like enough. It would be great on sandwiches, we decided. I ate one thick slice of it, got rid of the offending stuffing, and wrapped the rest of it up for sandwiches later this week. The problems came later, in digesting it. At least for me, anyway -- Daisy was/is fine.

I've mentioned before that I'm not entirely used to vegan food. I eat it quite a bit, especially when Daisy is here, but overall it doesn't always necessarily agree with me. Daisy brought down a vegan pizza from a place in Omaha she loves, for example, and that was our dinner on Friday night. It was wonderful, it was fine, and I loved it -- with no digestive side effects. However, most of the time, as my body isn't as attuned to eating vegan as Daisy's is, it doesn't react well to large amounts of tofu or alternative proteins or whatever else is in most of the foods we cook together. This isn't her fault, of course -- my body's used to what I feed it normally, so when it gets something drastically different, it's a shock to the system. So to speak, anyway. Hence I woke up at about 4AM with bad acid reflux and heartburn, bloated, and feeling miserable. I don't get heartburn often -- it's maybe a once-a-year occasion at best -- but it was really bothering me when I woke up. I had no choice but to get up and take something for it, telling Daisy (when she briefly awakened) that I was getting up, to go back to sleep because I had to shower and run the dishwasher anyhow. This is also true, but I wanted the girl to get a decent night's sleep as well without worrying about me. I'm okay now, and plan to go cook waffles for us in about two hours or so. A breakfast of homemade waffles and birthday cake before we open our Christmas presents sounds delightful, right?

So that was our day yesterday. I will update again soon, more than likely after Daisy goes home tomorrow, about everything we got each other as I plan and pack/re-pack for my trip home to West Virginia next weekend.

The Mythical Tofurkey

Countdown to 30th birthday: six days
Countdown to flight back home: seven days

I am completely done for the semester.

This is not something I take lightly, to be honest with all of you.

This is how I feel at the end of the semester:



At the end of any semester, for a few days I am left listless and out of sorts. This is because I go from a four-month period of high stress levels and constant responsibility to...nothing. All of a sudden, nothing. This sharp dropoff leaves me feeling, well, out-of-it. And yet, a week from today at this time, I will be in my parents' house in West Virginia, the home in which I grew up, even further away from my normal hectic life than I usually am. The thought is a bit jarring, to say the least.

I don't mind flying; after the first flight I made about four years ago (which, admittedly, was a bit scary for me) planes ceased to bother me. I actually rather enjoy flying now. It's peaceful to look down at the earth and see how beautiful it is from six miles in the air. As mentioned before, this is the first trip back home that I will have taken without having anyone to accompany me at all, in any way -- when I flew back over spring break, Lady and I were together then and she spent a few days at the house with me, and flights home before that were taken with my longtime ex -- but this time, it's just me. Perhaps next time, Daisy will be able to join me, but right now it's just me. I'm also a lot less restricted on this trip because it's just family involved. I may see a friend or two while I'm home, and I plan to have lunch with my longtime friends Wayne and Jane (as I did the last time I flew in) but I don't know about anything/anyone else. The vast majority of my trip will be spent with my parents, extended family members, and (hopefully) my siblings, before coming back home on the day after Christmas. A few days later, I'll be going up to Omaha to spend the New Year with Daisy -- and to finally give her parents their own Christmas gifts.

Daisy and I have been trying to get this weekend's trip to work for several days now -- I originally told her to come down on Wednesday, which she couldn't do. Then I said Thursday/Thursday night would be fine, but she was busy doing a lot of stuff and also wanted to give me a day to relax. Then she was supposed to come down this morning, leaving early. She just now left the house (or so I assume) tonight around 6PM, which means she'll be rolling into Newton around 11 or 12. Again, Daisy's visits have little to do with when I'd like her to be here and more about when she actually arrives. I've said before that she operates on her own timeframe -- Daisy Standard Time, or DST. I can't really complain about this (at least not seriously, anyhow); the woman has always marched to the beat of her own drum, so-to-speak, and this time she was late because she was baking me a birthday cake and bringing with her not only all of my birthday/Christmas presents (I'll get to that in a bit) but the makings of an entire vegan Christmas dinner for us -- including the mythical tofurkey.

(Update: 6:47PM -- she's just now leaving. Again, DST.)

I've never had tofurkey. I've only heard about it, usually as the butt of a joke. When I did a Google Image search, however, it doesn't look half bad. So, really, I'm as open to it as I am anything else Daisy and I eat together. The only thing she's ever steered me wrong on is vegan breakfast sausage -- which she loves, and I absolutely cannot stand. At all. I haaaaated it. That's not her fault, though. We all have our different tastes.

Because of her trip (and because I desperately needed to) I took the liberty of cleaning the house from top to bottom over the course of the past day and a half or so. This included scrubbing the hell out of my bathroom, which hadn't been properly cleaned -- as in, completely cleaned -- in well over a year. Don't get me wrong, I do clean the toilet on a regular basis, as well as scrub down the shower, but everything else just sort of gets pushed to the wayside when I'm busy with school. I vacuumed the upstairs and downstairs, including the carpeted stairwell (no small task as it's really hard to vacuum), did all the dishes, washed the cat hair and man-sweat off the comforters and sheets, and cleaned the cats' room better than it's been cleaned in months. All of this desperately needed to be done so that I didn't feel like such a horrible slob.

I also went to the post office early this afternoon and mailed a large box to my parents -- said box contains most of their Christmas gifts, as I don't have room to take said gifts with me on the plane. This saved me a bit of room in my bag to pack essential things like, oh, underwear. And pants. I plan to dress in layers when I fly out anyhow to save more space, but eh. I sent it in the biggest flat-rate box the post office had on hand, and it'll arrive on Monday -- well before I get there.

When Daisy gets here, we have plans for the weekend -- tonight, we'll have dinner (a laaaaaate dinner) and tomorrow we're going to do my birthday stuff. She apparently got me a bunch of stuff for my birthday, some of which she ordered from Kohl's (why she got me stuff from Kohl's when she could've more than likely gotten it cheaper on Amazon is beyond me, really). I don't know anything about what she's gotten me for either my birthday or Christmas except for one big gift, which I will reveal at a later time after I open it. Mind you, I also told her that I didn't need anything at all -- just having her here is good enough. It's the same thing I told my parents as well, really. I don't need anything for Christmas or for my birthday; really, I'm perfectly happy with the stuff I have. Holidays aren't necessarily big gifting occasions for me, especially since I'm an atheist. They're more about spending time with people who are important to me...though I will say that I don't mind the whole "gifting" part of it.

After we do my birthday morning thing we're going to Hutchinson (30 miles to the west of here) to do some Christmas shopping for her parents as well as for us. I don't know what she's gotten her parents (well, I know a little of it) but I'm sure she's not yet done, and I haven't been to Hutchinson in almost a year. I do have a little spare cash right now -- not a lot, but enough. I've already paid all of my bills -- the ones I've received, anyway -- and I can afford a shopping trip. I will have a bit of cash to work with once I get home, too; usually the go-to birthday gift from my relatives is money, and I got a royalty check from my Cafepress stores about a month ago that I mailed home for safekeeping so that I can cash it once I get there.

On Saturday night we're doing Christmas dinner, and on Sunday morning it's like our "Christmas Morning" of sorts, where we'll exchange all of our gifts. We're doing this so that we can have our own little Christmas before I fly home, and because -- as I told her before -- by the time I get home from West Virginia I will be "Christmased-out." And this is true, really. I've sent all of the Christmas cards I'm sending this year already -- all four of them -- and am looking forward to an under-the-radar holiday for the most part, holed up in my house back home, drinking freshly-ground coffee and good beer. Because, generally, that's what happens when I go back home. I tend to eat and drink a lot. Because I'm home and I don't have to buy my own food for once. Also because my parents stock the house with food like there's a nuclear apocalypse coming.

Daisy will more than likely return home on Monday morning, and I'll have a few days in the interim to relax a little and prep the house for my trip -- including locking everything down and making everything cozy, comfortable, and secure for the cats while I'm away. I'll have to leave the house at about 2:30 AM on Friday morning to ensure that I get to the airport with enough time to park, check in for the flight, and go through security. The flight lifts off at 6AM -- customary for any and all flights I get out of Wichita. I've always told my mother to fly me out as early as possible, as that means I'll get on the ground in Pittsburgh as early as possible as well.

I suppose, to change gears a bit, I should talk a bit about the grading process, as I am completely done for the semester now. At least the finals were fairly easy and not incredibly time-consuming to grade, anyhow. I switched off with the director of the 102 program on Monday afternoon, and by the time I got back on Wednesday afternoon, she had them done. I calculated everything and entered the grades on the Banner system before I went to my last Playwriting meeting that evening, a process that took, on the whole, about...oh, 90 minutes or so. I dropped off the exams and forms in the office, said final farewells to those classmates of mine that I wouldn't see again until January, and left. Most of them have left town already at this point, or will do so over this weekend; Rae and Jay left today, Ryan left yesterday, and I know several others who are leaving within the next few days as well. Some aren't coming back -- at least two new recruits who started the program this fall have abandoned it for greener pastures elsewhere. They have their reasons, of course, but that marks four different grad students who have left the program in their first or second semester over the course of the past semester year, and -- let's be honest here -- that never fucking happens, much less four. There may be more than that, too; I'm not certain.

(Update: due to driving through some nasty storms hitting the area -- yes, in mid-December -- Daisy messaged me to let me know she'll be arriving shortly after midnight.)

The semester ended with a whimper, really -- at this point, the finals week grading ritual is routine for me; I know how the game is played, I know the moves I have to make, the chess pieces to position around the board, etc. When things come due, they come due and I do them with little ceremony or emotion. It's all about taking care of business, metaphorically speaking. Yes, some students failed my classes this semester. Yes, some of them passed with very high A's. This is par for the course for any given semester, really. Surprisingly enough, though, I have not yet received any emails from students bitching/whining about their grades yet -- and really, I don't expect to. Those who did badly know why they did badly, and perhaps they've learned a lesson about spending more time on their schoolwork.

I will also say that I've been told that most of the students who do poorly in English 101 or 102 are the students who don't end up staying in college -- they're the ones who tend to give up and leave because life is hard. This is probably why only a very small number of them are ever seen or heard from in the department again. That's right, folks -- because I don't just gloss over assignments and actually educate my students, there are more than likely a decent number of students who have dropped out of the university due to failing my class. I'm not sure whether I should be proud of that fact, or pointing and laughing, or feeling discouraged and shaking my head in sad disappointment. It's not hard to pass my class. It's not hard to pass 101 or 102, period. You just have to show up and do the work -- for any student who is dedicated to their education, these classes should be a cakewalk. Now, mind you, I may be a bit biased because I have a degree in English, but still. It's not difficult. There's just, well, actual work involved. Work that some of these students, apparently, don't want to put in. That much, over the almost three years I've been teaching, has become abundantly clear.

Ahem, anyway, soapbox rant over. On that note, I shall leave you fine folks -- Daisy will arrive in a little while, and I still have to do some last-minute tidying and deodorizing of my humble abode. I shall write here again probably at least once more, if not twice more, before my flight back home -- I will want to show off the gifts Daisy and I got each other, at the very least. And for those of you who are traveling over the next several days? Be safe, be cautious, and have a wonderful journey.

Moments of Truth

Finals week: day two
Countdown to 30th birthday: ten days

It is 1:48 AM on Monday morning.

Twelve hours from now, I will be sitting in a bowl-shaped lecture hall room on campus, quietly watching my students take their English 102 final exam.

That's right, folks. Today, I shall be the tester. And they shall be my...testees.

It's funnier if you say it aloud.

I can't sleep. I slept until 3PM, and now I'm wide awake. If I'm lucky, I'll get about two or three hours of real solid rest before I have to get back up in the morning to make my jaunt to campus. It is the day of reckoning for my students, and likewise the last day most of the department has to be on campus for anything but administrative stuff like proctoring finals. There's a shockingly low number of final exams in grad school -- they all but disappear after one's first eighteen months or so, unless you take classes in which the professor specifically bases a large chunk of the grade on a final exam. Most of the time we just have final papers to do.

I didn't realize it at the time, but last Wednesday night, with the end of the Surrealism class, I attended my last formal class of my college career. Like, the last class of my entire education. Yes, I still have to meet with my Playwriting class two nights from now for our final meeting, but it's a very informal meeting and not an actual class. In the spring, I have thesis hours and the "visiting writer," neither of which are really actual classes. This means that, well, I've finished with all of my actual classes for good.

Upon coming to this realization, I almost cried tears of joy.

In other news, it is absolutely freezing. The temperature is supposed to drop to 10 degrees tonight, which means that it'll be fun trying to start/defrost my car in the morning, and even more fun to get gas in the cold (as I need it before I go to campus). Right now it's 21 degrees, and I've been forced to run my furnace most of the past two days -- I don't have a choice. Even inside, if I don't run the furnace, my fingers get so cold that they don't want to move, and I can barely feel them. My toes are the same way, but thankfully if I wear enough socks and thick enough slippers, I can keep them mostly warm.

I made a shopping trip today -- I went to the Dollar Tree this evening. I wanted to go to Walmart, but I went outside and realized how cold it was, then looked at the Walmart parking lot (almost completely full) as I drove past, and said "fuck it, I'll wait until the middle of the night later this week."

I dressed in layers -- three shirts, two pairs of pants, two pairs of socks, and the thickest, warmest pair of shoes I own -- along with my jacket, hat, and gloves. I was still freezing. My body does not acclimate well to cold or heat; it never has. This is one of the many reasons why I hope I get offered a job in a more temperate climate, somewhere which doesn't get any colder than 50 degrees and never gets warmer than 80. I chose to simply go to the Dollar Tree because I was already out, I was already cold, and because I needed to go there anyhow -- I've needed to for several weeks now.

And, really, I didn't want to fight the Sunday evening Walmart crowds.

I wouldn't have gone out at all, except when I made coffee when I woke up this afternoon, I realized that I'd have to open my new can I had on the floor of my room. In reality, this was not a new can, but an empty can that I had put there and had forgotten to put in the recycling bin. So I was out of coffee. Being out of coffee, for me, is as bad as being out of cigarettes. I'll freak out and start going nuts. It's imperative for my own mental health, as well as the health and well-being of everyone around me, that I have continual access to coffee no matter where I am -- whether I'm at home, work, or otherwise. It's the only thing that keeps me going and keeps me from needing to sleep sixteen hours a day. So, regardless of how cold I was, I needed to go out. I rationalized that I could get coffee at the Dollar Tree (I did) and that I wouldn't spend as much money there as I would at Walmart anyway, which is true -- while I need cat litter, they can wait another two days, and while I need cigarettes and some actual food for the next few days while I'm off, those things can wait as well.

I ended up spending $46 at the Dollar Tree, which is about half of what I would've spent at Walmart. I got the essential stuff I needed to pick up there for the past few weeks (deodorant, exactly four Christmas cards to the four people I need to send them to, etc), and got a lot of cleaning supplies for the bathroom -- as I plan to scrub it down this week once I'm done with everything. I also got a few more little gifts for Daisy, things that I know she can use and/or needs. This allowed me to wrap her final present tonight with those things, as I forgot to wrap one of them last night -- I'd stuffed it away in a drawer and had forgotten about it.

Did you know Dollar Tree sells Blu-rays now? Too bad none of them are movies anyone actually wants to own.

I then came home and made a quesadilla for dinner, took the garbage out, put the bills in the mail, and did the dishes, before watching Red vs. Blue Season 10, which was almost three hours long. It feels nice to actually have time to sit down and watch a movie again. I missed that.

And now I'm here. I've been writing here for an hour. My alarm clock downstairs will go off in two hours and twenty minutes. If I'm lucky, I'll actually sleep before 4AM, meaning I'll get an hour of rest before it goes off. Why am I getting up at 5 when the finals feast isn't until 12 and the exam isn't until 1? The same reason I get up early every other morning I have to go to campus -- parking. It's finals week. Good luck finding a parking spot anywhere close to any of the buildings during finals week unless one gets there really effing early. I'm planning on redoing, printing, and filing my plan of study in the morning to kill some time (and stay awake). I know, thankfully, that at least I can come home tomorrow night and not have to get up early again for a month.

So that's my life right now, folks. I'll let you know how things go.

The End, Part II

Feel free to play that song while reading this post.

The fall semester is officially over.

Well, sort of. The semester itself is over. Finals week started today. Yes, on a Saturday. Because my school does that.

I also finished grading all of my students' papers tonight, after three days of work on them. By the time I was finished I was bleary-eyed and punch-drunk, with my hand cramped from writing on every one of them. I normally don't take this long to grade students' final papers, but I wanted to make sure all of them knew exactly why they'd gotten the grade they'd gotten. Most students did well. I say most because, well, some didn't. And I was lenient, too. Do these kids think I'm not going to read their final papers, or something?

A few days ago, several of my friends posted this photo on Facebook:

As you can see, that is a humorous "Paper Grading Bingo" game card. I found it amusing. And then I had an idea: I should play the game as I grade. If nothing else, it will keep me on task and will keep me paying close attention to my students' writing.

Please note, I've never done anything like this before, with but one exception: I remember once, in my first year of grad school, I live-blogged my paper-grading sessions. I'm pretty sure I could've gotten fired for that, but as said post was deleted years ago, it's pretty safe to mention now. This bingo thing, as a game, seemed fun. So, as I went through my students papers and graded them one by one, I marked little tally marks in the squares of this game card.

Three grading-filled days later, I ended up getting bingo on five different lines by the time I was done. Oy. No, that's not a joke. I wish I were making that up.

Behold, here is my list of results when I was finished grading papers -- If a square isn't listed, it's because I didn't have a tally mark in it (which is good):

Their, They're & There Mistake: 2.

Over Page Length: 7.

Under Page Length: 8.


Cites Wikipedia: 1.*

Massive typo (define however you want): 2.

Clearly Made Something Up: 3.

Spelling mistake that was unintentionally funny: 3.

Cites Lecture Incorrectly: 2**

Tries to be funny...but isn't: 3.

Overused cliche: 5.

Thesis, what thesis? I don't need no stinking thesis!: 2.

Personal Story (may or may not be graphic): 1.

To, Too, & Two mix-up: 3.

Don't cite their sources: 7. SEVEN.

No Staples: 5.

Turned in paper late: 2***

Changed the font/size margins to reach page limit: 4.

Clearly doesn't understand what a sentence is: 1.

A paper so good it blows the curve for everyone: 6.


*I allowed one student to cite Wikipedia -- not info from a page, but statistical info from the site itself on a particular article's log of changes and edits, to use as an example. I see this as permissible. His paper was on whether Wikipedia should or should not be allowed to be used as an academic source, and he asked my permission about this beforehand.

**A few students used personal interview sources, which they had to approve with me beforehand (as I had to evaluate if said source would be credible). Of those students, two of them cited said interview incorrectly in their in-text citations.

***Technically, two students did turn in their paper late, but they did so by placing it in the folder on the wall outside my office door by the next morning, so to me this is also permissible. They also had their papers on SafeAssign long before the due date, and both of them had missed class on Tuesday. I did not take off points for this, as I didn't even start grading said papers until two days later.

As I read through my students' papers, however, I began to notice several disturbing trends that I began to mark down as well, as additions to the bingo card. I'd like to share those with you too:


Mentions of Hitler as an example in a paper that has nothing to do with him: 4.

Mentions of Hurricane Sandy as an example in a paper that otherwise has nothing to do with Hurricane Sandy: 4.

Mentions of 9/11 in papers NOT about 9/11 or the Patriot Act: 4.

Out-of-nowhere mentions of Barack Obama: 3.

A paper so bad it re-balances the curve for everyone: 3.

Blatant, thinly-veiled racist argument: 2.

Paper that could've been much better from knowledge of the student's previous work in my class, but they clearly decided to write it in the span of three hours or so and not proofread it: 3.

Paper that could have greatly benefited from a simple 20-minute visit to the Writing Center: 5.

Paper goes completely off the rails halfway through: 1.

Paper is written on a completely weird, unapproved-by-me topic, but is still decent enough to get a C: 1.

Number of students who will already mathematically pass the class based on points earned, but really, REALLY shouldn't: 3.

Students who could sleep through the final exam on Monday, wake up five minutes before it ends, sign their name on an otherwise blank page and still have a full A in the class: 4.


These lists make it sound like most of my students' papers were bad, when that is far from the truth -- many of them were quite good. I was able to see my students' improvement in their writing and editing skills, for the most part, culminate in this final paper. For many, this paper greatly boosted their grade in the class. For some, the opposite was true, but that's on them -- not on me. In grading my students final papers and comparing them to, say, their scores on their first papers in the class, I can definitely see my effectiveness as a teacher, and I take pride in that. I love my job. I love teaching this class. As I've said before, there's no class at Flat State University that I'd rather teach. If I've reached but one student and made a difference in his or her life, and if I've helped them to learn something new in the process, my job is done. I feel satisfied...as trite and cliched as that sounds. Every semester I have students who tell me that my class is the best English class they've ever taken, or it's the only class they look forward to going to, or both. I don't ask these students to tell me this -- they say it freely and openly. I don't seek their approval -- I just do my job to the best of my ability, and I always have. It doesn't matter to me that the pay is low, or that I spend many more hours grading papers, creating assignments, and writing lesson plans than I probably should. What matters to me is that I'm making a difference, just as I have had teachers and professors of my own who cared enough to make a difference in my life over the years. Even if I never teach again, I'm not going to graduate from this program with the reputation of oh, that guy? no wonder you're horrible at English -- he'll pass anyone. Because I don't. I teach these kids the skills they need to survive in college -- whether they retain those skills is up to them, but I do my best.

So yeah, there's that. The vast majority of my work for the end of the semester is now done. In grading my students' final papers, I also calculated all of their current grades in the class -- meaning that when I grade their finals this week, all I will have to do is add their point scores to that current grade number, and I will have completely calculated their final class grades. Add those up and post them all on Banner, and I'll be done with all of their grading. I do all of my calculations in advance so that when everything is done, everything is done. I still need, however, to email my "grading partner," the director of the composition program, to see when and how she will be able to go over my exams -- whether she wants to grade them first or if she wants me to, etc. It doesn't matter to me either way -- if I can be completely done by Monday evening, I plan to be. If not, I do still have to go to campus on Wednesday evening for my very last meeting of my Playwriting class, and can finish up everything then. As much as I love that class, I'd still get out of that if I could. I can't, though -- not if I want to get the valuable info about submitting my play to various contests and the like.

Oh, and I actually get my final graded copy of my play back that night, too. I'm not concerned with that, really -- I already know I'll have an A in the class, so receiving my play back is but a formality at this point.

As for my massive Surrealism project, I asked my professor what he thought of it after Wednesday night's class. He said he liked what of it he'd read through and that it should be perfectly fine -- he just hadn't gotten through the entire thing yet. This definitely put me at ease about it a lot more than I had been, as I'd been on edge wondering if I would have to throw together another paper over the span of a few days. I can only take his word for it that it's fine, and wait to see if it's been stuck in my office mailbox with a grade when I return to campus on Monday morning. He extended the due date to Wednesday the 12th for the rest of the class's papers, so if I do have to do anything else, I can devote the entirety of Tuesday to working on that -- I'm off that day.

I also heard back from my advisor about filing for the exception with the graduate school for my full-time hours for the spring; I filled out a form that she has to sign, and left it in her box to sign it and send it off. It's pretty standard procedure, apparently, as she told me many grad students do it (especially those receiving loans, like me). She said that form should exempt me from losing any aid and should make everything peachy for my final semester. The office administrators of the department, however, think that I shouldn't have to do anything, and that they may end up sending the form back saying that -- as my six hours of credit is already considered full-time in the English department's graduate program. Which, goddammit, I knew I was right about in the first place. Regardless, everything should be smoothed out from this point forward, and I shouldn't have to deal with any administrative paperwork or any other financial aid issues from this point forward.

There is a lot else going on that I haven't been able to write about as of late because I've been swamped with grading and other finishing-the-semester stuff. This afternoon, as an attempt to get a break from all of said grading, I spent about two hours wrapping all of the gifts I had for Daisy and her parents. There is now a massive stack of wrapped presents in the spare room here at my house; one box each for Daisy's parents, two boxes for her, and at least three or four other wrapped gifts for her as well. My own parents' presents I'm either taking back to West Virginia with me when I fly out there or I'm mailing to myself out there, so those I don't really have to worry about as of yet. You also can't take wrapped gifts on a plane, as the TSA looks down on any package like that which isn't in checked luggage. Yeah.

I also found out that no matter how many times I wrap presents, and no matter who I wrap them for, my gift-wrapping skills are still quite sub-par. It's been over two years since I've wrapped gifts for anyone -- last Christmas, I was single, and until Daisy came along, I've not been in a relationship over any sort of gift-giving holiday, not even a birthday, since 2010. Add to this that I am still working through three rolls of wrapping paper I purchased over five years ago and you get some idea of how few things I wrap during any given year. Two of those rolls, mind you, I opened today for the first time. I'm totally not a gift-wrapper. This was proven to me by the two paper cuts I gave myself and my liberal use of Scotch tape. I'd so not be cut out for a gift-wrapping job at JCPenney, is what I'm trying to say.

Still, they're wrapped and ready. I think there may be one or two little things I neglected to wrap for Daisy, and I'll have to dig them out and wrap them as well, but eh. The vast majority of everything is done, and that's what's important. Now I have to tackle the much larger task of cleaning the hell out of the house over the course of this week before she comes into town -- something I've been neglecting as I've been so swamped with my work.

Daisy will be coming into town probably on Friday, if not on Thursday. It depends on when she wants to come down, really. Since I'll be flying out on the 21st, it's really about getting some time together before Christmas and before my birthday while we can still do so. We're going to do our Christmas then, exchanging gifts, having Christmas dinner and sweet time together, before I go to West Virginia over the actual holiday. When I return, I'll be going up to Omaha for a few days to celebrate the New Year with her and her parents -- and possibly any other family (like her sisters) who may be around at that time as well.

After that? I get a two week break before I make a trip to Chicago.

...say what?

Yes. A trip to Chicago.

I haven't been through the Chicago area in twenty years, and even then I was just going through the outskirts of the city. However, the Megabus company was doing a big free tickets promo this past week for certain trips, and Daisy snagged a ton of free round-trip tickets. As in, like, seven. Between the dates of the 14th and 17th of January.

Daisy and her best friend (who also reads this blog) go to Chicago fairly frequently. Daisy likes to travel. I, as you know, am pretty much a homebody. I don't really go anywhere I don't have to go most of the time. I like being safe, warm, and occupied here at my house with the kitties and my computer. I've referred to myself as a hermit before, and that description is mostly accurate. However, Daisy saw the promotion that Megabus was doing, and jumped on it -- something that I was at first a bit irritated with, but warmed up to rather quickly. So far, we've got five of us going -- me, Daisy, and three of her friends (provided they can get off work for those days). We also extended the invitation to Rae and Jay as well, as if nothing else a three-day trip to Chi-town would be a hell of an adventure if they can go as well, and a "last blast" of traveling of sorts for us before the three of us enter our last semester of grad school. As the tickets are free, if the weather is nasty or something happens, none of us are out any money if we can't go. All we'll require money for is a hotel room (which, apparently, most, if not all of us are sharing/splitting) and food/shopping/etc. while we're there. Even I have enough money for that, so that's not a big deal. I also find it highly amusing that I will be in Chicago three times over the course of one month, as I fly into and out of Chicago O'Hare for connecting flights on my trip home and back.

As for the Chicago trip itself, I'm pretty excited for it. And I didn't think I would be. The thought of being on a bus from Omaha to Chicago and back in the dead of winter doesn't exactly fill me with pleasure, of course, but eh. It should be fun. It'll be an adventure at the very least, and I do need a bit more adventure in my life. If nothing else, the vast majority of the trip will be free, and a week after I arrive back home, the semester begins.

So that's about all that's going on right now, really. I will let you know, of course, how the week pans out and how everything falls into place when it does so. But for now -- and for all of tomorrow -- I shall rest. I shall rest well, knowing that I actually have the time and breathing space to do so. And it will be good.