on...well, everything

Remember that time I was doing really well with keeping my blog updated and I felt like a total blogging rockstar?  If you don't, it's because it's been three whole months since my last post and by now my blog link has fallen to the very bottom of your sidebar and you probably didn't even remember it existed. 

I don't believe in making New Year's resolutions, but I do believe in eventually setting goals to get things done at some point, so maybe now I'll be better about keeping you up-to-the-minute updated on the goings-on in my life.  If not, there's always Facebook, right? 

My last post was about that horrible gospel music class--the sight of which, now that I think about it, may be why I stopped visiting my own blog.  You'll be happy to know that I wound up with an A- in the class, which is pretty laugh-out-loud ridiculous, because I don't feel like I learned much in that class at all.  At the end of the day/semester, all I cared about was not getting a D, so I'd say my mischief is managed pretty nicely.

Did I mention that I'm now working at Borders?  I don't think so.  Allow me to quote from a blog post back in August: "Further decorating will come when I find a job, hopefully at a Books-A-Million or Barnes and Noble or Borders or something equally up my ally, and have a little extra money."  Did I also mention that I can see the future?

I love, love, love having a job at a bookstore, even a big corporate one, because I get to talk about books with EVERYONE.  Customers love books.  Co-workers love books.  People love my book recommendations.  People BUY the books I recommend!  It's like my college degree was made specifically for me to be really, really awesome at getting people to buy books.  I'm especially awesome in the kids' section, where every customer is a huge game of 20 questions.

"Boy or girl?"
"Boy."
"Age?"
"Uh...first grade." (People almost always give me the age in school-year format.  It's funny.)
"Any special interests?"
"He really likes zombies."
"Ok!  Let's look at a few My Weird School options."

The moral of the story is that Borders is amazing, even for retail.  And, for those you who are tempted to ask, "But isn't Borders going out of business?" like every other customer, please read this Wall Street Journal article.

The only time Borders isn't amazing is when customers are complete fools, like the lady who tried to pay with a gift card balance receipt ("But it says $4.65 right there!  What do you mean, 'Where's the gift card?'  I don't know where the card is!  I probably threw it away!"), or the other lady who started yelling at me because I wouldn't accept her Barnes and Noble teacher discount card ("I've never been asked for teacher identification before!  This is ridiculous!  Barnes and Noble didn't need any!" "Well, why didn't you just go to Barnes and Noble?"), or the man who ranted for five minutes about how someone "who knows" told him that Borders sells the Kindle (we don't) and it should absolutely be there and "you don't know what you're talking about, young lady," or the man who bought a Blu-Ray movie, took it home, realized he didn't have a Blu-Ray player, opened it anyway, and then brought it back because it didn't play on his DVD player.  (We have a no-return-for-opened-movies policy.)  On the other hand, these loonies make for great story material--obviously. 

In other news:

I went to Charleston for the wedding of two amazing friends of mine and it was the most fantastic thing since my own wedding. 

Zelda is getting a little bit chunky and I love it.  It makes her that much more adorable.

Ricky and I spent Christmas with my parents and grandparents in Miami.  It was 75 degrees.  Be jealous.

I bought "Inception" the day it was released on DVD.  It's still great.

My (real) Christmas tree is still up.

Notice the lack of ornamentation on the lower half of the tree.  This is Zelda's fault.  Also, our stockings are obscured by the angle, but you can see Ricky's peeking out of the right side of the tree.

Here's a close-up of the tree topper because I'm really proud of finding it buried behind other baubles at T.J. Maxx.  I had two strangers come up to me on the way up to the check-out line and compliment me on it.

Again, the angle makes it look funny, but it's a 12-point, three-dimensional star.  It's lovely.  Also, our white pine tree has lost approximately five needles up to this point, and it's been in our living room for three weeks.  I've never had a white pine before, but they're a lot cheaper than the blue spruces ($80 for five feet?!  No thanks!) down here in FL, and I like them a lot more now that I know how well they hold up!  You go, often-overlooked breed of tree.

Ricky and I also started our very first Christmas tradition!  Mount Vernon, where we had our wedding reception, designs and sells a new Christmas ornament every year.  We thought it would be neat to collect each one, starting with the year we got married, so we had my mom send one down to us!  (You can have them shipped from Mount Vernon itself, but we didn't know that yet.) 

This one commemorates the 150th anniversary of the restoration of Mount Vernon--the other side has a painting of the mansion as it was in 1860.  The ornament took a place of honor at the top of our tree, of course, along with another Mount Vernon collectible ornament of George Washington's sixteen-sided barn that my grandparents gave us for Christmas.

In still other news, Ricky and I flew back to Florida yesterday after a week-long adventure in the wild wild West.  We were supposed to fly out last Sunday, but five minutes before take-off the pilot informed us that a part was broken and everyone would have to vacate the plane and find another flight.  I was a little annoyed until I remembered my flight to England in 2008 that was two hours in before they realized they were leaking hydraulic fluid all over the Atlantic and made an emergency landing in Boston...at which point the plane caught fire.  (Sometimes run-on sentences are necessary for dramatic situations.  I hope you feel the drama.)  So, I was grateful they caught the problem before take-off and not after.  Everything into Salt Lake was booked for the rest of the day, so we re-booked the flight for Monday morning and went home for some much-needed sleep.  Other than that blip in the schedule, everything went without a hitch--we caught all of our connections, we didn't die driving in the snow, etc.  We also got to go to the Salt Lake City temple, which I took a picture of and haven't uploaded yet, so too bad for you. 

(We even got a $15 parking ticket because we didn't know the temple validated parking and didn't have enough change for the meter.  That's right--we broke the law to go to the temple.  No Mormons are more hardcore than we are!)

After the brain-freezing temperatures of Salt Lake, Ricky's hometown of Burley, ID seemed a lot nicer.  I got the tour of his childhood home, saw the old pictures, combed through his old room, and laughed over his X-files "Trust No One" doorknob hanger.  We played a lot of his old video games (and brought them back with us, of course) and saw his friends and even went to the DI (Deseret Industries, which is like the Goodwill of Utah/Idaho and run by the LDS church), over which I was way too excited.  We also went to Boise and saw Ricky's sister and her adorable chil'ins, who are still as adorable as they were last year but taller and with better eye-rolling skills. 

The youngest, Bridget (age 5), caught Ricky playing with her Leapfrog hand-held game across the room.

"Ricky," she said sternly.  "Did you ask?"

All the adults, of course, "ooooh"ed like someone in middle school just got called to the principal's office.  We're all really mature.

We also went to Rexburg, which is inhumanely cold and I don't understand why anyone willingly lives there. 

(I bet you'd like pictures of all these things, but I forgot my camera for 99% of these excursions and I don't even feel that bad about it.)

Then we flew back to Florida and I practically kissed the humidity-soaked ground.  My hair and skin still haven't recovered from the moistureless vacuum that is the West, but it was worth it to finally see Ricky's hometown.  He hasn't been there for two years!  If I couldn't see Charleston for two years, I'd be pretty sad.  He's a trooper.

I start classes tomorrow, so watch out for a blog post about either my enjoyment or disdain regarding them.  I'm taking History of the English Language, which has most of you gagging already, and a writing pedagogy course--I'm more excited about H of EL, but the pedagogy class was the closest thing to a grammar course offered for this semester, so there you have it.

Ricky hasn't been given his first semester grades yet, but from the amount of studying he did, I'm expecting a call from the President to tell him he did better than any law student has ever done, ever.  We'll see. :)

Hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas!