New Year's Eve

Well. So another year ends.

I haven't done a lot in the past several days since I've returned home; I've been sleeping a lot, eating leftovers (and the other food I have in the house), and have been spending a lot of time with my furry children, the cats. As mentioned in the end of my last post, I started the Bactrim this morning to see if it will cure my sinus infection for good, and as mentioned in previous posts, I have a hemorrhoid that even now is still painful and bothering me, but slowly seems to be healing up a bit.

There were a lot of little things I didn't mention in my series of recap posts because I didn't want to take the focus away from them and they didn't factor into the overall story at all -- such as the Christmas cards I received. I did, indeed, receive a card with a $100 check in it from my godparents, which I will soon be mailing back home to my mother so that she can put it in my bank account for me (along with the check Daisy's parents gave me). This means that in another week or so, I'll have a little more flexibility/cash flow with which to pay my bills for the month of January. I did mention that my electric bill came and that it was $180 -- double what it was for November, since it's been really really cold for a lot of this month and the electric furnace has to be on, or not only will my pipes freeze, but so will I. It's not due for another three weeks, so I have time to gather some funds. My grandmother sent me a birthday card with two $5 bills in it, too, which I put into my wallet. I'll need them for something, surely, within the next few weeks.

I haven't left the house; the car has been in the garage for over two weeks now, since well before the big snowstorm on the 21st. It's 50 degrees outside here now, and a lot of the leftover snow is starting to (finally) melt off this afternoon. I'm watching all of it drip off the roof and gutters like it's rain. While it has been this warm a few days, at least, since the snow fell, my house is situated in such a way that the sun never directly hits my front yard or driveway in the winter -- it's constantly shadowed. As such, my driveway is still a snow-packed sheet of ice, and the yard is still covered in a few inches of snow. It will remain this way until the actual outside temperature stays warm enough to melt it all, and I can't do anything about that. Tomorrow, for New Year's Day, it's supposed to get colder again and again snow a little bit, though I doubt there will be any accumulation.

I wrote here around my birthday that my friend April and her husband gave me an Amazon gift card for my birthday/Christmas, and that I wouldn't have the chance to use it until after the holidays were over and I was home for good. Well, I used it last night -- I got the next season of Breaking Bad, The World's End, Reaper Season 1, and a big box of incense (as I am out). It all arrives on Thursday instead of tomorrow because of the New Year holiday. While I do feel a bit guilty about getting luxuries with said gift card, there are very few necessities I can get via Amazon. About the only necessity I can get through there is cat food, and I do, but the kids are well-stocked on that (I ordered some as soon as I was paid on my birthday, and it arrived before I left town). I can't get cigarettes there, coffee is too expensive to get there (not that I need it now anyway after the Gordman's trip), and it's not like I can get fresh foods from Amazon delivered to me, such as meats and cheeses or vegetables. So, yeah, Amazon is really for wants most of the time, and not needs.

I've still not used either Visa gift card from my parents yet; I'm saving them in case I desperately need them for groceries or gas or something like that over the course of the next few weeks. If I don't, I'll find something to do with them eventually. $100, even in Visa gift cards, doesn't go as far as it used to. And again, it's not like I can pay my bills with them -- bills which are far more important than anything else.

Since turning 31, it feels like my body is starting to fall apart. Over the course of the past two weeks I've had to deal with the resurgent/continuing sinus infection, lip blisters, a hemorrhoid, and various other aches and pains. While I understand this is probably because my immune system is weakened from stress, a lack of sleep from being on-the-go all the time in Omaha, and being around all of the kids with their "kid germs," I'd be lying if I said any of it was pleasant or even welcome. I really wish I could just feel like my normal self again without any of these issues messing with me. Now that I've said this, watch me not be able to feel actually normal again until the day before spring classes start back up.

Speaking of spring classes, I sent an email to the department admins yesterday asking if they were able to find other classes for me. As of right now, I just have the one, the 102 class I teach at on the same times/days as the 101 class I taught last semester, on the West campus. Most of the students in it are the students I had in my 101 class as well, so it'll be good to see familiar faces. However, one class so isn't enough to be able to get enough income to survive on; paychecks for it would be about $150 every two weeks. I desperately need them to put me down for whatever they have open for me to teach, and soon. One of the administrative ladies replied and said that the university is closed down between now and the 6th, and that they'd be able to check/add/etc everything then and get it all sorted out. So, that's the earliest I'll know anything about what's coming up. Spring semester starts on the 21st, the day after MLK day, as it always does.

I'll also add, again, that there should be many sections opening that weren't available before; at least three of our GTAs have either graduated or won't be teaching in the spring (including Parker, who has not yet graduated but isn't teaching in the spring so that he can finish up his thesis) and at least one or two others have left the program for greener pastures elsewhere. The department knows I'll take whatever's available as long as it doesn't screw with my ability to get to/from different campuses (if it's necessary that I'd teach on both campuses on the same day) and that I have experience in teaching every one of the composition-related courses they offer. I'm not particularly worried about getting classes, but I absolutely need to know what I'm getting ASAP once the university reopens so that I can start making reasonable financial plans as well as lesson plans and syllabi for the semester. It takes a while to get all of that stuff planned, typed out, and printed. I don't care what I get or when it is, as long as I can do it and it gives me the money I need to survive. After all, I have a wedding I'll have to help pay for and plan for as well.

As for tonight being the last night of the year, and as for the New Year itself? Eh.

I don't really have any plans. I never do. Last year I was in Omaha for New Year's Eve, as I'd just gotten home from Christmas in West Virginia and went up there the next day after my return. This year, like many other years, I may end up sleeping through the ball drop or not even caring one way or the other. I slept through everything in 2011, for example. It's possible that I may watch the festivities on TV, especially if there's football on beforehand, but eh. It's just another day for me, really. I read about people on Facebook holding extravagant parties and the like, and I'm just "meh." I have no desire to do anything any differently. 2013 as a whole was good enough for me.

One of my friends from college put up a post detailing the five best years of his life and why they were the best. I thought it was interesting at the least, if not a great retrospective idea overall. So, I figured I'd do it here, myself, as a way to end this year's set of posts:

5.) 1994.

• My mother got divorced from my terrible former stepfather
• I fully immersed myself in comic books/comic collecting, starting a lifelong trend
• It was the last year of consistently-good 90s music (all of that ended, sadly, with the death of Kurt Cobain)
• I finally got a Sega Genesis and a Game Boy
• I began writing, seriously, as a hobby

 4.) 1998.

• We got the family dog (the one who just died recently) on July 5.
• In November, we moved to the house on top of the mountain during Thanksgiving week, and I would start high school up there the week afterward
• I began my coffee addiction
• I began learning how to play guitar, slowly
• I discovered Led Zeppelin for the first time
• I fell in love for the first time (it didn't last and nothing came of it, of course, but it was my first experience with that sort of thing)

3.) 2001.

• I graduated high school and started college at WVU, making many lifelong friends (even if a lot of them have since sort of disappeared or I've fallen out of contact with them)
• First drove a car on a regular basis

2.) 2005.

• Graduated from WVU
• Entered the first long-term relationship of my life (though I'm not in it anymore, obviously, since I have Daisy)
• Started my own clothing-design company
• Began writing very seriously and began my first attempts of many to get published anywhere/everywhere
• Won a creative nonfiction award at WVU with a story that the school journal was too uppity and incestuous amongst its editorial staff to even consider publishing (ha!)

1.) 2013.

• Got engaged to my lovely Daisy on Valentine's Day and began formally planning my life with her
• Graduated with my MFA
• Became a (terribly low-paid) professor, but a professor nonetheless
• Spent my first Christmas with Daisy's family
• I didn't die (yay!)

Is 2013, objectively and really, the best year of my life? Eh, it's pretty close. It's been really good to me (for the most part). Obviously there's going to be good and bad in all years -- for example, remember that my sister was killed in a car crash in October and that around the same time, I injured my eye with a pineapple so badly that it took almost two months to fully heal, not to mention the mess my finances have become -- but overall? Yes, it's been a very good year. Most years, on New Year's Eve, I can't wait to see go. 2007-11 were particularly awful for the most part, with much more bad than good in each one. This year is the first in a long time that I can look back and see more good than bad, while still respectfully acknowledging the bad. That's a big step for me, really. So I'm happy with that.

Another plus? While writing this post, the antibiotics have seemed to kick in -- very quickly at that -- as I have very noticeably felt the stuff in my face begin to drain down my throat already, making said throat sore and my nasal passages feel raw and inflamed, but it's apparently working and is starting to kick that shit out of my system. That's all I want, really. Get it out of there. Kill it and get it all out of me so that my body, face, teeth/gums, and head can all feel normal again.

That's about all I have for today, folks. I will, of course, keep you updated with anything else that pops up -- but for now, this post closes the year of 2013. Happy New Year, everyone. May we all have good luck and good cheer in 2014.

The 2013 Christmas Recap, Part IV

As the year (and this series of posts) draws to a close, I find myself reflecting a lot on the times, particularly the past several weeks and the next several weeks ahead of me. I do have worries and stresses still, of course -- I don't know what I'll be teaching in the Spring aside from one class, I got my electric bill for the month (and it's $180 -- again, electric furnace), and I have stuff around the house to do, as always. I did send the department an email asking for updates on my class schedule for the spring, if they have any, and I do have a little extra cash flow coming in within the next week or two, but I'll get to that when I get to it and when it's appropriate -- right now, however, let's finish up this series of recaps so it can all be done.

By Friday morning, we'd already had our entire day planned out for us. Daisy's other sister, the middle sister (Daisy is the "baby" of the family) and her own family were coming in for a few days; it was said sister's birthday, and they were bringing donuts and were going to spend the day with us, all of us were going to a play that evening, and then Daisy and I would be packing everything into the car once more for our trip back to Kansas in the overnight hours. It was a long day.

Said sister's family is large -- she's married and has four kids. Daisy is the only one of the three sisters to be unmarried and without children (though that situation will be rectified soon enough, obviously). Of those children, one of them is highly allergic to almost everything under the sun, and this includes cigarette smoke and even residual cigarette smoke on clothing or fabrics. Because of this, when they all visit, I can't smoke even outside on the porch as I normally do, as it still sticks to my clothing for a bit afterwards, and I don't want to make him sick. To most people, this isn't a problem, but as I'm the only smoker in, well, the entire family, and as family visit time tends to last 12-16 hours or so, my nicotine addiction has my mind bouncing off the walls during that time.

I love Daisy's sister and her family, of course, so I deal with it -- I'm not so shallow and self-centered that I wander off and sneak cigarettes or anything like that at risk of making the kid sick, because that would be a dick move. No, I deal with it. It's part of life. I've gone entire weeks without smoking before; a few hours during a day or two isn't a big deal. Does it make me go slightly nuts internally? Yes, but it's minor, and I don't care. Again, family first. When they come in, I smoke outside beforehand as much as I have time for, then I go shower and dress in fresh, clean clothes and the kid doesn't have to be allergic to me. I have my electronic cigarette if I need it (though in situations like that, really, it doesn't do dick to help).

There had been some debate on whether or not said sister and her family would actually be able to come in at all -- all of them had been dreadfully sick over Christmas with some sort of stomach virus, which kept them mostly incapacitated. They were still all sick with it on Thursday, and as it's a two-hour drive from their place to the family home in Omaha, we didn't know if they'd make it. Not to mention, obviously, that they shouldn't be traveling if they're that sick anyhow, especially with four kids -- one of whom is an infant. So, on Friday morning when I got up, I made sure we got the status report of their trip. Daisy called her sister, and they were 80 minutes away at that point in time.

Later, as in, shortly before that 80-minute window ended, they updated us and said that they had to "reset" and go back home for something (or something along those lines) and they'd be two hours later than originally expected. This gave me a bit more time to smoke, relax, and shower beforehand. With said sister's family there, we'd have a total of thirteen people occupying the house, including myself, with half of those thirteen being children seven or younger. That's a lot of people in one place at one time, especially with all of the kids making everything even more hectic. However, the "reset" made the family bonding time, the "Christmas" for the other kids, birthday celebration for said sister, and the family dinner before the play even shorter than it was going to be anyway, which was unfortunate.

Daisy and I had plans of our own; we had to go out in the morning because she needed lotion for her face and skin, as the cold beforehand (and the stress from constantly running around and doing holiday stuff, no doubt) was making her break out. She had to pick up something else for the household too, though I don't remember what it was now -- we were running around so much and I was already frazzled from not being able to smoke that my memory is, and was even then, mostly fuzzy. We left an hour or so before they were supposed to get there, and when we got back from running our errands they had already arrived. It did help that it was almost 70 degrees outside that day, though -- and remained even in the 50s long after dark set in.

We had the family's second Christmas for the kids and the birthday lunch/dinner/etc for Daisy's sister, and it was fun. It was nice. Again, I love all of Daisy's family, and all of the kids already look upon me as "Uncle Brandon" (except for the youngest ones, who have only a vague knowledge of who I am). Rarely, however, do I get any real interaction time with any of the adults unless all of the kids are asleep or otherwise occupied. Daisy doesn't, either, for the most part. She and her sisters are close, yes, but with the kids running around and playing with one another (as it's a relative rarity that all of them are together in one place), any real bonding time rarely happens. As a result, said visiting sister has been there twice during my own visits, and we're still mostly strangers to one another -- I've never, to this day, been able to sit down with her and have a conversation with her longer than five or so minutes. Some of that is a failing on my part, yes, but some of it is just because there's so much going on when everyone is there, and we're almost always on a time schedule of some sort for the next event of the day. Her husband, actually, I've been able to get to know decently well on my/their visits -- over Memorial Day weekend, I built a new porch swing with him and we shared a few beers during that particular bonding experience, for one.

As mentioned before, however, because they came in later than expected, that cut the family time down more than it would've been otherwise. All of us were going to a play that started at 7 -- a local playhouse's production of "Narnia" -- and to be able to get there on time and actually get parking, we had to leave the house by 6. Daisy's sister and her family were staying at a hotel a block or three from the playhouse in the downtown area right next to TD Ameritrade Park, as they were able to get a comped room somehow due to the husband's business/industry he's in and a conference he went to, and they had to check in first before the play. Well, Daisy's sister accidentally left her purse at the house when they went to go check in at the hotel, and they needed her ID (which was in the purse) to be able to fully check in and use the shuttle service to the playhouse. This meant that we had to get ourselves ready rather quickly and then go to the hotel first to return the purse, then get to the theater in enough time to get parking, pick up the tickets for us (Daisy's other sister and her family were handling that) and get our seats before the play started.

This is an example of how hectic things can, and do, get when everyone is there. As always, for a lot of it I'm just along for the ride -- literally as well as figuratively. I do what Daisy or the parents tell me to do, I go where they tell me to go, help with what I can, and the rest of the time I just stay out of the way. I have a complex about being in the way, inconveniencing people, or otherwise holding up plans, so I always do everything I can to avoid scenarios in which I'd be viewed as a hindrance. Yes, I wanted to go to the play -- it sounded interesting, and Daisy had asked me to go weeks beforehand -- but I'm also the kind of guy who doesn't ask questions when it comes to family event scenarios like that; I go with the flow.

Regardless, everything went fine -- we all got there and the play was very well-performed to what appeared to be a sold-out house in a theater of probably 1,500 people. Daisy's sister and her husband (the ones who had come in that day) had to leave the play early, as it was scaring the hell out of the younger kids -- there were some creepy characters and lots of loud yelling and singing, for example, and it was making the kids cry and freak out. I felt bad for them, but I was able to give said husband a brief recap of what they'd missed after the play was over at the hotel. By that time all of the younger kids were asleep, but as I'd finally been able to smoke after the play was over, I didn't go upstairs to the actual hotel room so that I didn't risk the allergic kid getting ill from residual smoke once he woke up in the morning. We took some photos and said our goodbyes, and the half of us still staying at the family house went back home.

By this time it was nearing 11PM. Daisy and I were both exhausted, and we still had an all-night drive ahead of us. I was mostly packed-up already, but nowhere near finished and ready to go. Neither of us had eaten since around 2PM or so, either, so we were hungry. We made a quick "dinner" of sorts, and Daisy napped on the couch while I hung out with her sister and husband, who were still awake as well. When they went to bed, I awoke Daisy and we began getting ready to leave. I made a pot of coffee which I poured into Daisy's thermos, as I knew I'd need it for the drive if I were going to stay awake the entire time.

I'd packed everything into the suitcase beforehand, of course -- one of the other reasons I'd purchased it -- and had everything layered, insulated against bumps and shocks and what-have-you, and was ready to go. Still, with all of my clothes from the trip as well as all of the Christmas/birthday gifts, my computer, toiletries (read: toothbrush, deodorant, etc) and other little things, my backpack and the suitcase were filled to bursting levels. The cooler was also a part of the traveling-home-luggage as well, as the parents always encourage me to take back as many leftovers/foods as I want or need, and I usually do. This time around, that consisted of leftover ham and turkey, the rest of Daisy's mashed potatoes, a bag of Mama's stuffing, the hazelnut coconut milk creamer I used in my coffee while there (nobody drinks it but me, apparently) and some other odds and ends that Daisy put in there for me to eat and enjoy. She encouraged me to take more than I did, as she knew I really didn't have a lot of food in the house and that my food budget for the next month or so is pretty tight -- but as the rest of the family is still there and in town, and they'd probably need and/or eat a fair amount of what was there during their stay(s), I didn't. I am not a mooch or a glutton, and I wasn't going to clean them out. That's not my way, as you know. I'm pretty self-reliant most of the time when it comes to food. I get by just fine.

As we left the house, we noticed that the temperature -- which, again, had been in the 50s even after dark -- had once more dropped like a stone, and the driveway/road had started to freeze and frost over. I put everything in the trunk of the car with the exception of the thermos of coffee and our "driving snacks" -- Daisy likes to keep snacks out when we make the drive, though I don't usually partake in many (or any) of them. And we left.

That's basically the end of the story, really, as it wraps back around to the beginning of this tale three posts ago here. She drove the first leg of the trip to get us to York; we stopped at Walmart there but didn't get anything, and then I drove us the rest of the way back to Newton, stopping at the gas station there around sunrise so that I could fill her tank for her before we went home to sleep.

In the days since, Daisy returned to Omaha (with barely enough time to get to work that night) and has been working ever since. Tonight is her first night off since she returned home. I, meanwhile, have been taking care of the chores and other things around the house, and haven't left the house since I returned; the car is still in the garage, and I have had more than enough food to be okay with. My sinus infection is still rearing its ugly head and is making my face/ upper gums swell up, so this morning I began taking the antibiotics (Bactrim) in hopes that I can just finally knock it out and be done with it -- it's been six weeks since it first started bothering me, so that's probably a sign that it's not going to go away on its own without antibiotics. I should've just started them weeks ago when it first popped up -- but usually my sinus infections will last a week or two at the most and then heal themselves. Daisy is sick now as well, as is Mama -- both of them seem to have a milder case of whatever stomach virus it was that her sister's family had before they came in on Friday. Luckily, I haven't gotten that and have thus far been able to avoid any sort of holiday sicknesses (aside from the sinus infection, of course). Daisy is sleeping it off right now, since she returned home from work early this morning, and I hope she rests well.

So that's the story, really, of the Christmas trip and return. There isn't much else to tell.

The 2013 Christmas Recap, Part III

Since returning home, I've been slowly recovering from the trip. Going from constantly running around, trying to help cook, clean, take care of the kids, run errands, and sleeping in a bed which hurts my back to finding myself back at home alone with the cats and no true responsibilities for the next month or so is, indeed, a bit jarring. As a result, during the past day and a half I've probably been asleep more than I've been awake, honestly. Pretty close, anyway. I slept with Daisy yesterday morning when we got home, then got up with her when she left. I went back to sleep once she was home safely only to get up around 3AM again (when I started the last post), went back to bed around 10AM, and got up this afternoon around 4. I've been craving a lot of rest. My allergies are bothering me off and on. I have developed another hemorrhoid, which (hopefully) will go away in the next day or two, as they usually do. I still haven't cleaned out the cats' room since I've returned home, though they're fine on food and water (that I did replace/refill upon my return). I am now paying half-attention to the Chiefs game as I try to wake myself up fully and return to some semblance of around-the-house normalcy.

Anyway. Let us continue. I might be able to wrap up everything in this post (but I doubt it).

The morning of the 26th was chilly, but the day itself got incredibly unseasonably warm -- by the afternoon it had to reach 65 or so, to the point where I didn't even need to wear my coat when Daisy and I were outside and while we were tossing the football around with the family. Because of this, she and I wore our new, Mama-crafted matching fleece sweaters, and we got up to make our trip out into the post-Christmas wasteland.

"Where did you want to go?" she asked.

"Gordman's, really, but that's about it unless you had anywhere else to go."

I wanted to hit up Gordman's because A.) there's not one of them around here, and B.) their after-holiday sales are generally really good; last year, around New Year's, I got bags upon bags of holiday-themed coffee that lasted me several months, well into the spring, for about $2 a bag. You can't beat that pricing. You just can't. I also was able to get a lot of nice teaching clothing at Gordman's, incredibly cheaply, over the summer when I was up there, and wanted to see if I could find anything else that would work for that. Again, I had my gift cards, so it wasn't like I would be spending my own money -- or so I thought, anyway.

As I mentioned before, my Discover card (which I'd had for about a year, but hadn't used before last month) has a massive limit on it. Like, I could buy a decent used car with it if I wanted to. Over the course of January, I'll more than likely have to put a few hundred dollars' worth of charges on it in order to go grocery shopping a few times since I won't be getting paid until the end of the month, and I can do that because of its large limit. If you'll recall, I also paid it off this month so that it would be balance-free before my trip, in the strange case that I had to use it a lot. I used it once on the way up there to get some stuff at the York Walmart, but again, I planned to use the gift cards for whatever I needed/found/wanted/etc. while shopping on the day after Christmas.

This. Did not happen.

We went to Gordman's, and I began stocking up on their discounted coffee. They had a lot of it, all of which I was getting at 50% off, so the final cost to me was $2.50-3.00 per bag. I don't know how much of it I got, but it was at least 8 or 9 bags. I got a bag of it for Daisy, too, as she wanted one that was maple-flavored. I didn't care; I can't get coffee that cheaply anywhere else, and it will last me months. Gourmet coffee. Good flavors, too: caramel, vanilla, chocolate raspberry, etc. Each bag gives me about 6-8 pots of coffee, roughly -- more if I cut it with the cheaper stuff I get at Walmart. This sets me up for coffee for about three months or so, on average. Something like that, anyway. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if I still have some of it after Daisy and I are married. My mother put some single-pot bags of coffee in with my box of stuff, too, and I haven't even used any of that yet. I still have probably two pots left of the Tim Horton's coffee Daisy got me for my birthday.

Daisy had also mentioned to me the week before that Gordman's had luggage on sale when she was doing shopping there previously, and that some of it was really, really cheap. I've needed a new suitcase for years. Well, I've needed a suitcase, period for years. I've never owned a suitcase. All of the traveling I've done over the years I've done with my backpack and/or a second bag for my laptop, but that's it -- and because of that, I've learned to travel light. I dress in layers so that I don't have to pack that stuff in my bags, I take only what I need to survive regardless of where I'm going, and generally speaking I get along just fine. However, that isn't exactly practical for long stretches of time (not that I can travel that long with the cats) or for faraway trips (like visiting my parents back in WV). In the summer, I wear less clothing, yes, but I can't dress in layers, which makes it even harder if I travel then. So, yes, I needed a suitcase and have needed one for a while.

Daisy took me down the luggage aisle, where everything was marked 33% off. Within 30 seconds, I found one I liked, it was $25 before the discount (marked down originally from $70), and I said "Okay, I'll get this one. I like it."

"Don't you want to look at the others?" she asked me.

"Nope, this one's good," I said, and stuck it in the cart.

That's how I buy things I need -- I don't spend minutes or even hours hemming and hawing over choices and styles. I look, I grab one in my price range, and I move on. Why waste the time, you know?

The one I picked was a roller bag that is 24" -- the maximum size for carry-on, so I won't have to check it if I fly with it -- and it's sturdy and light when empty. Semi-hardshell case. Upholstered and padded-lined. That's all I wanted. It'll hold about 3x-4x as much as my backpack will. And that's all I needed.

I really didn't find much else in Gordman's; I picked up a Firebird t-shirt (because, if you know me, you know I've always wanted a Trans Am) for $8, and I found a Punisher coffee mug for $4 to add to my nerdy mug collection -- I already have Transformers, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man, and Batman mugs -- and we checked out. The total came to $63.

The Visa gift cards were only $50 each. I didn't want to use an entire one and then piggyback $13 over onto the next one, so I just used the Discover card again -- which is why I mentioned that earlier. It's not a big deal; I'll pay it all off slowly until I can get it completely paid off, and I know I'll be using it for groceries next month, as I said above. By mid-semester (spring-break-ish), all of my credit cards should be mostly, if not completely, paid off again. So, yeah, I'm not incredibly concerned with all of it. I saved the Visa gift cards and didn't end up using either of them on my trip to Omaha -- I'll probably use them for some of the aforementioned groceries or ordering some stuff online that I can't get otherwise.

Upon taking the stuff out to the car, Daisy and I had our one and only argument of the entire trip, and the only argument we've had in probably close to...oh, three months? Four? Something like that.

Why? Because of ten dollars. Or something close to that, anyway.

Looking back on it now, it was sort of ridiculous. Okay, it was really ridiculous. At least to me, anyway.

Daisy asked me to check the receipt to make sure that I got the suitcase for the 33% discounted price. I checked it. I didn't; it rang up the full $25 amount.

"Take it back in and tell them it didn't ring up correctly. Or I'll do it and get the money back."

"Eh," I said, "I don't care."

"What?"

"I don't care. It doesn't bother me in the least. It was marked down from $70. I got it for $25. I paid for it with the credit card. I don't care."

And that's how the argument started. I won't bore you with the details, most of which are irrelevant anyhow. I honestly didn't and don't care one way or the other. I saved a ton of money on it anyway, I needed it, and I saved a lot more money on all of the coffee that I'd purchased at deeply-discounted prices to make up for it. It didn't bother me if I didn't save a whopping $8.25 (33% on the suitcase, before tax) because it didn't ring up correctly. I didn't want to go through the hassle of trying to put $8.25 back on my card, and trying to prove to them that yes, it was on sale -- who knows if it actually was? Maybe not all of the suitcases/luggage was on sale, and I'd picked one of the ones which wasn't 33% off. Why lug everything back in there and bicker with the salespeople about it when the store was busy and I didn't care? It didn't matter to me in the slightest. Pick your battles, folks. This wasn't an important one to me.

Of course, my attitude on the subject strongly irritated Daisy, which is why we were fighting about it in the first place, and she kept bringing it up and pushing me on the issue -- which I found pointless, and it made me angry. I don't get angry with Daisy; I can count on one hand the amount of times I've actually been angry with her or angered by her over the course of our entire relationship. We don't generally fight about anything; we talk it through and use our communication skills, because that's what mature, intelligent adults do. But, on the other hand, I'm also the sort of person who, when I say to drop a subject and let it go, I mean it. Daisy is not that type of person -- she wants logic and reason and why, why, why in everything, and I'm not like that. I don't have to have logical reasons for why I don't care about $8.25 of a luggage refund -- it doesn't matter to me and I just don't care. $8.25 on a credit card purchase isn't going to make or break me, and it's not like I can devote complex reasoning to why I don't care about something. And, most of all, it didn't affect Daisy herself -- it wasn't eight bucks of her own money, or anything like that, which if it were, I could understand. I just didn't get why she cared so much about something so obviously trivial.

Our fight lasted about an hour before we discussed everything calmly and made up. Her parents, of course, took her side when we told them about the luggage experience. I still didn't care, and we didn't go back to Gordman's to dispute or haggle with them. To me, it wasn't worth my time, and we had a lot more to do while we were there. The luggage issue was quickly forgotten.

As I mentioned previously here in the blog, the 26th was the day all of us had planned to celebrate my birthday. I'd been asked what I wanted for dinner that night, as it was my choice apparently, and I half-jokingly, half-seriously had answered with "poutine." A day or two before, I told Dad about that, and he had told me in all seriousness that it had already been planned, that they were already working on it -- which surprised me, since I hadn't been completely serious about it. True to form, they'd picked up a ton of fries and cheese, and had made extra gravy. The poutine was happening. Daisy even had vegan cheese and vegan gravy for her own poutine concoction. With it, we had hot turkey-and-gravy sandwiches, with leftover stuff from the dinner the day before (it was a good way to get rid of a lot of leftovers, apparently, which was good). I had two large servings of poutine and was full. It was a very nice, thoughtful dinner made for me, and I loved it.

That wasn't all, however -- at the end of dinner, I was given a gift bag with something stuffed into it. Inside was a massive blanket that Mama had made me; it was fleece on one side and plush-lined on the other. At some point, Daisy had told her that I'd had trouble finding fleece blankets big enough to actually use (since I'm not a small man). All I could find in stores in the way of fleece throws was 50x60", which will realistically only cover about the top 2/3 of my body. I end up getting two or three of them and overlapping them, and I had mentioned to Daisy a while back that I wondered if I could get four of them and have Mama sew them all together into a big square, since I can get the 50x60 ones for $3 or so each at Walmart, but getting one that's four times that size (read: big enough to cover my bed) is about $50 or more. It makes no sense. Mama took it upon herself to make me a large blanket with the plush lining as my birthday present. She told me what its dimensions are when I got it, but I can't remember now what they were. It's big, though. More than big enough for what I need. I was, and am, extremely grateful -- especially as it is ten degrees outside right now, and it is cold in the house.

As an aside, when I got home on Saturday, I had it packed in the suitcase. When I unpacked the suitcase and began putting away everything in it (including the coffee), I put the blanket on the couch for a moment as it was the first item on top of everything else. No more than thirty seconds afterward, this happened:

The folded blanket has now become the girls' favorite sleeping spot over the course of the past 36 hours or so, and if they're not in here with me or downstairs on the bed with me, one or both of the girls are sleeping on/with/next to said blanket -- sometimes together and cuddling on it. 

You can see there, to the left of Sadie's curled-up-in-a-sleepy-ball form, Maggie's ass.  Yeah, they love it. It's going to break my heart to take it downstairs away from them to put on the bed with the other blankets. I will, however; I want that warm plush on my skin when I sleep, and they've had free reign of the blanket for a day and a half now. I think that's enough for them to have enjoyed it; now it's Daddy's turn.

Ahem. Anyway.

It was a good night. I did, of course, thank the parents profusely for the beautiful and useful blanket, and I love the pattern on it. I mentioned that, as always, their kindness and generosity overwhelms me -- and I do truly mean that when I say it. I don't want it to come off as trite or phony; these people, all of them, have made me a part of their family. I am genuinely wanted there when I'm there, and I am loved and appreciated as a person and as a future husband/son/brother/uncle/etc. These people mean as much to me as my own family because they are now part of my own family. I cannot tell you how important that is to me, and yes, how much it does indeed overwhelm me.

In the overnight hours, after everyone went to bed, I had to stay up -- one of my promised tasks (and really, the last Christmas present I could give Daisy) was to reformat and reinstall a new OS on Daisy's laptop. She had Windows 7 on it, but even with as much RAM as her computer has (as much as my desktop here), it would constantly hang/freeze/mess up/run very slowly, and whether it had any viruses or not -- I don't know if it did -- there was little else that could be done but wipe it and start anew. She had been having problems with it for months, and those problems slowly got so bad that the computer had been rendered basically unusable. I begged her, long ago, to let me put Linux on it so that she wouldn't have to worry about all of that stuff anymore. As you may know, I've been running several different versions of  Linux on all of my machines since 2005 or 2006 -- my desktop has Ubuntu 12.04 LTS/GNU, while my laptops have Linux Mint 13 MATE and Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon, respectively. I'm well-versed in Linux and could probably get paid to work for the Linux Foundation (or whatever) if I wanted to. When her computer became so unstable that it was became pretty much unusable, she finally relented and told me that I could put Linux on it when I was up there over Christmas.

In order to be able to do this, however, I told her that it was very important that she saved and backed up everything she needed off that machine, putting it on discs or on removable flash media, whatever she had to do, because once I wiped her HD, it was gone forever. I stressed the "gone forever" part, because that is indeed important. Daisy is well-versed in computer stuff, what with most of her family doing work somehow related to computer/IT fields, if even in a tangential fashion sometimes. She's had her laptop wiped before by Dad, but I told her this time that it would be different than anything else she's had done -- it was a complete and total wipe of her HD with a completely different, unfamiliar-ish operating system being installed on it. Because of that, anything she needed to keep, she needed to back up. And she needed to make sure she got everything she needed. Most of this stuff consisted of iTunes music she'd bought over the years, thousands of pictures from family trips and the like, and her important documents -- resumes, paperwork, etc.

The backup took forever. Part of it was because said computer kept trying to freeze up or give errors; the other part of it was because Dad had provided her with a portable HD to put her stuff on temporarily, and while it would take all of her pictures, for some reason the computer didn't want to transfer the music or documents to it. She got what she could on there and utilized other means to save her documents and music, but that process itself took many hours. It was probably 1AM before I even sat down with her machine to work on it...and then the first OS I tried to load on it (Ubuntu 11.04, the last one with the GNOME interface included instead of that "Unity" bullshit they use now) half-installed before it failed. Over and over and over again. Luckily, I had a backup OS -- Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon -- which I used and successfully installed over the course of an hour or so. By the time I was done, I had updated her now lightning-fast computer with the newest software and had installed Chrome, Skype, and a few other useful programs she'd need (such as some browser add-ons and AdBlock Plus) to reduce the clutter of everything. When I finished, tired and bleary-eyed, I showed her the basics of how to use it -- Linux Mint operates a lot like old-school Windows systems -- and how to access her files and programs, and we went to bed.

It was good that we'd stayed up late -- not only did we have a long day ahead of us on Friday, but we had to drive back home that night, as she had to be able to sleep quickly, turn around, and be back in Omaha by Saturday evening so she could return to work for the weekend.

What happened on Friday, you may ask? Well, you'll find out in the next post, which will (finally) wrap up this series of recaps.

The 2013 Christmas Recap, Part II

Christmas morning in a house of eight people is all at once delightful, crazy, and hectic, and I loved every minute of it. As you know, I don't really get the "Christmas morning" experience very often anymore, and haven't really been able to get it since I've been living on my own (with very few exceptions). Over the years I've become cynical enough and battle-hardened by the world to view Christmas as simply for the kids more than anything else. Yes, of course, there's the religious aspect to it, but as I'm not religious, that never even factored in on my radar when it came to the holidays. Instead, I focused on the family aspect of it, and (if at all possible) I always tried to spend the holidays with family. This hasn't always been possible, of course, as you know, but for the past two years I've been able to do it with moderate, if not complete, success.

So, that being said, let's pick up where I left off before.

A little before 8AM or so on Christmas morning, everyone came downstairs and Christmas officially began. Shortly beforehand, Daisy asked me "Did you look in the living room?" When I replied that I hadn't aside from a cursory glance at the tree, she told me to close my eyes and went to hide something. Okay, whatever works,  I thought. Far be it from me to ruin any surprises. All I'd been doing up to that point was drinking coffee and dicking around on my computer, which really isn't much different than any other morning when I wake up. I figured I'd see everything, including all of the gifts and stockings (which were laid out on the couches and chairs one by one) when we opened gifts, and I hadn't thought much of anything else. Again, the whole Christmas is really for the kids mentality of everything.

After everyone was up and mobile (I can't remember whether we had breakfast first or not), we all went into the living room where we distributed and opened up gifts, much to the delight of Daisy's five-year-old nephew. It was really cute, and more than anything else, fun.

Now that everything's passed, here's the rundown of what I got Daisy -- since I can finally share it here:

• A pair of knee socks with the word VEGAN written up the sides of them
• A "What Does the Fox Say?" t-shirt (this one, specifically)
• A case of Bob's Red Mill Vegan Vegetable Soup (four big packs of it, in a box)
• A new pair of earbuds, since she seems to lose hers on a frequent basis and/or doesn't always have a pair available when she needs them at work; the ones I got her had a peacock paint scheme
• The book What Would Wonder Woman Do? which I found amusing and cute
• Three large tubes of apple cinnamon incense
• An "ocean wave projector" for her room, as it looked neat and she'd been wanting a star projector or something similar for a long time (she loved it, and it works really well)
• A tie-dye shirt in brown and white, as it matched both the socks and her car, and she loves earth tones
• Two big bags of chocolate-chip/peanut butter waffles, which I finally gave her today to take back home with her as I'd forgotten to do so before we left for Omaha
• A new mix CD for the car

There's probably one or two other little things I'm forgetting, of course, but that's the vast majority of it. She loved it all; each one of the gifts meant something; I wanted her to be able to enjoy all of them because it wasn't me just randomly picking out shit to get for her, but me carefully thinking about -- and having reasoning behind -- every one of them. She loves my waffles, so I made special ones for her. She loves the mix CDs I make, so I made her another one. She loves my tie-dye, so I made her one of those as well. She loves Wonder Woman, so that's why I got the book. The soup we'd gotten from Big Lots when I was there over Thanksgiving, and it was great, so I got her a case of it. Etc. Even though it wasn't a lot (as I am poor) I put a lot of careful planning into what I chose, as I thought that would make everything that much more meaningful.

Daisy, once again, went way overboard on stuff for me (as she usually does), but over the time we've been together I have learned not to question her; she is decently watchful of her finances, and knows what she can afford and what she can't. Here's a short list of stuff she got for me herself, though I am probably forgetting a bit of it:

• A framed Marvel Comics covers poster
• A rolled up in-a-tube Star Trek poster
• A stocking filled with vegan jerky, macaroons, coconut dates, a Marvel t-shirt, and some other little goodies of that ilk, including a cup of vegan chicken ramen
• A black, faux-fur-lined zip-up hoodie (because she was finally able to find one which had lining all the way up and down the arms, which is what I wanted; it's near-impossible to find that). She said it's a women's hoodie, but I don't care.
• Two massive, several-pound bags of nuts -- one almonds, one pistachios (already shelled, of course)
• A dress shirt (which I'd already received, early, and had worn to the Christmas Eve church service)
• A Flash costume hoodie to replace the one I had that had worn out, badly, and the zipper had broken on the old one ages ago.

I later conferred with Daisy while typing up this list to be sure that I hadn't forgotten anything major (or at all, lest I seem ungrateful by its omission). This is pretty much everything.

Mind you, the Flash hoodie itself probably cost Daisy the same amount as almost everything I got her listed above; those things are not cheap. I tried not to think about it. Daisy loves me; whatever she spent on me is unimportant if she can afford it, and she doesn't get anything she can't afford.

From the rest of the family, we got a lot of assorted and very useful stuff as well, stuff geared toward starting our household after the wedding, for the most part -- her oldest sister got us a Pyrex measuring cup I'd wanted for us, for example, and a large set of glass mixing/baking bowls that we definitely needed. Her other sister got us an Alaskan chopping knife. The parents gave us both cards with checks in them, along with a really nice cookie sheet and frying pan. There was a lot of wonderful stuff like that, and I let Daisy keep most of it up there and put it in storage for when we get married and combine our stuff -- after all, I don't want to risk breaking or dirtying a lot of it beforehand, and it's not like I'll have time to be cooking a lot or baking while I'm teaching during the spring semester before the wedding.

There was one very special gift from Mama that I would be remiss if I didn't mention, though -- she made both of us matching fleece sweatshirts in a Navajo pattern. They're slightly different to tell them apart (Daisy's has her initials embroidered into the lower front, and the pattern is oriented differently above the chest), but they're both awesome, and really warm:

 

Oh yeah. Aren't we stylish?

We realized long ago that we're going to be that couple that goes out in matching outfits to look cute together. I used to look down on people like that, to be honest with you. Now I can't say anything. Not that I would anyway, because I love the shirts and they're incredibly comfortable and really warm. Is it necessarily my normal style? No,  but I don't care. It's awesome and I love it. I told Daisy I can't wait to teach my classes in mine this coming semester. And I will, too.

As for what we got everyone else, I let Daisy handle most of that. She got teddy bears for all of the kids (six of them in total), got a nail-stamping kit for Mama, and some assorted stuff for Dad and everyone else. I didn't keep track of, or even remember a lot of what she'd gotten for everyone, as she had it coordinated and catalogued, and she wrapped 95% of it herself in the sewing room the night before. I made two tie-dyes for the parents -- both of them the same patterns and colors (red/orange/yellows) and told them they could pick whichever one they wanted, since they were the same and were both the same size. By the end of the evening, Dad had already marked the one he wanted as his with a Sharpie in the collar area. Mama will more than likely alter hers, as she does with most of her shirts, so that the collar is wider and lower -- she doesn't like anything around her neck and collarbone if she can avoid it. Neither does Daisy -- I made the joke to Daisy that for her birthday or anniversary I was going to get her a box full of turtlenecks to see how she reacted. The joke didn't go over well.

I like turtlenecks because they're warm and I can wear them under things. But that's just me.

The rest of the day went quite lazily and slowly, which I think is what everyone -- including myself and Daisy -- needed. We had a wonderful Christmas dinner which all of us helped to prepare, involving turkey, stuffing, vegetables, Daisy's famous mashed potatoes (which, since I adore them, I brought all the rest of them home), and fresh baked rolls. That night, because he'd been wanting me to for the entire time I'd been there up to that point, all of us watched Disney/Pixar's Planes with the five-year-old nephew. I fell asleep through a good chunk of it, but what I saw of it, I thought was really good. You know, for a kids' movie, anyway. I'll probably have to watch it over and over with said nephew and/or my own kids at some point anyhow, so it's not like I missed much and/or anything I won't see again eventually.

Once everyone went to bed, I sat up for a bit with the brother-in-law and watched some Blackadder with him on Netflix before taking a shower and going to bed myself sometime later. I don't remember when, however; I just knew that Daisy and I had plans to go out the next day to get some post-Christmas sale stuff from Gordman's and a few other places, as that tends to be our new tradition after holidays. Holidays are over? Time to go out and get deals on everything we can that's holiday-related, like coffee and gift sets and the like. This time around, I had two $50 Visa gift cards from my parents to use, which was basically free money as it's not like I can use it to pay my bills or rent or anything like that.

What did I get? Did I use the gift cards? And how did my "birthday" celebration go? Well, I'll cover that in the next part in this series...

The 2013 Christmas Recap, Part I

Well. That was really fun.

First off -- as I always do in these posts -- I will say that I am back home in Kansas, safe and sound. I pulled Daisy's car into the driveway this morning at a little after 7, both of us exhausted and sleepy from not only a long drive down here in the overnight hours, but a long Christmas week in general during which both of us were running around constantly trying to get everything done, help the parents, and play with the kids (Daisy's sisters were in town; one sister has been there for a few weeks, and the other came in yesterday before we left). I put stuff away this morning, Daisy showered, and both of us went to bed -- where we slept until 2PM, got up, had "breakfast," and then she ventured back north to Omaha, as she goes back to work this evening.

Whew. It was indeed a long trip; it felt much longer than it was, especially last night's drive. By the time I was nearing Newton this morning I was desperately just wanting to get here, put gas in Daisy's car, and get us in the house so we could sleep. As I've mentioned before, regardless of whether we're coming or going, I drive 2/3 of the trip now since Daisy drives down here and back all by herself and because she's usually really tired. Daisy's car is fine to drive; I've said in the past that I've never driven a car that handles more smoothly and easily than Daisy's Hyundai, and over the course of the past year and a half now, I've gotten used to its nuances and quirks, as it's a hell of a lot different than driving the high-horsepower smokewagon that is my Monte Carlo. But, we made it safely -- the house is fine, the cats are fine, and everything was put away and stocked up in the fridge and cabinets (I'm also doing multiple loads of laundry from the trip now, as I write this). So let's get to it.

Daisy arrived here on Monday evening around 6 or so. This was expected (as I covered here in my last post); she'd not been feeling well that morning and had taken some DayQuil before she took a few hours' nap. I'd used the day beforehand to get everything I needed to do done before leaving town. Rent was paid, Discover card bill was paid, leftover pizza (and anything else that would go bad while I was gone) was frozen, cats were fed and were given new food/water/litter, and the house was locked up tight as a drum with my car in the garage.

As a sidenote, the box from my parents arrived on Monday evening; in it was the normal assortment of candies, coffees, and snacks, and two $50 Visa gift cards (which is pretty standard for my parents to do for me at Christmas), even though I told them I didn't need anything. It was still very nice of them. I took the gift cards with me to Omaha, but didn't end up using either one of them while I was there -- I figured if I needed to get anything, my completely-paid-off Discover card would suffice, as I know that works perfectly fine while I'm traveling. I unpacked what needed to be unpacked from the box (perishable stuff that would go bad if left out for four days) and left the rest of it in the spare room where the cats couldn't get to it while we were away.

Daisy and I left Newton a little after 8PM -- I let her rest, stretch her legs, and I finished up the last of my important stuff while she did. We got gas and headed north, stopping in Concordia and in York where we always do. It was a quiet drive -- Daisy was so tired that about 1/3 of the way through it, she fell asleep, as she needed it. I'm so used to making that long drive at this point that it didn't faze me. Much of the drive is autopilot more than anything else; set the cruise control and keep the car on a straight line, and it does everything itself. Adjust your speed to match the speed limits in different areas, and you're good. I especially like making that trip at night, as there's no traffic, very few (if any) cops on the road, and it's peaceful. There was a bit more traffic than usual as it was the night before Christmas Eve, but once you get past a certain point on the highway north and away from the cities and towns, it's all quiet, dark, and nothing but road and fields.

I do want to add here that in the interim between last weekend's snowstorm and the drive up there on Monday night, the road crews had cleaned off the highways remarkably well. There were still some patchy places of snowpack and ice that remained because it was so bitterly cold, and the streets in Newton (including my neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods) hadn't had anything done to them -- but neither of us had any trouble making the trip, and once we were out of the area where it had snowed, there was nothing on the ground or roads anywhere.

We stopped at the York Walmart, as we always do, getting there shortly before midnight. I got cigarettes (as I needed them) and some lip balm and L-Lysine, as I was beginning to feel a blister pop up on my lip, and paid for it with my Discover card as I'd planned. From that point (the 2/3-of-the-way-there point), she took over, having snoozed in the car beforehand to recoup some of her lost energy. I'd like to note that even when she's driving, I don't (and won't) sleep during the trip since we do it in the night. I know how quickly Daisy can fall asleep when she's tired, and it is literally within seconds. We'll be having a conversation one minute and the next she'll be snoring. It's not that I don't trust her to stay awake, because I do and because I know she can, but it always helps to have conversation and to keep said conversation going when we're both in the car and both tired.

We arrived in Omaha around 2AM, give or take. We put away our stuff, and I smoked two cigarettes in the freezing cold on the parents' back deck (which is where I smoke when I visit there; I even bring my own ashtray) before we went to bed.

I should mention again that Daisy's sister, her husband, and their two boys were in town for the holidays as well. Her oldest boy is five; the other is eight or nine months old and has just recently started crawling. They all stay in the spare room in the parents' house when they're there, which is about the same size as Daisy's bedroom (though remarkably less cluttered). That meant that aside from myself, there were at least seven other people occupying the house at all times when I was there.

So, when I woke up on Tuesday morning (Christmas Eve) at around, oh, 10 or so to find the house quiet, empty, and seemingly deserted by everyone but myself, it was -- needless to say -- somewhat surreal.

I went downstairs and looked around. Nobody was there. All of the cars were in the driveway and garage, coffee was fresh and hot in the pot, but nobody was around. Hm. It was as if I'd awakened in the Home Alone universe, and I was Kevin McAllister. I've been alone in Daisy's home before, of course -- over the summer when I was there, Daisy's parents were traveling to visit family, and Daisy had to work some nights -- so it's not like it was a new experience to me. It was just new in the sense that there were more people there over the holidays than there had been in the house at any given time during my visits, and now they'd seemingly vanished.

I could (slightly) hear people moving around upstairs, of course, though I didn't know where any of them were. The parents' house is large and well-insulated, meaning that noise doesn't travel or carry that much compared to my place, where I can hear someone down the street slamming their car door or yelling at their kid(s). I got a cup of coffee and settled down in the big round chair in the piano room, waiting for anyone upstairs to come down. Eventually, of course, they did -- they were all (or most of them, anyway) in mama's sewing room...where Daisy was making me a Marvel comics-themed Christmas stocking.

That evening, as planned, I joined the family for the Christmas Eve service at the local church. Those of you who know me well know that I always fear I shall burst into flames upon entering a church; I am, and have been, a hardened, science-and-reason atheist for the vast majority of my life, but this is something that meant a lot to Daisy and her family -- so even though I wasn't required to go or specifically asked to go, it was something I wanted to do just so that I could be part of the family bonding experience. Again, I love Daisy and her family. I wanted to take part in their traditions, especially the traditions that mean a lot to them even though they don't necessarily reflect my own religious views. I didn't even think about not going, though I was given an out if I chose not to. Family sticks together; family is extremely important. Out here, 1,000 miles from home, my cats and Daisy's family are all I have.

The service was really nice, though it was a lot shorter than I expected it to be -- maybe an hour at most. We went to the early one, though there were at least two more of them scheduled that day (I believe there was a 7PM service as well as a midnight service, though I could be mistaken).

Daisy and I had to go out and do some last-minute grocery shopping on Christmas Eve -- which, of course, is always a bad idea anyhow on the day before a holiday -- because her family has a sort of set tradition on the holidays, especially Christmas and New Year's: the night before the holiday at hand is sort of a "junk food" night, where our dinner consists of lots of goodies -- cheese and crackers, fruit and vegetables/dip, bread and fondue, pie(s), and lots of other stuff like that. This year we had the added bonus of some unique items, such as mama making baked feta and spinach rolls inside phyllo dough, jalapeno poppers, beef taquitos, etc. It was all very good; Daisy, of course, makes vegan versions of what she can and eats that stuff instead. I tend to eat half-and-half of both, especially since for some things (depending on what it is, of course) Daisy's versions are really, really good. Daisy's pies and desserts are always top-notch, and she made vegan phyllo-and-feta cups (with almonds acting as the "cheese") which were wonderful as well. This same sort of oh-so-delightful fare is offered up on New Year's Eve as well, as I was able to experience it last year. The only sad part of it was that Daisy's father wasn't feeling well and went to bed quite early, even before most of us got anything to eat.

I also got to finally meet Daisy's brother-in-law, who (aside from being a nerdy guy just like me) is going to be the one officiating our wedding in a few months. He's a pretty nice guy, though with everyone running around and with all of us taking care of everything we could, sit-down time with him to discuss nerdy things and/or really get to know one another pretty well was at a premium -- especially with both of the kids there needing constant attention. I was able to talk to him for a bit on Christmas night and more last night, but both times tended to be a bit fleeting. While I do adore everyone in Daisy's family, a lot of the social time with them tends to be overshadowed (or at times, overwhelmed) with or by the kids who will, in a few months, officially be my nieces and nephews. This time, with the new baby who requires constant care and monitoring lest he get into anything now that he's crawling about the house, and with the five-year-old who is a great kid, but is really hyper and rambunctious a lot of the time, there was even less time for that -- and lesser still once Daisy's other sister and her family arrived yesterday...but I'm getting ahead of myself.



Christmas Eve, overall, was really good, and the night ended peacefully. Daisy and I stayed up for a bit after everyone went to bed, but not too long as we knew that the five-year-old nephew would wake up bright and early, excited like crazy to open presents in the morning. I ended up going to bed before Daisy did, as she was in the sewing room for several hours after everyone went to bed so that she could finish wrapping Christmas presents and stuffing stockings for everyone. Because Dad was sick, Daisy wrapped his presents for mama for him, and she still had to wrap most of the stuff for me as well. Even though she was really tired, she did an admirable job. I took a shower and went to bed, and she joined me an hour or two later.

On Christmas morning, I woke up very early -- unnaturally early for me, to be honest with you. Usually I can't sleep on Christmas Eve, but this year I didn't have a problem. I just woke up really early. I put on my watch in the dark (Daisy refuses to have a clock in her room) and hit the light button. It was barely after 6AM, but I was wide awake. Daisy's bed also makes my back ache like crazy, so when my back wakes me up, the only thing that will make it feel better is getting up and moving about. Still, I was awake, and getting dressed in my pajama pants and a Ramones t-shirt, I went downstairs very quietly. I knew it wouldn't be long before everyone else got up and came downstairs anyhow, and Christmas morning would begin.

I didn't even bother going to the living room, though glancing into it I could see that Daisy had brought all of the wrapped gifts downstairs and had placed them under the tree before she came to bed, so that the "Santa" mythology would remain intact for the kid. I didn't pay attention to anything else, though I found that I was not the first one who had been awake -- magically, there was coffee ready to be made in the coffee pot, a new loaf of bread was stirring and baking in the bread machine, and there were two (cold) sticks of butter left on the counter to warm up and soften. This meant mama had been downstairs at some point shortly before me, and I'd assumed she'd gone back to bed. I made the coffee and turned on my laptop, and sent my parents a "Merry Christmas" email while I checked Facebook and the like.

Around 7:10 or so, after drinking a few cups of coffee and making a few trips outside to smoke in the cold on the porch, Daisy came downstairs in her nightgown, bleary-eyed, with her hair up, to find me sitting at the table and relaxing with a hot cup of coffee ready to take on the world.

"How long have you been awake?" she asked.

"Eh, about an hour or so. Made coffee, did computer stuff, went out to smoke, etc. Mom was up before me, apparently; the coffee was set and the butter was on the counter when I came down."

About half an hour later, as Daisy woke up a bit more and it began to get lighter outside, everyone began coming downstairs one-by-one, and we had breakfast. It was at that time that Christmas officially began.

How did it go? What did everyone (including myself) get? Well, that's what I'll cover in Part II of this series.

Into the Tundra

It is 16 degrees outside right now. Last night, when I went to bed, it had dropped to 5.

I am not a fan of the cold, as you know. I'm not a fan of it any more than I'm a fan of 110-degree summer days. The cold creates the same number of problems, if not more, for me personally. In the summer I can't stay cool; in the winter, no matter what I do, I can't stay warm. At least not here in my home. When the temperature drops to a certain point, even the electric blanket downstairs won't keep me totally warm.

It is dark and gray outside today, even at noon. It's supposed to snow off and on today, but nothing significant or accumulating. Probably just enough to re-slicken the roads a bit for Daisy's trip from, and our return trip to, Omaha.

Daisy is sick, or at least she thinks she's getting sick (she blames it on allergies more than anything else). I reminded her last night that she's been in the house with not only her parents, sister, and sister's husband, but their two boys for the past week or so. Obviously, that many germs swirling around will probably batter down one's immune system over the course of enough time. She came home from work this morning, drank some DayQuil and took a two-hour nap, and is now getting ready to leave the house to come down here.

This is fine, as I told her last night that I can't leave today anyway until the mail has come in and gone out; I am still waiting on the box from my parents, which should arrive today as my mother paid for it to be delivered on Saturday, and I want to make sure my rent check and Discover bill go out in the mail today while I'm here and can verify that yes, they were mailed. The mail, depending on how shitty the roads are in my neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods, could get here anytime between now and close to 6PM. So, really, who knows. Regardless, Daisy won't get here until after that anyhow, even if she leaves right this second. I doubt we'll be on the road again to go back north until 8-9PM, roughly.

I'm fine with that, really; I much prefer making that trip at night anyhow, as you know, especially when I'm driving.

After highs in the 60s last week (and it apparently reached the 70s back home in some places) this week it's going to be December-ish here in the midwest; this is pretty normal weather for Kansas in the winter -- snow and cold. Daisy had me check the roads for her earlier -- whether they were open or closed, I mean, and the road conditions for the trip. All roads are open, and highway cameras show most of them to be mostly or completely clear. I told her to be extra careful, as no matter how well they're treated, there will still be slick areas of black ice and/or snow/icy slush-covered areas on the routes we take back and forth. It's cold enough to where most road treatment probably only works up to a point.

Last night, as I'd run myself out of most foods in the house about 36 hours earlier than expected, I took a nap and then ordered pizza when I got up. I can afford pizza; it's not a massive purchase. I did this for two reasons -- the first was so that (duh) I could eat something last night that I didn't have to cook and was different than the usual fare. The second was so that I could freeze whatever was left and thaw it upon my return home at the end of the week, therefore having food here ready to go without needing to go to the grocery store immediately upon my arrival home. Yes, I will more than likely be asked to (and will) take home some leftovers from Christmas dinner with the family, but pizza is a good stop-gap measure for me. When I use coupon codes to make it much more inexpensive than usual, it's even better.

Now, mind you, I hated the fact that my delivery driver had to drive through the snow and ice to bring my pizza to me -- through neighborhood streets that have not been shoveled, treated, or plowed -- and the little car my delivery guy drove really didn't look like it went well in the snow. I, therefore, tipped him 50% on the order. It was a $20 order, and I tipped him $10, making it a round, even $30. Because I felt like a dick. But I also wasn't going to take out the Monte Carlo in this cold/snow to go to Walmart and back for one meal's worth of food, only to have to stick her back in the garage as soon as I returned home. It was a judgment call.

I am a relatively nice guy sometimes, I suppose. I try to be, at least, when I inconvenience others.

Anyway.

I have a fair amount to do before Daisy gets here, as always; I do have to ready the cats' food/water/litter and I need to clean the kitchen and freeze the pizza, as well as get a shower and dress ever-so-warmly afterwards so that I don't freeze my bits off. Most other things are taken care of. All of the gifts are wrapped. All of the bills I have are paid. Everything's packed up and ready to be hauled to Omaha, with the exception of a few of my electronics (DS, mp3 player, laptop, etc) that I may or may not have time to use or work with while I'm there. And, finally, the sun is poking through the clouds a bit right now. It won't melt anything, since it's still way below freezing outside, but at least it's a bit of a change.

The neighbors next door apparently got a new recliner for Christmas -- I watched the furniture store people deliver it this afternoon. Must be nice. I have no doubt that one of the gifts Daisy must have gotten me for Christmas is a new computer chair, as she knows it's the one thing I need right now that's affordable for most people, but not for me. While I have no doubt in this, I really hope she didn't get me a new chair -- I have to be able to test it, approve it, know that it's going to hold my weight, etc. I spend many, many hours every day, week, month, etc in my computer chair. I need to know that my ass isn't going to ache, literally, from sitting in it for long periods. Not to mention the fact that almost all of the chairs I looked at were $200+. Yeah. For a computer chair. I don't get it either. And, additionally, almost all of them were leather, which the cats would destroy immediately or I would stick to in summer. Not to mention that Daisy is, y'know, vegan, so it's not like a leather chair is something she'd get me anyhow.

In other news, I tried to apply for the health insurance thing this morning, the Healthcare.gov Obamacare website, since today is the last day you can apply if you want coverage starting on January 1. Well, the site is down. Okay, it's not down, per se, but there's a very long "queue" to be able to apply for anything because today's the last day, and everyone is stuck waiting for hours. I don't have time for that. On the plus side, I make so little money that 80% of the plans I saw basically gave me free healthcare. Not that it matters, really, but I haven't been to the doctor for anything in...oh, four years? Something like that. When I get sick, I deal with it myself. I don't really care about the arbitrary deadline of January 1st coverage, either. It doesn't concern me. Believe me, I have a lot of more important stuff to worry about and deal with in my own time. Obamacare is the least of my concerns right now.

Daisy told me she was leaving about an hour ago. If she stays on schedule she'll get here around 6PM or so. This means I should probably begin to take care of most of my household tasks if we plan to turn around and leave again as soon as she gets here and everything's loaded into the car.

Fare thee well, folks. Happy Festivus, merry Christmas, and all that jazz. You shall hear from me again upon my return to Kansas.

A Festivus for the Rest of Us

My birthday came and went just fine, I suppose. I didn't spend the day any differently than any other day. I had a decent (but not really large) number of people tell me happy birthday on Facebook -- much lower than other years in recent memory, really -- and my mother sent me an email telling me happy birthday and that she loves and misses me, which is nice.

I didn't get any cards or anything like that; all I got in the mail was my Discover card bill and the paperwork that verified my loans' forbearance, which I was expecting anyhow.

I did, however, get paid for the last time for the fall semester on Friday, so today's  task is to write out the checks for the rent and for that Discover card bill, and get them in the mail tomorrow so that I no longer have to worry about those things, at least.

Everything I had or have has been paid at this point except for those things; the cable bill was paid earlier this week, and a few days ago I renewed my car insurance with my Citi card. I've got about another month or so before any of my other credit card bills are due, and I don't know if the electric bill will come before Christmas or not. Even if it does, it won't be due until right before I return to teaching in the spring, so I have some time to kill there.

My credit score is 738, though, which is fucking amazing for a guy who basically has no money. Even Daisy thought that was crazily good. How do I know this? Because my Discover card bill says it right on it, and apparently they keep track of it with every statement. That's pretty neat, I think.

So yeah. My birthday was quiet. My friend April gave me a $50 Amazon gift card for my birthday/Christmas -- which is, as always, totally unnecessary but incredibly appreciated, and I thanked her for it -- and Daisy had a special gift delivery set up for me of a bag of Tim Horton's coffee and the newest Bathroom Reader book; those things were delivered this evening via UPS. April's gift card, though I did redeem and add it to my Amazon account, will not be used until well after Christmas, as even if I'd ordered something today I wouldn't get it until after I returned home from Omaha anyway. As for the box my mother sent, it has not yet arrived -- I am guessing  the weather snarled its delivery yesterday (she said it had an expected arrival date of "by Saturday"). It didn't arrive, though Daisy's last Christmas present did.

The storm itself...well...

Yesterday morning when I got up, it wasn't doing anything at all. It was just cold and windy. None of the forecasts were still really in-sync yet at that time;  one channel said 1-5 inches total. Another said 10+. The Weather Channel was shooting for the 5-7 inch range. So, really, I didn't know what to expect. I could've gotten anywhere between an inch and close to a foot of snow. Great forecasting, weatherpeople. Way to be vague.

"I'll check the weather before I leave," Daisy told me, in reference to tomorrow's drive down here. She didn't seem too concerned with the storm. She didn't really have a reason to be, honestly. By the way it tracked, Omaha didn't get anything -- maybe a dusting to an inch (I haven't talked to her this morning, so I don't know for sure).

By about 1PM or so, it was beginning to sleet. By 2-3PM, it was all ice. Hard, thick ice balls, the kind that looks like microscopic hail and turns everything white and slick, but isn't snow. This was the scene yesterday afternoon in my driveway and yard, complete with Pete looking out the window as well:

That white coating is all ice. Every bit of it.

By around 5PM, as it started getting dark, the ice was so thick and there was so much accumulation of it that it looked and felt like snow; when I went down to get the mail, I had to walk through the thin strip of grass next to my retaining wall (visible where Pete's ear is in the picture) to be able to get the mail without breaking an ankle.

When it got dark, the snow came. And boy, did it come.

I wish I could've gotten a good picture of the snow at night, but my camera doesn't really take good pictures in the dark (or at all). There were times we were in white-out conditions, with visibility of about 50 yards (or less). I couldn't see the next street over, and that's about 50 yards from my driveway, give or take. Yes, I have seen it snow harder in the past, but this was some really impressive snow.

This was the scene this morning when I woke up, at about 10:

 

My estimation, based on coverage on cars and a rough knowledge of how tall stationary outdoor objects are, is that Newton got 7-8 inches or so in the span of, oh, 9-10 hours, roughly (it stopped snowing before I went to bed last night). I haven't been outside, obviously, to verify the actual amount. I do know that last night in the evening, all of the forecasters updated their snowfall totals to amounts that were more reflective of what we were seeing on the ground, and I was updated to fall into the 8-10+ range as Newton was just far enough north and west to get the larger amounts.

Wichita, by the way, had an "official" snowfall total of 3.1 inches. That's basically a dusting compared to here and cities like Salina and Abilene, north of me, who got over a foot. Other areas, north, west, and southwest of me got 15 inches or so.

Again, Omaha and most everywhere else north of the Kansas state line? A dusting, maybe an inch at most; the storm was moving southwest to northeast. It completely bypassed them. Daisy won't see snow until almost halfway down here tomorrow on her drive, and when she does it will be like a night and day difference very quickly.

Crews have been out treating the roads, of course, but unless my neighbor on the farm next door gets out his tractor, nobody's going to plow out my street or any of the other residential streets around here, and it's not like the snow is going to melt anytime soon. It's not supposed to get above freezing for another several days -- more than likely not until I get home from Omaha -- and tomorrow it's supposed to be the coldest day in recent memory, with highs only in the single digits and lows below zero. I am not looking forward to it. By tomorrow all of the main roads and interstates should be cleared, yes, but that doesn't mean the drive is going to be a fun one. It will probably take longer than usual -- especially because it's now the holidays and everyone will be traveling.

I don't know what the plan is for tomorrow, really; Daisy has told me she's planning to come down here straight from work, and if she does she'd get here around 1PM, give or take. I plan to let her nap for several hours, if necessary, before we turn around and make the drive back up to Omaha. I will be driving the first two legs of the drive back, and she'll drive the third. When that will happen, though, remains to be seen -- I have to be here at the house at least until the mail arrives, as the aforementioned box from my parents should show up tomorrow, and I want to make sure my Discover card bill and my rent check go out in the mail smoothly before I leave town for a few days. Plus, I have to ready the house for the cats and make sure they have enough food, water, and litter (which they will) while I'm gone.

Tomorrow, amusingly enough, is Festivus -- I can't wait for the feats of strength and the airing of grievances.

The plan is to be in Omaha between tomorrow night and the night of the 27th, when we'll go see a play with the entire family (the 27th is also Daisy's sister's birthday) and then return home in the overnight hours that night, since Daisy goes back to work on the night of the 28th. Again, it's a fairly short trip, but given the holidays, the weather, and the comings-and-goings of family while I'll be there, being there for a few days is better than no days. Daisy's sister, her two sons, and her husband are already there and have been there for days. Her other sister and her family will come in on the 26th or 27th, I think. I don't know exactly how the family's holiday schedule will go, but I do know at the very least there will be a full house at all times over the holidays -- between eight and fourteen people, including myself, all occupying the same space, with six of those being children under 8 and two of those children being infants. Yes, the house is big enough for everyone with no issues, but that's a lot of folks who may and probably will be there all at once for a good chunk of the holidays. I do know that Daisy's younger sister and her family won't be there on Christmas, as they are going to the husband's side of the family's place (I think) before coming to Omaha.

As for anything else I have to do before the trip? Eh, there's not a whole lot. My bag is already packed. All of the Christmas presents are wrapped and are in a box, ready to be stuck into the backseat of Daisy's car. All I have to do is mail my bills (which are ready to go), and ready the house for the cats and close it up, which is already half-done since my car has been locked in the garage for a week now. Nothing major, really. While I'm not a fan of the cold, I will have to (unfortunately) turn down the furnace to about 50 or so before I leave the house, otherwise it will run nonstop while I'm gone and will jack up my already expectedly high electric bill for no real reason. The cats have fur coats; they don't need the heat running like crazy like I do, and they always stay warm enough. I don't care if I can see my breath in the house when I get home as long as the pipes don't freeze while I'm away.

Daisy has told me that I have "other" birthday presents, despite the fact that Christmas is three days away and my birthday was two days ago -- she just wanted to get the coffee and book to me on my birthday. I've told her she doesn't have to do anything for me, and she knows that already without me telling her, but well, it's Daisy, and she'll do anything she wants/can do for me even if I tell her not to. She's also been telling me stories about her older sister's husband (who, aside from being the man who will officiate our wedding, is also a big nerd like me) who has seen my Christmas gifts and is incredibly jealous of them, so apparently there's that as well. Again, we're supposed to be doing a "small Christmas" this year -- I have five or six gifts for her, total, and they're all really small, thoughtful, and inexpensive (I refuse to use the word "cheap"). I believe heavily in equivalent exchange; I don't want her spending hundreds of dollars on me for no reason, needlessly, when I have spent about $50 on her, total. It's excessive. It makes me feel guilty and sad because I'm poor.

"You never did guess correctly on how much I spent at Torrid," she told me the other night -- referencing a big shopping trip she had about a month or two ago.

"I'd rather not know, really. It would probably make me sick."

"...my point is that I spend a lot of money sometimes, because sometimes I can," she said. "I can afford to get you stuff for Christmas."

That's not really the point, I thought.

I don't need, or want, hundreds of dollars worth of stuff. I have no use for anything else that will simply clutter up my house or otherwise gather dust. My primary concerns are, and always have been, survival with minimal luxuries. I don't have time to enjoy a lot of the stuff I already have...which is why I have a stack of DVDs and Blu-rays that I've owned for years, yet haven't been able to sit down long enough to watch yet. I don't know if I'll ever have the time to watch all of those, even the ones I was so excited to see when they came out or when I originally purchased them. There's probably close to thirty of them at this point. Award-winning films from 2008 and 2009, even, stay shrink-wrapped in their plastic, gathering dust. Not kidding. I just don't have the time anymore. I generally have slightly more pressing concerns.

Oh well, though. It's not like I'm going to be a dick and be like "nooooo, I refuse" any gifts she gets me. I know she has her best intentions at heart and I also know that she puts a lot of thought into the things she gets me. Plus, I know how I'd feel if she refused any of my own gifts, so yeah. I also have a bit of leeway if necessary if I come across anything between now and Christmas morning -- my Discover card is now paid off and has a massive limit, with small minimum payments -- so if I see anything at the Walmart in York when we stop there, whether it be something for Daisy or something for someone/anyone else in the family, I'll be able to get it and not worry about it until after I'm paid again next month.

On that note, I'm going to end this post; I will more than likely update again tomorrow before I leave, but if I don't, I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas, and I'll catch you on the proverbial flip side after I return home.

Birthday Thirty-one

A lot has happened in the past week or so.

Until recently, I was not exactly feeling myself. Mentally, I mean. At the end of every semester, it seems, I drop into a funk, where nothing seems good enough or entertaining enough, and when everything starts to lose its luster and/or bores me. Everybody leaves town, I lose contact with a large amount of friends and colleagues, and I sort of retreat into myself. Nobody contacts me, I don't contact anyone else, and I hole up in the house, listless, because all of the responsibilities I previously had to deal with during the semester (such as grading papers, making lesson plans, and taking care of other professor-oriented work) simply disappears. It stops, finally, after weeks and months on end of waiting for it to stop, waiting to get a bit of breathing space.

When it stops so suddenly, mentally, psychologically, and physiologically I don't know how to deal with it. I suddenly have this abundance of free time that feels like time I should be spending doing something constructive or something beneficial to myself or my students, except there's nothing to do. So, in response, I clean my house. I do the dishes, take out the trash, load and empty the dishwasher, vacuum, and do the laundry. I go grocery shopping for what I need. I shower and sleep on a regular basis at set intervals, not just when I have the time to do so. I cook and eat real meals, not just a sandwich on the way to bed so I can put something on my stomach. I brush the cats to remove all of their excess shed hair, cooing at them the whole time so that they're not scared of the brushing or combing they're receiving. I catch up with the news. This time around, even, I spent time wrapping Christmas presents for Daisy and her parents, and writing out/mailing out Christmas cards to friends and family.

Still, there comes a point (usually within the first three days or so of having all the free time in the world) that everything is done that can possibly be done. I play catch-up with all of the stuff around the house that I've been neglecting all semester long, but once I'm finished with it, I'm finished with it. When I have enough leftover cooked food and plenty more in the fridge and pantry, when the floors have been vacuumed and the laundry and dishes washed and put away, and the cats have shiny, shed-hair-free coats, even those things stop -- and I am then left with true nothingness, a vast expanse of time with nothing to do to keep me occupied, entertained, or even satisfied in life. After a day or two, my podcasts become boring. Another day or two after that, it's no longer fun to spend hours on Facebook or Twitter, or to play any of my video games (even though, during the semester, I have no time at all to play any of them). Slowly, I become bitter and jaded at the world, and being stuck at home doesn't really help much with that, as if I had somewhere to go, something to do, or money to do something with, I wouldn't feel that way.  The reality, however, is that I am incredibly poor, 90% of my friends and colleagues have left town for the holidays (and the other 10% or so have plans between now and New Year's almost every single day), and as I'm not flying home for Christmas this year, it's not like I can look forward to getting out of Kansas to see friends and family back east.

When all of these things coalesce, I become a pretty dark person. I don't like who I become, but I can't do much to change it. That's when the funk sets in -- or, more appropriately, it's a very quick plunge into deep depression.

It's not a secret that I've battled with depression my entire life; for a brief time, in college, I was on medication for it (Lexapro, which I so lovingly referred to as "apathy pills"). I tend to slip into it pretty deeply for a few weeks every year before I can finally pull myself out of it again. I'm not entirely sure, of course, that depression should be classified as a "mental illness," at least not with me, anyway. I know the causes of my depression and why it strikes/when it strikes. For me, it's equal parts being very poor and worrying about how I'm going to pay my bills, and suddenly having all structure that kept me busy and occupied on a daily basis just disappearing. I know this because when I've had money and when I've been able to keep occupied doing things I love to do, I've never been happier in my life. Those two things are what make my life...well, my life.

So I've been feeling like this for most of the last week or so, which has basically been since I finished the semester and came home for the winter break. To try to occupy myself and get myself thinking about other things, I've watched the first three seasons of Breaking Bad, as mentioned before, in the span of about a week and a half. For those of you who haven't seen it, Breaking Bad isn't exactly the most uplifting and/or happy-go-lucky television series. Some (read: many) of its episodes are like a metaphorical punch to the gut -- which indeed does make it one of the best series to air on American television in many, many years, but doesn't necessarily make one who's already depressed want to jump up and take on the world. So, in hindsight, that was probably a bad idea.

I eventually came to the conclusion that I may have problems, but I don't have Walter White-level problems. And this made me feel a bit better about my life. Since Monday or so, I've slowly been feeling better, to the point where now I'm almost completely normal. And that feels good.

Which is good, because I turn 31 today.

Look, I'm not a big fan of birthdays. They used to be fun as a kid. In saying that I mean that I used to enjoy them a lot more than I enjoy them now. Because of this, right now I'm doing nothing but sitting here at my desk, at 12:43 AM, with Pete sitting across my shoulders.

Don't believe me?

Yes, I realize that isn't the most flattering photo of me ever taken, but it makes my point.

Last year, when I turned 30, Daisy was here. She brought down a cake that she'd made, and we had our early "birthday/Christmas dinner" involving the god-awful beast known as Tofurky, something which we swore to never, ever ingest again. She left that afternoon, I went to bed early, and got up really really early (like, 1AM) in order to catch my flight home to West Virginia the next morning.

Obviously, on some levels my life was quite a bit different then than it is now. It's also still evolving and changing. As my birthday posts here in my blog are sort of a "State of the Union" sort of thing, it's important to note the differences and similarities.

For one, last year I was still a grad student, I wasn't yet engaged to Daisy, and I had a hell of a lot more money in my bank account than I have now. Now, of course, I have a fiancee, a second degree, and I am now an actual professor, but most other things remain the same. I still live in the same house. I still drive the same car. I still have the cats (which should go without saying after the picture above). I still fit into the same clothing -- some of it better than I did before, which is always a plus. I don't have any major health issues. I mean, in the big picture only a few things have changed. I have a few more gray hairs here and there on occasion (don't worry, I pluck them out when I see them, and they're usually in my beard). My hairline is receding a bit more.  Sometimes my knees and ankles ache. I'm far from being an old man, but I notice things like this a lot more as I get older.

Age 30 was a big turning point for me in many ways, and over the year that I was 30, it seems like I "grew up" in many ways that I hadn't before. I mean, I got engaged. I became a professor. I stopped wearing comic book t-shirts every day (though this was really only because I personally felt a responsibility to look "more respectable" as an actual professor). I came to terms with my student loan debt and my finances more than I have at probably any other time of my life. I began thinking about and planning for my future with set goals in mind much, much more than before, when I was just sort of skipping through life and trying to survive day-to-day. That's kind of important when, y'know, my wedding is coming up in several months.

However, in many ways, I still act like a swingin' bachelor in his early twenties. I'll go two or three days without showering sometimes. I'll grow out my beard for many months at a time because fuck it, who do I have to impress? I let my hair grow really long and unruly. I will occasionally have a beer and some Doritos for breakfast. When I can, I'll sleep ten hours at a time before downing a pot of coffee poured cup-by-cup into a Batman mug and smoking through most of a pack of cigarettes while playing a video game. I drive a beat-up car with faded paint and literally hundreds of thousands of miles on it, but it goes fast and has a loud stereo. I'll spend hours with friends quoting Star Wars or discussing the merits of Chris Claremont's X-Men run. That -- all of that -- is just who I am, and regardless of age, I doubt much of this will change even after I'm married to Daisy.

I'll be captured in pictures like these:

As well as pictures like these:

And all of them represent me equally as a person, as a man of my age.



That's me and Daisy, by the way, in case you couldn't figure that out.

It's all about perspective, really.

Am I a different person than I was a year ago? Yes, I am. In many ways. Do I necessarily feel different, or feel older? No. I'm just me.

Daisy was the first person to wish me happy birthday, and she sang me the song while on Skype tonight.

"When you're 35, I'll still be in my twenties," she said.

"I know, and I'll be able to say I'm 35 and married to a twenty-something. Giggity."

 Daisy is a little less than six years younger than me. It's about the same age difference between her own parents, actually. Or at least pretty close, anyhow.

Nobody has asked me if I'm doing anything for my birthday, which is good, 'cause I'm not. I took a nap in the evening last night, and my only plans are to shower, finish off the third season of Breaking Bad, and watch for the packages I have coming in the mail -- Jane has more than likely already sent out her Christmas cookies, my mother said (despite my request for her not to do so) she sent me a box which will arrive today or tomorrow, and I still have one of Daisy's Christmas presents on its way to me in the mail...very slowly on its way, apparently, as all of her other stuff arrived two weeks ago and has already been wrapped.

So no, I'm not doing anything for my birthday. Nobody's throwing me a party, nobody's taking me out for drinks, nobody's giving me loads of presents -- not that I would want any of that stuff anyhow. Daisy asked me a while back if I wanted her to make me a cake or anything like that, and asked me what sort of food I wanted her parents to make when we had my "birthday party" at the house in Omaha the day after Christmas. I originally told her that neither she nor her parents had to do anything special for me, of course -- again, it's just me -- but eventually relented. She is making me vegan Butterfinger bars (I found the recipe) in lieu of a "birthday cake," and tonight I finally figured out what I wanted my "birthday dinner" to be.

"Poutine," I said. "Plain and simple."

"...you're serious?"

"Yes, I'm absolutely serious. Real poutine, not vegan poutine. French fries, cheese curds, and gravy."

"Eww," she replied.

"You think it sounds gross, and everyone thinks it sounds gross...until they actually eat it. And then they realize that some sort of unholy alchemy has taken place between those three ingredients when mixed together, and it becomes the absolute best food ever."

Daisy's mother is Canadian. Daisy, by extension, is half-Canadian (and holds dual citizenship, actually, but that's neither here nor there). You'd think a Canadian would have an amazing appreciation for poutine, especially if it were veganized. To Daisy, however, it sounds vile in all its forms.

As an aside, she once found a vegan recipe for poutine, but it involved tofu, and tofu can stay the hell away from me except in small, small doses in certain dishes. Bad things happen to my digestive system when it comes in contact with tofu. I'll leave it at that.

Whether her parents will go for the poutine idea or whether she'll completely forget I brought it up by morning (as she was desperately, deliriously tired when I discussed it with her tonight) remains to be seen. While I personally think it would be awesome, again, it's not necessary -- Daisy's parents never have to do anything for me, and of course, I would never ask them to.

Finally, not do be outdone by last year's "Winter Storm Draco" and "Winter Storm Euclid" that seriously disrupted my travel plans and schedules between my birthday and Christmas (as I like to point out, I experienced Draco no less than three times -- here, flying into Chicago, and once again on the ground after getting off the plane in Pittsburgh), this weekend the first "big" snowstorm of the season is supposed to hit Kansas.

Here's the latest projections, from a few hours ago:

 

For those of you who don't know Kansas geography or town locations, Newton is directly below the last "n" in "Hutchinson." Hutch is about 30 miles directly west of me. So, as you can see by plotting that on the graph....I'm basically in the dead center of where the heaviest snow is supposed to fall. 

It's supposed to start tonight...as ice and freezing rain. And we could have a half-inch of that first before it all turns over to snow.

I would like to take a moment to mention that yesterday -- December 19 -- it was 63 degrees in the afternoon before I went to take my nap. I know this because I went down to check the mail for bills and birthday cards at about 3PM, and it felt like May or early June outside.

Luckily, because I knew I wouldn't be going anywhere for some time, after I went grocery shopping earlier this week I put the car in the garage, where it has remained since. It's got new oil and coolant and more than half a tank of gas, and it'll be fine in there for most of the winter break, protected from the elements and cold.

However, this does not bode well for my holiday travel schedule regardless.

Daisy works until Monday. She goes back to work tonight. She took Monday night off (she usually works Monday nights) and will be coming down here when she gets off work in the morning. Projections are that this storm will last through Sunday night before it moves off, but I don't yet know the projected snow/ice totals for Omaha.

Earlier this year, as you may remember, she was returning home from a trip down here when she plowed headfirst into a fast-moving snowstorm that rolled in and shut down I-80. She had to spend a night in the hotel in York (conveniently enough, right next to the Walmart we always stop at there) before she could make it the rest of the way home the next day. I'd rather not have a repeat of that scenario, obviously, for either of us. She drives a Hyundai -- a nice, safe vehicle that's relatively new and in great shape, but is mostly plastic and fiberglass. Even my Monte Carlo, with its 3,700lb. dry weight and massive tires/wheelbase wouldn't have saved her in that situation.

I don't get freaked out driving in snow -- I grew up on top of a mountain in West Virginia, and I've seen it all. In February, when we had a blizzard that closed down almost everything here in Kansas (including the university) for the better part of a week, I was still able to drive back and forth, to and from Walmart to get cat food and cigarettes (priorities, you know) with few issues aside from a little fishtailing here and there around sharp corners. Daisy's Hyundai is very easy, reliable, and fun to drive, but I would definitely trust the Monte Carlo for its weight and handling much more in nasty weather.

Of course, with the Monte Carlo there's always that "well, the engine's blown up and we're stranded now" possibility, which is why we always take her car back and forth on trips regardless of the weather or time of year.

"We have to watch this weather carefully, babe," I told her earlier tonight. "A few hours' window between when the storm stops and moves through and you get in the car to come down here is so not enough time for the road crews to clean and clear off everything, even on the interstates. I don't want a repeat of the 'stuck in York' scenario."

"Yeah, yeah," she said, waving me off. "We'll wait and see what happens."

She knows I get my jimmies rustled over weather, but they get especially rustled over weather that adversely affects any travel plans for me from point A to point B. Since yesterday afternoon, the forecast has been continually updated every few hours, and each time it's gotten progressively worse for my area. 

The problem here is that we're on a schedule, as we frequently are when traveling back and forth between Omaha and Newton, but this time it's more important than most, seeing as it's...well...Christmas. If we had to delay the trip an extra day until Tuesday (Christmas Eve), we wouldn't even get back to Omaha until probably 3 or 4AM on Christmas morning, and would certainly miss the entire Christmas Eve dinner the family is planning...not to mention the fact that we really wouldn't have a Christmas morning because we'd be sleeping through it. That's the worst-case scenario, obviously.

Best-case scenario? The storm is weaker than predicted and/or doesn't completely snarl the roads and interstates, and we get there on the morning of Christmas Eve, Tuesday -- or even Monday night.

What will more than likely happen? The storm will hit full-force, Daisy will be delayed in coming down here at least until Monday night, especially if the interstates are shut down and the other roads are a mess (it doesn't take a lot for them to shut down I-80 in both directions, really) -- at which point we'll either sleep fast and leave early in the morning, or we'll basically have to turn back around and drive back north -- and we'll get home in Omaha between dawn and midday on Tuesday.

I'm prepared for either eventuality -- I told Daisy not to risk her life or her car just because it's Christmas and she wants me to be with the family a few hours earlier. Christmas falling mid-week sucks for many reasons, but the biggest one is the travel logistics in regards to Daisy's work schedule and the weather. Regardless of when we leave Kansas, we'll be returning on the night/late-night hours of the 27th because she has to go back to work next Saturday night and work through New Year's morning, I believe. It's a fairly short trip regardless, and the weather, days on the calendar, and her work schedule isn't helping it a whole lot. She is right, however -- we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

So that's my birthday post, I suppose. While writing this, the storm is apparently getting an early head start. Reports of freezing rain and freezing mist have been coming in all over the area, and upon checking my front windows, they are coated in a thin glaze of ice -- as is everything else outside, apparently. Happy birthday to me, right?