For Shame!

Between the hectic chaos of application deadlines and the holidays, I've been remiss in posting. I'm going to try and be better about that and about working on my novels now that I've entered waiting room limbo. As deadlines pass, I'm struck with paranoia that I've somehow forgotten some vital part of my applications and none of them will be considered. But I've double and triple checked, so this is patently false (I hope!).

Super Short Sum-Up:

My team let me down in the Big 12 Championship, but coming within 1 point and 1 second of beating the 3rd ranked team when you're only ranked 21 is pretty damn good in my opinion. Plus, everyone who scoffed at me for wanting to see Colt McCoy face Ndamukong Suh had to eat their words. And Suh kept McCoy from winning the Heisman, which made me perversely happy, especially with the incredibly rude and smug behavior of the Texas fans after the game.

The pinnacle of the night was the elevator ride after the game. We piled in with all Husker fans and who should get on at the next floor but TOM OSBORNE. TOM OSBORNE and his wife stood RIGHT NEXT to me in the elevator. I wanted to pull out my phone and snap a picture, but he looked heartbroken and I didn't want to be that fan. So instead I stood perfectly still and silent, while inside I was jumping up and down, shrieking in glee and cartwheeling (because the only place I can cartwheel without killing myself is in my mind): "I'mridinganelevatorwithTOMOSBORNE!I'mridinganelevatorwithTOMOSBORNE!
I'mridinganelevatorwithTOMOSBORNE!I'mridinganelevatorwithTOMOSBORNE!"
If you don't know who Tom Osborne is (and shame on anyone who doesn't), he is the GOD of Nebraska football. He lead us to three National Championships in the 90s and retired two years before I went to college at UNL. And I rode in an elevator with him!

Christmas was spent in Lincoln. Snowed in. Visiting my grama in the hospital every day. Possibly my least favorite way of spending the holiday. Though better than the last time we had to as my grama was merely recovering from surgery, not battling against cancer like my grampa. The good news: I still remember how to drive in over a foot of snow. The bad news: hospital food instead of a homemade Christmas dinner.

I picked up a cold just in time for my ten-hour drive home, which turned into a 12 hour drive home thanks to a traffic slowdown that caused me to spend an hour crossing the Oklahoma/Kansas border, which put me in OK City during rush hour.

New Year's was great. A vast improvement on last year's Bridget Jones-esque celebration. Friends, food, fun and exploding bottles of champagne.

It was followed by cold recovery, shopping and Sherlock Holmes (FAB-U-LOUS--except for that evil cliffhanger ending!).

In the midst of which God decided that as the rains this fall didn't succeed in washing Dallas off the map and the snow at Christmas didn't bury us, that he would FREEZE us out of existence. Last weekend saw the coldest temperatures Dallas has experienced in twenty years. A good 25-30 degrees below normal. So I stayed inside all weekend because temperatures in the single digits are only acceptable in Nebraska or other northern parts. I didn't move south so that I could continue to freeze my ass off. Apparently I'll have to move to Tahiti to return warmth to my hands and other extremities.

And that brings us to the present day. And a weekend that promises going out with friends and marathons of Psych and How I Met Your Mother (as I just got the most recent seasons in the mail from Amazon this week).

I hope your holidays were warmer and merrier than mine. One thing I do know: It won't take much for 2010 to be a better year than 2009. I just wish it was April already.

Today's Migraine is Brought to You by the Following Sponsors

The 700-page Manuscript accompanying the 300-page book-to-be. A beast of a proofreading project that landed on my desk this morning only an hour before I found out that I'd be filling in for one of my co-workers who was out sick (about 15 minutes before the meeting I had to run in her stead took place). So instead of buckling down and getting a jumpstart on the project, I had a day filled with delays and interruptions (and the only slightly dissipated paint fumes from yesterday). Part of me is hoping for a snow day tomorrow so that I can work on it from home instead. And I found out that I have to complete the 69 hours of proofreading on before next Wednesday (which is complicated by the fact that our office Christmas party is Tuesday afternoon).

And the 75-minute, three-plus accident obstacle course (otherwise known as my usually 25-minute commute home). First, the major street I take to the interstate is down to one northbound lane because of what seemed to be a party of cops and firetrucks and one injured car. After I clear that hurdle, an idiot decides to change lanes while driving next to me and nearly knocks me off the road. Then, 635 was literally a parking lot. It look me twenty minutes to go one mile to the first exit ramp on my side of town. I get off the interstate to find that someone has apparently knocked out the signal (flashing lights and four-way stops are never a good combination) on the north side of the bridge. So I have to go back west on the frontage road to the last major road that goes north, which of course does not connect to the eastbound road I had planned on taking home, so I have to go an extra mile north before I can finally get back east again. All of this appears to have been caused by the fact that the meteorologists predicted that there MIGHT be a slight CHANCE of snow TOMORROW. Which is only scary to me because apparently nobody in Texas can drive when there's not a bloody cloud in the whole freaking sky. (And the sun hadn't even gone down yet, either.)

The one ray of sun in my day: I turned on my blinker to move to the far right lane on the interstate, fully expecting it would be at least a mile before I'd be able to actually get over, and the guy next to me signals for me to roll down my window. Curious, I do. [[It is important to note here that I recently acquired a Nebraska Alumni license plate frame and decal for my car. And the following song is stuck in my head: "All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don't know who you are. You let me change lanes while I was driving in my car."]] The guy tells me that he was an '87 Husker and that he'll gladly let me go in front of him. I respond that he's "awesome" and quickly move over. I look forward to sharing that particular story with my Texas-loving grandad who predicted that if I put pro-Nebraska stuff on my car down here, it would end up vandalized. So in preparation for Saturday:

HUSKERS UNITE!

Follow-up Note: I've decided that Thai food is by far the best cure for a migraine. Though caffeine comes in a close second.

My Favorite Time of Year

The past four days have been quintessentially perfect fall days. Brilliant blue skies. No clouds. A light breeze. It feels crisp outside. Like the first time you crack open a brand-new book. There's something special about it. So cheering. Like maybe there's something right with the world. I have to open my moonroof and roll down the windows on my commute home. The perfect weather for a bowl of chili, a beer and a good game of football. Yesterday I got two out of three. My beloved team is breaking my heart. This is not unusual. I grew up during the era of amazing Nebraska football and it was so difficult to watch them play under Solich and Callahan while I was in school there. But I've stood by them through all of that. And I continue to stand by them; I am a husker through and through. But that doesn't mean I like them very much right now. They've let me down yet again. Whenever I start to think, "Hey we're good again!" They have a game like yesterday. And I want to shake them. And I ask myself why do I care? Why do I let myself care so much? Why can't I stop watching and caring about college football? Possibly for the same reason I can't completely right off my attempts to find a boyfriend. Despite the mountain of evidence from my past experiences that boys are unreliable and just cause trouble, I continue to search for "the one." In the past few months, my single friends have been increasingly getting boyfriends and it's making me feel more and more like a crazy old spinster. Except that I don't even have a cat (Allergic!) or dog for companionship.
In the meantime, I'm hoping for more beautiful fall days; I've had enough rain to last me for quite awhile.