I melt

The high for today is 42, a temperature unheard of since the beginning of January. I'm hoping the foot high pile of ice blocking the path to the front door starts to melt. Right now, we're just asking for broken bones every time we enter or exit our abode.

I've read eight books so far this year. They are, in chronological order:

Love Me by Garrison Keillor
The Innocent Man by John Grisham
A Mighty Heart by Mariane Pearl
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
All He Ever Wanted by Anita Shreve
Our Lady of the Forest by David Guterson
Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina
Teacher Man by Frank McCourt

I'm trying to keep up with a book a week. The one I'm starting today is Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. It won the Pulitzer Prize and I've been wanting to buy it for months. I'm excited.

We started a little public speaking in class. I thought I'd start off easy with a 2-3 minute reading. Sadly, no one in my classes listens so they all forgot about it and were just reading random passages from their textbooks. Not the most inspiring class period.

That's about it. I bought a gameboy advance used and am a little obsessed right now. It's really cutting into my reading time. And I'm not sleeping well. Which does not bode well for my mental health. Also, I changed my comment settings so I think it's easier to post comments now. See how I beg?

Happy Valentine's Day (Blizzard)

So lately blogger/my computer is letting publish comments, but not sign in. It was a long process to get to the point where I can write. Anyway...

So on Valentine's day we had some crazy weather. Actually, it started Tuesday night with lots of snow. Then around 8:30 that night it started with the sleet and freezing rain, which was weird since it was only about 10 degrees. You'd think at that temperature it would just be snow, but whatever. Anyway, the sleet carried on for awhile... pretty much all night and into the morning, then around 10 in the morning we basically had a white out which lasted till about one. Then just regular snow. The snow plow would go down the parking lot and back up and where they had just plowed it would be full of snow again. So of course salt and gravel weren't gonna do the trick. So all afternoon the power was flicking off and on.

We got our car stuck when we were coming back from the cafeteria after lunch. We thought it would be good to keep moving it so that it wouldn't get snowed in. It didn't work. At 4:30 I walked home in the 40-50 mile per hour wind. With drifts up to my knees on the road to our house. What was nice was that the snow in front of our house was so hard that neither my footprints nor the car's tiretracks sink in more than half an inch.

At seven the power went off for real. Which was too bad because that's when Michael started walking home from school. And supper was almost ready. Fortunately it was only out for about an hour, so we didn't freeze to death without the heat.

So I opened up an MSN article about the storm and cleanup this morning and sure enough, it was posted from Hamburg. Yeah. That's where we live. They closed 50 miles of the interstate that runs through town. They had blackhawk helicoptors and hummers bringing people food and fuel for about two days.

I don't think I ever got my car stuck in Nebraska... And we really only got about eight inches. It was just the crazy combination of precipitation that made all the mess. At least we got the backhoe to get our car out and now we can drive again, they got the snow drifts off the road.

Too bad they don't close boarding school for snow.

So that was our craziness of late.

*Door slams in face* Look, a window's open!

So last Wednesday we were supposed to go to the Daily Show in NYC. We were way excited. We got off work at 12:30, ran home and changed then drove to Newark, took a bus into the Port Authority and ran the 13 or so blocks (NYC blocks, not Lincoln blocks) to the show taping address. Sadly, we were a little late. They stopped giving tickets away two people in front of us. Even more sadly, for the people in front of us, they were from San Diego. It's harder to get to NYC from San Diego than from Pennsylvania.

We were really disappointed. Apparently they overbook every show by about 30 people so that they have every seat filled. The good news is that we get VIP tickets next time.

The fantastic news is that as we were walking along, lo and behold, we saw a sign for Wicked. If you don't know what Wicked is, then you shouldn't be my friend. Go look it up on Google or something. So we walked up to the box office and asked if they still had any seats for sale. We got 6th row orchestra seats. We could see the director's head. And little stick as he waved it around. It was fantastic. And awesome. And many good times were had by all (me and Michael). I love musicals. And though it was quite different from the book, they were singing and dancing, so that pretty much made up for it. We splurged a bit to get that close, but really, how often are we going to have this opportunity? I think it was a once in a lifetime chance, and we took it and we loved it.

The drive back at two in the morning was another thing altogether.

Oh yeah, we also found this great little Thai place about a block away from the show. They had nice big chunks of fresh vegetables in their food. And so tasty. No frozen vegetables. Wonderful.

Other than that, we had a good homeleave. We cleaned and played games and watched Veronica Mars. I'm trying to stay in the normal zone. Struggling, but it's been sunnier, so that helps.

Enjoyed the Superbowl last night. Go Peyton Manning. Yeehaw for Tennesseans!

Happy to Oblige

I'm pretty sure I've done this survey before, but it was on my other blog, and maybe I have new answers now. Plus I'm uninspired to write about anything else. By the way, my computer won't even let me look at other people's comments, much less comment myself. That explains my lack of commenting... What's your excuse?

Four jobs you have had in your life:
1. Print Shop Coordinator (bleh)
2. Lifeguard/Blob Director
3. Student writer/intern for Marketing Communications Department at UC
4. Switchboard Operator


Four Movies you would watch over and over:
1. The Music Man
2. Fiddler on the Roof
3. Benny and Joon
4. Beaches

Four Places you have lived:
1. Cortez, CO
2. Lexington, KY
3. Madison, TN
4. Hamburg, PA

Four of your favorite foods:
1. Chipotle Vegetarian Fajita Burrito... it's been so long
2. Green Spaghetti
3. Homemade pizza made by me
4. Ice cream

Places you’d rather be right now:
1. In bed. Maybe not my own bed because we're keeping our thermostat at 52.
2. Florida
3. My mom's house
4. Somewhere where the high today is more than 17 degrees, as it is here. Somewhere like Jamaica. Warm and exotic.

People I hope will respond by posting on their blogs:
1. Everyone I
2. know, I think
3. has already posted this, but in case they haven't
4. Justin