In my job, I regularly plan for future years.  Writing spreadsheets or negotiating fees for three to five years out is normal, so in my head it has been 2012 almost since last July when our fiscal calendar changed over.  I’m already planning for 2013.  The fact that it is just now 2012 is what is surprising to me!

Happy New Year!  We had a lot of warm days last week, and New Year’s Eve had a high in the upper fifties.  That is ridiculously warm for mid-Missouri in January.  I would like to get a little winter this year and I’m hoping for some snow.  It’s not too late!  The weather did turn chilly for the early part of this week, and there’s a chance of snow next week.  I hope it will come.

The New Year Christmas celebration with my family went really well- we had a great time.  Lots of food, lots of board games, and lots of gifts.  I received a lot of lovely presents, many of which were kitchen items.  Jay and I left a little early on Saturday night to join some friends for a concert by the People’s Republic of Klezmerica, one of the Columbia First Night celebration events.  They didn’t end up having any fireworks due to the wind (the cold front was coming in after the unseasonably warm weather), so we went over to Ragtag to see the New Year in with all of the Columbia hipsters.  And then back to more partying with my family on Sunday.  It was nice to have the day on Monday (yesterday) to sleep in, and clean up a little, and recover.

So I survived Christmas with Jay’s family, and he survived Christmas with mine.  We finally exchanged presents on Friday night- he bought me this little hair comb (which I had favorited on Etsy), and I bought him this analog synthesizer after much research and deliberation on my part.  It was a total surprise for him, and he seemed delighted by it.

And now the holidays are ending.  Epiphany is Friday, and I do really want to get a couple of photos of some Christmas lights before then (since that is usually the day when they take down the lights).  We’ll see if I can manage to get my tripod out before the end of the week.  One of my New Year’s resolutions is to take more photos, which also means processing more photos.  I hope I do!

It’s also time to get serious about the house again.  It’s been nice to have the time off since right before Thanksgiving, even though I didn’t spend any of the time on any projects.  Of course not.  The holidays always go so fast.  But there’s no way around it now- I want the house sold, and I gotta get back on the market to sell it.  It will be a slow winter, I hope, and then maybe things will pick up again towards the end of February as we head into spring.  I really hope it’s a good spring for the real estate market, but I will take what I can get.  Anyway, I already contacted the realtor to sign contracts.  I’ll put it on the market and fix what I can during the slow winter months.

In the meantime, winter!  Are you aware of Pinterest?  It’s basically a bookmark tool for pictures, illustrations, and images.  Some people use it to save clothing or design ideas, but I love using it to save pictures that are pretty and evocative.  I’ve been collecting winter images (both Christmas and winter) on this board for the past few months- take a look.  You can see all my boards here.

I’m taking off work tomorrow, as I have done for my birthday every year since I’ve been in Missouri.  (I think.)  I don’t know what I am going to do, but it might involve a hike with the dog and then putting up twinkly lights at Jay’s house for the party on Friday.  I told him I was going to do that, so it won’t be a surprise except that I will do it without him.  But no more decorations than twinkly lights.

It was a good Thanksgiving and long weekend.  I took Wednesday off work, and got Friday off work anyway, so it was five whole days of vacation in a row.  It was tough to get up and return to work yesterday after all that time off, especially because the weather turned brisk and cold.  But last week was very pleasant weather for our trip up to northern Iowa.  We had a cloudy but warm day on Thanksgiving itself, with a high in the upper 50s at least.  That was great because Jay’s grandparents’ house was small and too warm with the ovens on high and the place full of people.  It was one of those little 1950s houses with a full basement rec room.  They were all champion ping-pong players, of course.  And then they basically passed a guitar around the living room with nearly everyone able to take a turn playing it.  I loved that.  But when it was too much, the weather was nice so I could escape to the backyard and cool off a bit.  And the food was good!  I was concerned about being the only vegetarian, but they were very nice about it.  Maybe another time I could bring something for myself.  I think they would have been nice about it!

The trip was fast.  We saw The Muppets on Thanksgiving night and were back on the road south to Missouri before Friday noon.  I liked the drive, mostly on Highway 63 north.  Two-lane highways are perfect for being nosy about other people’s property.  There’s even some Amish communities along that highway, which has wide dirt shoulders for the buggies.

On Saturday, I helped Jay clean his house for the party on Friday.  He has been talking about having a party for months and months, and finally I suggested we have one for my birthday.  He is excited to be having it, and I am excited to have it there.  He has a great house for a party with a couple of gathering spaces and a fire pit in the backyard.  I am looking forward to stringing up twinkly lights around that fire pit tomorrow.  It will look cool.

Then Sunday was my annual birthday lunch at Flat Branch.  I just like Flat Branch more than any other restaurant, and on my birthday, there is an excuse to have dessert.  So why choose anyplace else?  This was at least the third or fourth year in a row for it, though.  We were all going to see Hugo afterwards but it was only playing in one theater and the times were inconvenient.  So the family scattered and I saw it with Jay later on.  I thought it was great.  I would recommend not seeing it in 3D though… I didn’t like the 3D, especially in the action sequences.  But I would say that both The Muppets and Hugo were worth it.

And then this weekend.  Did I tell you about the party?  Yes, I did.  There is also Santacon, which is a big bar crawl where everyone dresses as Santa or something Christmas-related.  Just a hat won’t cut it in the costume department; you have to go all out.  I have a smattering of pieces that I am putting together.  I am not sure if I am going to buy anything new, but I will have to try on my smattering and see if it works as it is.  We will see!  And then, on Sunday, my friends are doing a Moveable Christmas Tree Decorating Party, and I will see how many Christmas trees I can help decorate without feeling a need to pull out my own.  I have a feeling the fiber optic one will make an appearance this year, if not the aluminum one?  The aluminum one is pretty fragile, but I do love that color wheel.

Yes, it’s brisk and cold out there.  I pulled out my short boots for today, short boots that I bought specifically to wade through snow on the way to work.  But I just wanted some warm shoes today, and my big down coat, and a wool scarf, and it’s not even really that cold today.  In February, if it’s this warm, I will wear a dress to celebrate!  But right now it feels cold out there.  Possible snow this week or next week!  It’s definitely turning winter on us.  And hooray for that, except I need to start bundling up more.  Gotta be warm to celebrate the cold, in my opinion.

Well, have a happy last day of November/my birthday!  Treat yourself to something on my behalf.  I will appreciate it.

That’s what I wore for Halloween last week… to work.  I was much bedecked in finery for Halloween parties on Saturday night, but they were too fine for work.  Cowgirl was good enough for work!

It is Monday, the Monday after Daylight Savings Time, so it feels later than it is.  I was up by six a.m., making rice.  Not for no reason, of course, but to take to work with the chickpea-spinach curry I made last night.  Mondays are vegetarian potluck days at my office.  Make lunch for the group once every couple of months and eat every other Monday for free.  Nice deal!  But it was my turn this Monday.  It went well, but it wasn’t a surprise.  I’ve made it a few times and I knew it was pretty good.  All garlicky and curry-y and full of flavor!

It was a good, busy, quiet weekend.  How is that possible?  There’s been a flurry of activity related to yes-the-house-is-still-on-the-market: attempts at scheduling a showing, last-minute successful scheduling of a showing, an an open house.  I managed to get the house clean, but the yard remains wild and unmowed.  It’s not outrageous, but it looks a little unkempt.  I just can’t get it on my schedule.  Maybe this week?  We will see!

Other than trying to get stuff done for that, it was a pretty typical weekend.  There was some pretty weather and some dog wrangling, some doughnuts and NPR, a documentary about Robert Crumb, Indian food, some television, a family dinner at a down-home-country restaurant in Claysville, a comedian at Mojo’s, a trip to my parents’ house, brunch at Cafe Berlin, a haircut, and potluck-food-making… yes, it was busy, but it was a quiet kind of busy.  I stand by my statement.  And there was a lot of food in there, wasn’t there?  Wow!

Tonight is the radio show that I do on Mondays these days.  I have not been keeping up the blog, but I really should get back on that.  I usually spend this time of the day looking at stories online to share on the show, but right now I’m blogging here.  So I am going to stop this and go do that before I waste all my time doing this.

Then I can remember that no one is actually looking at any of my shit, so I should just calm down.

Sigh.

It is edging on lunchtime, and someone is eating something in my vicinity that smells really good, both reminding me of home and also unusual at the same time.  Is that green pepper?  Yes, I think so.  Smells awesome.  Whatever it is, I want to make it right now!  Because autumn makes me want to cook things, lots of things, and having a boyfriend means someone will eat the food I cook.  It’s a nice combination!  Last weekend, I made lasagna and we had enough leftovers to munch all week.  It was quite nice!  I didn’t cook dinner this weekend, but I did buy some cinnamon bread at Whole Foods in KC on Saturday, and used it to make some French toast yesterday morning.  Can’t believe it took me so long to make breakfast for him, but it was a good one: French toast with pumpkin granola over Greek yogurt.  I had coffee and he had tea.  It was pretty nice!  I like to cook, and I’m feeling more confident about it even though he is not a vegetarian and I am.  I only cook vegetarian, of course, but he is not bitchy about getting meat with every meal and I don’t care if he eats meat as long as I don’t have to cook it.  But most of my cookbooks are vegan, not just vegetarian.  I had to buy a couple of Moosewood cookbooks to fill in the gaps and find some recipes where dairy products can be the protein.  Hence delicious lasagna!  Though I did put some Boca crumbles in that, and we both thought it turned out pretty well.

So this weekend was mostly going to Kansas City (to visit my grandmother who is a rehab facility to recover from shoulder surgery), shopping while there (at Whole Foods & Trader Joe’s, with a stop by Planet Sub for dinner), and making breakfast on Sunday.  I also worked on constructing some Halloween costume accessories yesterday- I’d bought all the pieces, but needed to put together some Crab Hands and Antennae for my Sexy Yeti Crab costume!  I think I’m done with the costume, other than maybe some make-up and of course the actual assembling of the costume on the night itself (Saturday night, for a party at a friend’s house).

This will be the first year since I’ve lived in my house that my family won’t come over for Halloween.  Halloween is a Monday this year, so trick o’ treaters will come while I’m at the radio show.  I was trying to put something together for Sunday night, but a few things conspired to come together on that night.  It will be a busy weekend!  And no Halloween party for me.  Too bad!  It was never the dog’s favorite activity, anyway, since she had to stay in the back bedroom.  She was always upset about it.

This week, we are headed up to St. Louis to see Adrian Belew at the Old Rock House.  I have been trying to listen to some of his music on Spotify so I know what to expect.  It should be good!  But it will make for a very long week because I won’t have any time off until Thursday.

We went out on Friday and saw Tucker & Dale vs. Evil at Ragtag Cinemacafe (our local arty theater).  It was HILARIOUS.  I highly recommend it if you can see it near you; I’m sure it will be on DVD soon.

It is a beautiful day in the neighborhood!  I am just kinda aglow after a wonderful weekend and feeling pretty much on top of the world.

Part of all this happiness is just bouncing back (way back) from a bout of strep throat that took me down last week for several days.  Most of the week, in fact!  I was really sick.  I got back to work by the end of the week and was able to do some email catch-up before the weekend.  And the weekend was busy in a normal sort of way, so I was able to recover entirely.

It was Homecoming weekend for MU, the 100th anniversary of Homecoming.  A huge big deal.  Campus was buzzing by Friday afternoon.  I walked downtown to eat lunch with a friend and the line for Booche’s hamburgers was out the door.  (We didn’t eat at Booche’s, of course- we had Main Squeeze.)

I have never been to any Homecoming event as an alumna.  Well, possibly there was a high school Homecoming at some point in there, but I don’t remember attending it on purpose, except maybe to support my younger sister or younger brother after I’d graduated.  Anyway, I usually avoid Homecoming activities as they are not usually directed at people like me.  I wasn’t into sports or sororities or traditional student life.  But it’s not like I wasn’t in any groups or clubs or didn’t have any friends.  It’s just that I had the kind of friends who would not go to Homecoming activities.  There was a reason we were friends, after all.

But this year was different.  A college friend who was involved with the LGBT Center on campus decided to put together some Homecoming activities, and I decided to go to one of them.  I was only on the periphery of those activities, but it was definitely part of my college experience.  So it was kind of exciting to see some people I knew from back in the day.  We are all old and grown-up, with kids and mortgages and responsibilities.  I am not sure if any of us are the people we thought we would be, back in college when there was a lot of fight to fight.  But it was really cool to see that, too.

So that was Friday night, drinks with old college friends.  Then I went home and crashed with my boyfriend while we watched a documentary about the Ramones.  I love the biopic documentaries about bands I don’t know very well.  So many questions get answered!  Like, I was under the impression that the Ramones were all related to each other.  But that is the very opposite of true.  In fact, none of them have the last name of Ramone and none of them are related to each other.  A few weeks ago, we watched a biopic of The Who and another documentary about the making of U2′s The Joshua Tree.  I don’t even love U2, and I still found it pretty interesting.  Music is a whole world to me that is kind of mysterious and unexplored.  Netflix Instant makes it easy to access documentaries that fill in some blanks.

On Saturday, I was out and about in the morning, getting caught in Homecoming traffic.  Ran back home to listen to NPR shows on the radio, a favorite Saturday morning activity.  After lunch, I went shopping again, and with the game on, no one was really out and about.  I got to run several errands and felt very accomplished.

My boyfriend and I have been dating six months as of this weekend, so we had a little celebration on Saturday.  I made lasagna and apple crisp and we listened to records.  I got to look at a scrapbook of baby pictures too, and of course I was very pleased about that.  I don’t like to get very personal about stuff on here, but things are going great in this relationship.  We are making plans to spend the holidays together.  Our Halloween costumes are vaguely related.  We are a very happy couple.

On Sunday afternoon, I went up to my parents’ house.  They did BBQ and I brought some pumpkin bars & candy apples to share.  We had a nice time chatting about all kinds of things, and then we took a walk through the woods.  I got a few pictures with my phone, though I was too lazy to get my real camera out of the car.  It was a great time.

It was a beautiful weekend, weather-wise.  I think we’re a little past the peak of autumn color, but I haven’t seen a good show of reds in the trees yet.  Temperatures were in the low 70s.  But today is different!  Today is chilly and rainy, and we’re supposed to get our first frosts later this week.  I will have to make some room indoors for all the outdoor plants.  And I will need to make a date to mow the grass one more time, and to do a big clean-out of the flowerbeds to prep for winter.  I guess I still have some weeks for both of those activities, but I’m so happy to have the yardwork over for the year that I’m rushing it in my excitement.

So that’s what I did over the weekend.

Everything is pretty good these days.  The house is still on the market, and will be for about another month until the realtor contract expires in late November.  I have definitely let things slide in the last few weeks, though.  And my vacuum cleaner broke last week, so that’s not helping the situation.

I did dig my comforter out of the garage, though I have not unearthed my winter clothes yet.  The comforter got washed and dried and the duvet cover got washed and dried, and I put it all on my bed last night and slept very well.  I still have not turned on the heat in the house, though with the frost coming, I will likely have to do it pretty soon.  I’ve still enjoyed a few weeks of very nice weather that does not cost me anything in terms of utility money.

Heading up to Kansas City this coming Saturday with my mother to visit my grandmother, who had shoulder surgery last month and has been in a rehab facility for the past few weeks.  It will be good to visit.  I finally ordered print copies of photos to take to this grandmother, who is not online and never ever will be.  I always forget to make prints, but she won’t see the pictures if I don’t.  My other grandparents made that switch already.  Yet those grandparents are politically conservative and my offline grandmother is politically liberal.  What’s that about, exactly?

Happy mid-October!

Last weekend was spent at the Lake of the Ozarks with my family on the annual vacation.  This was our fourth year for the fall trip somewhere together, and it was a good one!  My father rented a large house on the water.  It had four bedrooms, two huge decks, a foosball table, and a dock.  It was plenty of room for eight adults (including my boyfriend).

We had dinner together and played foosball on Friday night after everyone got in (though we were all coming from the same place, we mostly arrived separately).  On Saturday, our first outing (after breakfast) was Bridal Cave.  I’d never been there before, despite seeing the billboards all over Central Missouri.  It was an okay tour; our guide seemed to rely on making stuff up when she didn’t know the answer to our questions (but we did have a lot of questions).  After the cave tour, we went to lunch at a place that was literally on the water (a large dock), and then we went down to the Strip to play some of the ancient video games in the arcades (similar to what is available at Logan Hardware in Chicago, only you pay for these and it’s not ironic).  After that, we had some rest before dinner and then board games afterwards.  On Sunday, we had breakfast together before we split up and some of us headed home.

It was great, as always!  The house was beautiful and the weather was gorgeous.  The hills down there at the Lake were already showing some signs of color.  In Columbia, the yellows are gorgeous and we’re starting to see peeks of red and orange.

I don’t know what’s on the tap for this weekend, except for a party tomorrow night to which I’ve promised to bring pumpkin bars.  I guess I will need to do some baking tomorrow afternoon!  I also have another couple of cooking projects in the works, as well as a couple of costume projects for Halloween (though that is still a few weeks away).  My costume is coming together and I only have a few things that have to be assembled.  I took the rare, dreaded trip to Hobby Lobby yesterday for something.  I hate Hobby Lobby, but I hate most that their checkout processes are so slow.  It’s not the equipment, it’s the customers.  Every customer seems to want to argue about prices, and it takes forever.  But I got out of there after only having to wait about twenty minutes in line for a couple of dumb things.  Huzzah.  But I will probably put off assembling these things for the costume for another week or two.  Why do it now when I can procrastinate?

I am overdue for some serious house cleaning.  There have been some steady house showings, and though the house is uncluttered, it is not clean.  I am ashamed at the state of the floors, specifically, and it’s about time for the annual clearing-out of the flowerbeds.  Bah, gardening!  I do not want to do any gardening.  Anyway, I ought to do some dusting and floor mopping and weeding, and we will just see about that.  We will just see.

I had a grand time watching Downton Abbey this week on Netflix.  I love me some BBC genre drama.  There have been several movies in the theaters lately that I wanted to see, but somehow I haven’t had time for them.  I need to keep better track of what’s around so that I can take advantage.

Life is good.  Life is great!

I look forward to getting home because I may have a shoe package from Zappos, if I am lucky.  I found some boots that just might fit me.  They just might.  I am not very optimistic but I have some hope.   Boots that fit me are hard to find.  Boots that are cute and fit me might be damn near impossible.  (For cheap.  I could spend $300 and order from the UK.  I do not want to spend $300.)  But I have hope about these boots, and I look forward to seeing them on my doorstep later, if they are delivered today.

I had a great weekend with some steamy late-summer weather at the Roots & Blues & BBQ festival.  I heard some roots and I heard some blues and I had some delicious BBQ seitan from Main Squeeze, along with a taste of jerk sauce on beans & rice from the Jamaican Jerk Hut.  The BBQ festival is not very friendly to vegetarians, but we had a really good time listening to the performers.  My favorites were probably David Wax Museum, Toubab Krewe, and Fitz & the Tantrums.  Toubab Krewe caught me at a good time, too- a mellow jam session while I had a nice seat on a curb in the shade of the Psychology Building.  It was a great time!  The rest of the weekend was pretty lazy in comparison… I did not do much.

Ugh, I don’t feel like writing any more.  I want to go home and see if my boots fit.

Here is this video I found that you will enjoy, made for Austrian TV in 1994.  It is a parody of documentaries that explore non-Western cultures.  Enjoy it!

I outlined my plans in my last post, and I can say that all of that went off without a hitch.  I had a great time at the 90s dance and a good turnout from those that I invited on Facebook and on Meetup, despite a rainstorm that started a couple hours earlier.  It was fun.  And some of us discussed Halloween plans, so now I have to start thinking about my costume.  I’ve had it picked out for awhile, but I need to assemble it!

The Free Market on Sunday was also a success.  I took four boxes of junk, pure junk, including a bag of telephone wires and a bag of floppy disks and boxes of pre-2000 software, and all of it was taken.  All of it.  In fact, I heard that everything that was brought to the Free Market was gone within an hour or so.  Pretty amazing!  However, I am concerned that I might have been enabling some hoarders and that my stuff will just find a home in the basement of somebody else’s house rather than being put to use.  But I have no idea- this is all conjecture.

On Monday, I went for a hike!  It was the first hike since May or April because of schedules and also because of the weather.  The weekend started out pretty hot with temperatures in the 90s for the football game (I’m sure some people came home from that with wicked sunburns), but cooled off with the rainstorms on Saturday night.  We woke up to temperatures in the 60s on Sunday morning- I even put on a jacket!  It’s been nice cool for several days now, and it felt so great that I planned a hike on Monday.  My boyfriend and I took the dog to Gans Creek Wild Area and we prepared to do a loop from the Shooting Star trailhead.  But we were about halfway through that when we came across a couple and a child who were clearly very lost, so we turned around and backtracked to the trailhead with them to give them a ride to their car (on the other side of the park- they’d had a long walk).  So that was a nice adventure!  Good deeds and nice walks in beautiful weather.

This is two years in a row that a weather change at the beginning of September really reminds me that we’re moving into fall.  I always think it’s a much more gradual transition, but it really isn’t.  Overnight lows for the past couple of nights have been in the mid-40s.  We’re really moving into fall here.

And I have packed up most of my winter stuff!  It’s all in the garage!  My comforter, my winter clothes, my boots… it’s all out in the garage and boxed up without a real thought given to the fact that I would need it all again in this house.  I seriously was under the impression that I would be out of the house in mid-summer.  It was only during the slow month of June that I realized that I could be in the house for another winter, and even then I was still mostly sure I wouldn’t be.  But now it’s pretty clear that I’ll be there until spring, at which point I will try try again.

In fact, I’ve already started compiling some lists of fixes I want to do while the house is off the market from November – February.  A couple of rooms will need to be painted, for instance.  That kind of thing.  And then I will be on the market as soon as possible in early early spring.

It’s that time of year somehow.  Halloween candy is in the stores.  I need to get ordering a Halloween costume.  I have already had multiple requests for a Christmas list AND some discussion about Thanksgiving and Christmas plans.  Already!  It all goes too fast.

But it’s only September 7.  Tonight I will mow the lawn.  It’s a couple of days before Roots & Blues & BBQ and it will be a nice cool weekend for that festival in downtown Columbia.  Here’s a nice song by David Wax Museum (who are playing the festival, of course) to send you out on:

Sometimes it’s hard to remember in July that it can return to cool weather so quickly.  But then once we’ve had a taste of cool weather, it can be hard to remember that we can get sweltering temperatures and humidity into late October.  Weather!  Amirite?

Chicago was a lot of fun!  We ate Chicago deep-dish at Lou Malnati’s (my first time there; I usually go to Giordano’s, but I’m glad we tried something new because I thought Lou Malnati’s was superior) on Friday night.  We met up with an old friend of my boyfriend’s.  They hadn’t seen each other since high school in the ’90s, but they had tons in common and we ended up hanging out a few more times over the weekend because it was just so much fun.

On Saturday, I enjoyed the fact that we could listen to our favorite Saturday radio programs directly on WBEZ, Chicago Public Radio, which produces Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and This American Life.  Ironically, the subject of This American Life this past week was a theme park in Kansas City.  So we Missourians visiting Chicago listened to a Chicago Public Radio-produced program about Missouri.  Nice, right?

Later, we went to some record stores and book stores.  I got a few things but I always have a hard time in record stores because I never remember what I’m looking for.  It’s kind of dumb to say it like that, but there it is.  I’m faced with a big bins of alphabetic band names and poorly standardized genre labels, and it’s all I can do to wander around listlessly, browsing while racking my brain for things that I might want to look for.  I come home with two random CDs, smacking myself for not remembering the other forty CDs I’ve been thinking about getting.  So stupid.  But the first record store we stopped at also had a back room of ’80s arcade games, demo versions so that you can play for free.  I had a pretty good time with that, despite my stellar lack of hand-eye coordination.

On Saturday night, we had a lovely dinner at Lula Cafe.  We were warned that the wait might be really long, but I think the rainy day kept most people close to home and our wait for a delicious meal was only 15 minutes.  The restaurant was chosen for a good selection of both meat and vegetarian entrees, and it made us both very happy.  We wandered around on Sunday in Millennium Park near our hotel (I got a Priceline deal on the Chicago Hilton, which was huge and ornate and fancy-schmancy) but didn’t end up doing much touristy stuff other than driving along Michigan Avenue and seeing the buildings.  Someday I will see the planetarium and the Art Institute and the History Museum, etc., but it was not this trip.  After our little tromp through the park with coffee, we headed back to our car (I parked in a surface lot near the hotel but not in hotel parking; of course downtown parking is expensive) and started our trip back.  We had a nice stop in St. Louis at Trader Joe’s on the way home.

And then I had a free day on Monday to do whatever!  It was very nice.

Now students are clearly back in town this week, and especially today.  I think it must be dorm move-in day.  Ugh!  I dread this time of year so much.  It’s not that I particularly hate students, but it’s the whiplash from going from a quiet intercession time where everyone is on vacation or out of town, and then BOOM, everyone returns at roughly the exact same time, over the course of 2-3 days.  It is hard to get used to it so quickly.

Last night, I was driving downtown to my weekly trivia night (we are currently kicking everyone’s ass) and nearly had two accidents with students.  One was on Providence Road, which is a major thoroughfare in town and cars tend to drive pretty fast despite the fact that the street is lined with Greek houses (fraternities and sororities) and other off-campus student housing, and there’s no buffer between the sidewalk and the street.  A few guys were playing football in their front yard last night.  One threw the ball and two others were running after it, and the ball bounced and hit my car.  I was a little pissed about the ball hitting my car, of course, but very relieved that the kids hadn’t chased the ball into traffic.  I guess they will have to learn what it means to live right on Providence Road.  It means not playing ball in the yard if you don’t want to lose your ball to traffic.

The second near-accident was just a minute or two later when I was driving down Elm Street.  I had a green light as I approached Ninth Street, but a girl standing on the corner stepped right in front of me.  She looked at me before she did it, too, so I know she saw me.  I would have hit her or swerved into oncoming traffic if her friend hadn’t pulled her back in time.  I gave her a WTF?!!?? face but didn’t honk.  I probably should have honked.

Ugh, students.  And then school starts next week and that means student bicyclists everywhere, not following established road rules, running stop signs and traffic lights and ignoring the right-of-way of pedestrians in crosswalks.  It is crazy.

It’s just the way it is when you live in a college town.  I know that, of course!  And things generally get sorted after a few weeks; I learn to look for bicyclists speeding through intersections, oblivious to all, and they learn not to step directly into traffic unless it is a big bus or truck, because obviously you can step right in front of those.  (SARCASM.)  But I do not mind the end of summer too much.  It’s fun to see grad student friends back in town, and it’s nice to have more activities on weeknights and weekends, and I look forward to fall weather and fall clothes and Thanksgiving week when they all go away again for a bit.

Our office move in late April means that we’re now working out of one of the main campus buildings, Ellis Library.  I haven’t really mentioned much about this, but it’s been a really great move for many reasons and I feel part of a work community for the first time since I’ve been in this job.  I love it.  But there are some weird quirks to the location of my office, which is right off one of the busiest parts of the library: the basement coffeeshop.  It has been pretty quiet over the summer, with a little bit more bustle at lunchtime.  But we were here for the last few weeks of school last spring, including finals week, and it gets pretty crazy in there.  It doesn’t extend to my actual office, which is generally quiet.  But the coffeeshop area is busy most of the morning and early afternoon, enough that the restrooms usually have a line.  I would say that waiting in line to use the restroom at my office is probably the most annoying thing about the new office space.  But what are they going to do?  The building is old and historic and there’s no room for staff restrooms.  We have a lovely staff lounge if I really need to escape, and we get our own vending machines and fridge space in there.  So while there are some annoying parts, it’s really not a big deal.  I just need to learn to time my bathroom breaks, and get used to sharing a bathroom with the general public.  This has just not been the typical experience of my career, is all.

It is somehow the middle of the week already.  I have a dentist appointment this afternoon.  How do I know that?  Because they called me three times and left three messages (increasing in volume and frustration) requesting a response to ‘confirm’ it.  I am probably going to say something about this when I go in this afternoon.  Hair stylists and doctors’ offices have been making these confirmation calls for the past few years, and mostly it’s just annoying because I am already quite aware of the appointment I made, but voicemails are easy enough to delete.  But it’s one thing to leave a short voicemail reminder, and quite another to request a response from me and then follow-up with two more messages in less than three hours because I have not returned the call.  I am quite aware of my appointment, as I own a calendar and am capable of using it.  I made the appointment.  And you, dentist office, are not my mother.  (Actually, my mother would expect me to make and keep my own damn appointments without having to be harangued about it.  But then my mother is not a helicopter dentist’s assistant.)  When I finally returned the call yesterday afternoon, they didn’t even answer- it went straight to voicemail.  I assume they were busy harassing someone else.

I am chatty today, but this message is long mostly because I wrote some yesterday and then finished it today.  I will leave it up to you to find where I put the scotch tape.  Unless you are too busy stepping in front of green lights?  Hmm?

It’s been a long two-week stretch since I had a weekend free because I traveled over last weekend for the library conference in New Orleans.  It’s a full two days of work with two days of traveling.  So I am looking forward to the weekend even more than usual.

The trip went well, overall.  I was traveling alone for the first time, with a full roster of meetings to handle on my own, and that all went fine.  I wasn’t really concerned that it wouldn’t go fine.  I’ve had plenty of experience with it at this point.

Otherwise, the trip was fun.  I got in early enough on Friday that I could run over to the Backstreet Cultural Museum before my first meeting, which was really important to me.  It was a hike to the museum in hot & humid weather, but I was so glad I made the trip.  The founder of the museum, Sylvester Francis, was there and basically gave me a personal tour, which was great.  I loved seeing the Mardi Gras Indian costumes in person.  They are beautiful, but I am glad I am not the curator in charge of preserving those costumes through the years.  It must be quite a trick.

My hotel was on Canal Street at Bourbon, and was quite swanky, very pleasant.  Bourbon Street was a complete pain in the ass except for the brass band that played on the corner near the hotel, and I ate one dinner at the Red Fish Grill on Bourbon (blackened avocado with most of a loaf of French bread- holy shit, it was delicious), but mostly I avoided that area.  I would also get agitated as I neared the French Market area, so except for one trip to Cafe Du Monde (poorly timed, as it was too miserably hot to really enjoy a plate of beignets, and it immediately started pouring rain when I wanted to leave), I wandered in the French Quarter, but in the calmer and more arty areas.

Food was generally a problem, as the City of New Orleans obviously officially considers fish to be part of a vegetarian diet.  I have been thinking about eating fish now and then, as it would generally make things easier for me as I am currently dating a carnivore, but when it came down to it while looking at the menus posted outside the restaurants, I just couldn’t follow through with it.  The closest I could get was Caesar salad, which is usually made with anchovies in the dressing.  I know it’s there in the abstract, but I’m not really tasting it, so I can handle it.  Eventually I may work my way beyond this.  We’ll see!  Anyway, other than the blackened avocado, I had a wonderful breakfast at The Original Pierre Maspero’s restaurant at Chartres and St. Louis.  I’d seen a big long line outside this restaurant on Saturday night, full of people who looked like they knew from New Orleans cooking (not just librarians and tourists), so when I walked by it the next morning, I decided to stop.  The vegetable omelet was fantastic, but the grits, the GRITS.  Holy hell, deliciousness.  I tried to recreate this meal the next morning at my hotel restaurant before my flight home, and it was a giant failure.  The omelet was okay, but the grits were basically Cream of Wheat.  Dear Mr. Pierre Maspero, you know from grits.

But I had bread pudding twice.  Life is pretty grand when you get to eat bread pudding twice in one weekend.

On Sunday, David Simon and his wife gave a keynote address after the Public Librarians Association handed out their annual awards.  I was waiting outside the auditorium more than an hour before the event started, even though there was really no line.  So I got a great seat, and was early in the line when they did a signing afterwards.  I generally hate book signings, because I always feel stupid talking to the writer while I get my book signed, but I feel a need to get a book signed anyway.  So I waited in line and came up with something interesting to talk about, which was my recent visit to the Backstreet Museum.  And, score!  He did perk up and look interested, and that was great.  Apparently the museum was on a recent episode of Treme, an episode I still haven’t seen, so I either came off as a nerd who didn’t do the assigned reading or as a nerd who read the bibliography ahead of the reading.  Oh well!  Anyway, I walked away with a signed book and a feeling of not being the biggest dork on the planet after talking to one of my idols, and that is a job well done.

The flight home was fine.  I arrived early in the evening and even managed to finish three books on the trip.  I am very proud of myself for this, and even more so because they were all books I bought prior to the trip and not on the trip, which is my usual MO.  Dumb!  And one of those books is the Columbia One Read selection for 2011, so I’m ahead of the game there too.

And now it’s been a long week since.  My allergies were killing me after I got home, but I seem to have pulled through.  I finally had a house showing last night after weeks of no showings at all (other than the open houses).  I have a few things going on this weekend, but it’s not really packed to the gills.  It will be fun and pleasant, except for the weather, which will be hot as hell and twice as humid.  But yay for three-day holiday weekends!