Cold

I get up these days around 6 because I teach a class at 8 am. Most days this involves extravagant lies told in the semidarkness by my responsible self to my groggy self—promises of eggs and bacon and sausage, promises of naps taken in warm beds with my clothes still on, my shoes hastily deposited by the door upon arriving home from class. I rarely make good on these promises (I've been to Wendy's only once, and as yet the only naps have happened in my chair at my desk).

This morning I got up feeling cold. The average temperature here for the last week or so has been a single-digit number, often with a minus sign in front of it, and today was no slouch. I hobbled downstairs to a bowl of Cheerios, realized I should've checked into the bathroom first, came back up to grumble in front of my email while all my systems came online. Consciousness: check. Internal Clock: check. Sensitivity to Light: fading.

Senses of Humor, Self, and Responsibility: check, check, check.

Better Judgment: standing by.

Internal Combustion: nothing.

I'm not a morning person, which is why waking at 6 is requisite to teaching at 8. I have to plan in advance not to be grumpy if I know interaction with others is on the docket for the am. I leave myself a detailed plan of the first 2 hours of my day so that there isn't any dependance on a mind process of any kind; every morning I mark off the words "breakfast," "vitamin," and "prayer" without questioning the wisdom or the order. Despite all this crummy biology, however, I never worry about being warm. It's a given with me.

I'm one of those warm hands types—I sleep with my feet hanging off the end of the bed and the window cracked. I don't own a pair of gloves. When Kate came to pick me up the other day and I was wearing jeans and a puffy vest, she expressed her worry that I'd freeze walking home later. I showed her the odd-square foot of wool in my hand: "It's okay; I've got a hat."

But this morning I was cold, and I don't know why. I didn't warm up with the return of consciousness and I didn't warm up with the application of clothes. I waited in vain for the needle in the dash of Kate's Explorer to sidle over from C to H and the floor vents to begin blowing warm air over my feet. When we got to school I excitedly ran into my office expecting a familiar rush of snugness, but instead I found the room drafty. I taught. I napped. I was cold.

All day this went on. I wore my heavy coat indoors all day and never felt good. Is this how the rest of you feel all the time? Jeez.

I'm about to jump into bed with a giant pair of thick sweatpants on. I have two quilts and a bottle of water. I'm going to dream of true love.

Winter Barbeque

Last night we celebrated something with a winter barbeque. Everyone came over and feasted, and then we watched Spirited Away, one of my favorite movies. Sorry I didn't get any pics of everyone looking so attractive and having such a good time—I was too busy having a good time and looking so attractive to take pictures then.

Grilling on the front porch. Average temperature: 10º F. My landlord was taking his trash out and shouted across the street, "Something wrong with your kitchen?"
"Nope," I smiled."
He shook his head: "Now I've seen everything."


See guys? I told you a headlamp would come in handy.


Darrin and Dave keep me company.
I should admit right here that this was all Dave's idea.


Here's the feast, minus Matt's chicken enchiladas and Dave's tapas sides: mega mashed potatoes and Italian meats-wrapped asparagus. Notice his roasted red pepper salad already on the table.


If I had 4 wishes, the fourth would be to live in this bathhouse, always barefoot, sleeping by day and working by night.

Leftover Pictures: Group C

Behold the annual Jump-in-the Truck-and-Look-at-Christmas-Lights party. I don't think I got a single Christmas light in any of these shots:

Oh, there's some Christmas lights, back there behind Charlotte. My bad.


Here's Mary trying to sweet talk her way into the cool truck.
Too bad—we had a strict no-matching-accessories policy.


Me, Liz, Faith, Luke, Harris, Ike, Ethan, and Matthew. If it wasn't for this slightly cold
night and the 25-mph windchill, it'd have been a total waste
to bring home anything I'm wearing here.


Hello, Luke.


I'm out of clever captions.

Bonus Pics!


3-D IMAX, people. 3-D to the MAX!


Unwashed, unshaven, unabashed. This is EYE-MAX, people!
(I'm talking to you old folks in the second row there—I need to see more MAXing).

Leftover Pictures 2

Here's a few shots from our Halloween party last year.

Kate got some farmer to up and donate an Explorer full of pumpkins to our cause.
That smile? That's the "It's so early I'm not even sure what day it is" smile.


Awww, Boo House is all dolled up for the party. I wish you could see the inside; it's
completely covered in streamers and bats and candles. And pizza, mountains of it.


Most of the action took place on borrowed lawn furniture under the twinkle of borrowed lights. The lights are hung very unprofessionally from house to tree and back. Basically I strung them through the windows and tied them to door knobs and (mostly) heavy-enough furniture. Ken, on the other side, tangled them in the branches. Très romatic.


Zach (tourist) and Danielle (horse girl) play Twister while
I (my branch president biker) mope about losing.


Typical Court Street reveler.


Quit checking out my butt.

Leftover Pictures

Here are some pictures from the 2^nd annual Grover Family Game Night.

Mary blows out the candles on what I am required to say
was not a birthday cake because we were not celebrating her birthday.


The funky papers hanging on the bookshelf are our attempts to rip pieces
of paper into Christmas tree shapes behind our backs.


Props to Mom for funding the whole thing.


We like to keep winning in the family: my sister-in-law-in-law won
the jar of M&Ms by guessing closest to the right number.


Mary won the jar of Nerds. That's right—I counted every single one.


Oh, and here's us actually playing a game at Game Night. Fancy that.

Elder Dave

My roommate's name is Dave, as you may have gathered. He's taller than me. He's lived in Athens longer than me. He's several years ahead of me in our program. The utilities are in his name. He's engaged to a lovely woman.

Whenever I'm giddy and need someone to gloat to, I find him, as I did this morning when an essay I was working on went very well. Whenever I need to vent about the department's functioning or a particular assignment, I find him for sympathy. If there were any bullies about, I'd probably ask Dave to walk me to school.

There's only one problem: Dave's well over a year younger than me.

Not a problem, I guess, but interesting all the same.


(note: In composing this I went downstairs to confirm our mutual ages. Dave fed me something spicy he had just whipped up that included, as far as I can tell, black beans, onion, peppers, almonds, kidney beans, Granny Smith apples, corn, and tomato sauce. We ate it over Fritos. Vive le Bachelorhood!)

Lovesick, or

The Weapon of the Future is the Montage

I can't explain why, but I'm feeling lovesick right now. (Okay, that was a dumb thing to say, since the whole point of typing this is to try to explain it anyway.) You may remember the feeling: the mild anxiousness, the fluttery guts, odd swings between elation and despair. I've wanted to listen to the saddest songs I know all afternoon. My usually paralyzing nostalgia (for foreign lands and other days) has ebbed in favor of a new flavor of angst. I haven't felt this way in years, literally.

Alright, before I go any further, let me lay down some ground rules. Number one: no, Mom, I'm not actually in love, so don't get your hopes up just yet. Number two: yes, Internet Girlfriend(s), I still think you're sweet; let's flirt later.

If I was really in love, I wouldn't be talking about it—for one, it wouldn't be noteworthy enough for a blog post; for two, I'd be discreet (see post, 12.11.2008). The reason I'm talking about it, the reason it's worrying me, is that I can't explain it.

Here are the possible reasons I can come up with for why I might be feeling this way:

1. I watched several episodes of Freaks and Geeks this weekend at the behest of my roommate. I liked it. It made me feel like a high school again, which is where I spent a lot of time feeling lovesick. So maybe I'm just over-identifying with the characters.

2. I haven't had access to a (steel-string) guitar for two months. I didn't think this would bother me, being such a casual player, but it really has. I've found myself wandering around aimlessly at odd hours recently, and when I come to my senses I realize I'm looking for a guitar. Jeez, I sound like a hippie. Or a high-school cry baby theatre kid.

3. I've been on several dates in the past few months, all with charming women, and that's more than my average for a few years now. It could be an overdose of romance feeding back into my consciousness.

4. I could be in love. With who, though? The girl on Freaks and Geeks? She is a T-babe, but I don't usually go for imaginary girls. With you? Are we in love?

5. Perhaps I'm having a prescient emotion: perhaps love is on the way. How exciting!

My money's on the tv show. There's something about the mixture of film and music that is completely unfair to the senses. Throw on some dated t-shirts, intercut with shots of good times and slow-motion smiles, and choose a soundtrack of Journey-like proportions and you can't help but create something both completely false and inexorably compelling. I'm opposed to montage! (And yet, somehow, they're the best around. Nothing's ever gonna take them down.)

So what are your hypotheses? Why might I be feeling this way? (No PMS jokes, please.)