You do remind me a little of Hooch.

Work and bad writing.

I'm sure you would assume that I am talking about my student's bad writing. But no. I'm referring to my own.

Heather called me out for my last post about the blanket. And she totally sounded like me, "Details! You should have provided more details!"

So let me try again.

I crocheted this blanket. It is my first crochet project ever in my life, and while my inability to follow directions followed me into this arena just as it haunts me in cooking, I think it turned out pretty well.

***

Some other odds and ends.

I got my hair cut last week. I don't really like it, so here is a picture and you can give your own judgment.

The bangs are a little worse today than normal, but that's pretty much how it is looking every day. Ignore my squirrelly eyes, I was half closing them.

I am thinking that maybe next time I should take in a picture of Kate Beckett, the detective on Castle.

***

I got a few really nice comment about my post over the last five years. I was still thinking about the last five years last week, and had the thought of a couple things I should add to that.

1. Places I've worked
--LabCorp. Super boring data-entry temp job.
--Brooks Museums Magnet Elementary School. Kindergarten Teacher's Aide. Rough job.
--The Science House. I can't stay away. High school program for that summer.
--The University Writing Center. As a tutor.
--The Mustard Seed. A plant nursery. Hard work, but it actually made me think about throwing in the towel on all this English stuff. Glad I didn't though.
--Teaching as a grad student. My first year, 4 classes.
--The Mustard Seed for a new summer season.
--And my current job.
Eight jobs in 5 years. Does that look bad on a resume? Maybe it isn't something I should brag about.

Along with things I shouldn't brag about, I was thinking one of them is how many places I have lived in those 5 years. I mentioned the cities in my last post, but it's funnier to think about the number of apartments.
--Raleigh. Always at the parents. That's the benefit of Raleigh.
--Boone. Two different apartments.
--Here. Two different apartments. Now my house.
Six places in 5 years, that doesn't sound as bad as the jobs.

And to end with something that I can brag about: Races.
I ran a 10K in 1:03. I ran a Thanksgiving 5K in 27 min.
Maybe more to come on that. We'll see.

***

Finally. Classes.
My classes are going well for the most part. I have one group of duds, but at least their writing is decent. But I have two tiny girls in one of my classes. They came in the first day, and I thought wow, they are tiny. And then I thought, I wonder if people think that when they see me.

Then during the name game, one of them used the adjective "short." It was good because I remembered her name.

Before you think, of course people think that about you, I realized today, while following the short one down the hall, that she is a full head shorter than I am. So I decided that people don't look at me and think, wow, she is tiny.

It's nothing but work, work, work, all the time.

There's always a moment when you finish a project that you are like Woo hoo! I'm done!

For me that is quickly followed by, uh, what do I do now?

The answer, for today, is show off the project.

You're doing recon work on our anniversary?

an⋅ni⋅ver⋅sa⋅ry

 [an-uh-vur-suh-ree]

the yearly recurrence of the date of a past event

Today is an anniversary. It has been five years since I came back from Italy.

Well, technically, five years

ago today I got on a plane to return to the States, I didn't actually arrive until tomorrow.

I'm not really into anniversaries. There aren't any that I celebrate, but this one always makes me think. I still miss Italy, I miss the people that I knew there, and I miss the work that I did.

Besides nostalgia, I spend the week of this anniversary wondering what I've done with the past five years. What have I got to show for this passage of time? So here are some things I have and have done with my time.

Material things:

A nice car

My House

Other things:

A Master's degree

An Office and the office means that I have a job. It's a good job and I really like it.

Places I have lived:

Raleigh, NC

Boone, NC

Missouri

Places I've been:

Chicago

New York

The Beach

Nauvoo, Illinois

The sadder but wiser girl for me.

I was at an activity the other night, and we were playing getting to know you games. One game was "two truths and a lie." I decided the best thing to tell about would be my extensive job history. So I told them that I started working when I was 16 at Wendy's, that my 2nd job was at a library, and that I loved my job at a plant nursery.

As they were guessing, someone said, "The library is the lie."

And someone else responded, "No way, she's the perfect librarian."

And I was left standing there thinking, wait, perfect librarian like this:


Or like this:

It's Santa! I know him.

I have a couple funny first week of school stories, but I feel like I can't tell you about them until I write about Christmas and being at home. So this is my Christmas post.

It was great. All my siblings were home for a while and it was really nice to just relax and hang out. I read a bunch of books and we watched bunches of movies. The fun new game was Bananas - basically a variation on Scrabble, but we even got in a round of Risk.

Heather kept trying to recreate a scene from House by telling me that my hands were orange. I finally admitted that they looked a little weird, and she said, "Your wife is cheating on you!" On House there was an orange man who came into the clinic with a sore throat (or something). House's diagnosis was that his wife was cheating because she either 1. didn't care that the man was orange or 2. didn't notice.

I have decided that my orange hands were caused by the delicious North Carolina sweet potatoes. We went to the farmer's market and Mom bought a case of sweet potatoes. I was eating them with everything, and apparently all that beta carotene will make a difference.

I'm sure you will be happy to know they are back to normal now.

UPDATE:
So I was telling my friend Julianne about Heather saying I was orange. And she was like, yeah, you are. And I was like What?! Still? And you didn't TELL me? I thought I looked better.

We thought up a code so she can tell me tomorrow whether I am still orange or not.

But then she totally surprised me by asking, "Don't you remember Melia telling you you look yellow and asking if you were eating a lot of squash?"

Actually, despite my good memory, I absolutely do not have any recollection of the sort. And so I was like, "Wait, was I actually listening to Melia at that point?"

If it ain't fittin' through the frame, you ain't carryin' it on the plane.

It seems like a good time for some airport stories.

My best airport story comes from my trip from the middle back east.

I arrived (why does that sounds so weird? It seems like it should be arrove -- like drove) at the airport and walked up to the kiosk to check in. After going through the entire process of checking in, the computer told me that it could not check me in. So I sighed and went and stood in line.

There were about 4 or 5 people in line before me and we stood there without moving forward at all for 30 minutes. Then the girl behind the desk called out that something was wrong with the computers, so thank you for being patient. That caused some grumbling, especially because now the line extended behind me and was winding down the hall.

We waited another 10 minutes, and then the girl behind the counter walked away.

She came back a few minutes later with a group of 4 people. Instead of immediately moving to man the desks and get these people through the lines, they walked down the secret employee only corridor.

They eventually came back, and an older lady took charge, inspecting the computers and the number of people in line. After a couple minutes of typing away, she grabbed the PA mike and said, "This is Airtran Airways. We have a computer problem and we are switching to manual. Airtran. Going manual."

As she is shouting this she walks over to the far wall and pushes a large red button on the wall, "Going manual NOW."

A large young black man was behind me and said, "I knew there was a red button somewhere! I was in the military. There's always a red button somewhere. Shoulda pushed that red button 30 minutes ago. All you gotta do is push the red button!"

After the red button was pushed, the four employees each took a station and started handwriting boarding passes. It was astounding.

Airport story number two comes from my connection in Atlanta, on the way back to the middle.

We arrived on schedule at 4:30 pm. My next flight didn't leave until 8:40, so I just found my gate and settled in with my book.

At around 6:00, I went and got dinner, and on my way back to my departing gate, I checked the boards again. Still the same gate, so I sat back down and read.

Around 7:30, I started getting a little nervous, because there was still no plane, and no attendant at the gate, but at 7:40 a plane pulled in. I thought great, they will unload this and load us up, no problem.

They unloaded the entire plane (which took a while) and then the attendant walked over to the gate and started typing on the computer. And you know how that goes. It's like the scene in Meet the Parents (that of course I can't find on youtube....).

After a few minutes of typing, she gets on her PA and says, "There are no more planes departing from this gate. Come see me if you have a problem."

Well, a ton of us jumped up, and everyone in line said Kansas City. She said D1.

Yes, an entirely different terminal.

So I took off running. It was rather like the scene in Home Alone, where the entire family is running through the airport. And just like that I made it as one of the last to board. Phew.

The end of airport stories. But I have been pondering something.

I spent 4 hours in the Atlanta airport just on that last trip. And one thing I noticed in all of the airports is that I was the only one reading a book.

Back in June 2003, I was on a flight, and everyone, literally every single person in the airport had Harry Potter. It had just been released a few days before, and everyone was carrying around these enormous books.

But literally, I sat in big groups of people and in every single group, I was the only person with a book. Weird.

they don't start sentences with "you know who just died shoveling snow?"

Yesterday there was 12 inches of snow on the ground. And then 5 more inches fell yesterday afternoon and night.

Remember this picture that I posted?


Yes, that is for real what it looks like now.

Some lessons from shoveling snow:
1. Start at the road end of the driveway. It is the hardest part.
2. Shoveling snow is a good way to meet neighbors.
3. Snow really does turn yellow when a dog pees on it.
4. Snot freezes.
5. Shoveling snow is REALLY hard work. It should be a challenge on The Biggest Loser. I think I lost 10 pounds.

The best part of the day was when a neighbor came over and helped me finish off the hard end of the driveway. Best neighbor.