Category Archives: Me and My Life

And Therefore It Rained

Me and My Life

The gas station attached to the car wash in town closed a few months ago, so the salty residue that builds up on cars in the winter has been merrily building up on my car without fear of ending up sloshed down a drain. Without fear, that is, until yesterday. Yesterday I waited in line for nearly an hour to go through a car wash in a neighboring town and emerged sparkling clean.

Today, the temperature rose to nearly 50 degrees (Fahrenheit) after two weeks of hovering around zero. Then it rained. Beginning tomorrow, we’re set to head back down to the near-zero mark, and the air will be too cold to hold any moisture.

Fine

Me and My Life

“How are you?” People ask.

“Fine,” I say, and smile, because it’s expected. “How about you?”

“I’m ok. You look a little tired, though.”

“Yeah. I didn’t sleep well.” Which I didn’t. “Pippin was a rascal all night.” Which he was.

Cold

Me and My Life, Portraits of People and Places

I’ve lived a lot of places in my lifetime, all of which were blessed to have four seasons in every year. I love seasons. Each one has its own unique charm, and none last long enough to let you get really tired of it. Just as that rut starts to set in, the next season makes its appearance.

But I’ve begun to realize that I’m definitely a transplant this far north. I’m not used to “arctic” fronts. I’m not used to having highs in the negative numbers (Fahrenheit) for days on end. I’m not used to news anchors who make it part of their regular duty to tell me how many minutes I could be outside before frostbite sets in. I’m definitely not used to fingers becoming useless within the space of time it takes to fish keys out of my purse and unlock the office door. In fact, the only thing I like about this weather is the incredibly intricate and delicate ice crystals that form over all of my windows.

And then, today, I heard the final evidence that I’m not from around here. A co-worker said, “Oooh, I wonder if the river will be frozen solid by now. I think I’ll walk out and find out this afternoon.” First of all… this is important enough to warrant bundling up and trekking out into the arboretum in sub-zero weather? And second of all… Brrrrrrr!

It takes a local to think this way. And I am not a local.

Happy Days, Mostly

Me and My Life

Seems like pretty much everything has been going right for me over the last couple of days. Mom and Dad came to visit over the weekend, so I got to spend quality time going over a brand new cookbook with my mom (while catching up on family news and introducing her to my online friends), and I got to talk database code with my dad. Heaven! (They had to leave on Monday, so that was a pretty unhappy evening. But luckily I have friends who were willing to cheer me up by letting me beat them at Scrabble.)

Then, at work, pretty much everything I did turned out well, and people around me are generally in a pretty good mood right now, which makes everything even more pleasant.

Mom and I are also starting to think about maybe possibly kinda flying to California to visit family, which is exciting in a kind of thrilling-and-overwhelming-all-at-once kind of way. Do we go next month? Do we wait for spring? Does spring even matter in Southern California?

And I’m really excited to see what my choir does with an SSAABT a cappella piece I found for them. Will they think it’s as fun as I do? Or will they give me that “you want us to sing what?” look.

But speaking of choir, the one thing that hasn’t been a joy lately has been choosing music for them to sing for the next few months. So much drivel gets published and wastes hours and hours of my time. It literally took me 11 hours over the past two and a half days to get to the point of actualy ordering music (which I did this afternoon, by the way, which is contributing to my general good mood).