Thanksgiving Highlights

It snowed! For real this time!

Okay. Backing up. Thanksgiving was great fun. Exhausting, but great fun. Quality time with the family during the day -- quality time with friends at night. (Hi Matt, Autumne, Andy, and Kajda!)

Some highlights:

We had a near-run-in on the drive home with an SUV that spontaneously decided to cross the median on I-35. Luckily there was a fence there -- although I have yet to figure out WHY there is a fence there. I was just glad it existed.

My grandparents came out for the holiday, which was super. I haven't seen them since July ... Considering I used to live an hour away and would go to the ranch on the weekends to get away from it all, it's been a harsh adjustment. In any case, it was great to see them again (and my dad's brother's entire family, which is rare, and my mom's sister and brother-in-law, which is even rarer -- it was a weekend full of visitors).

The sibs built one heckuva gingerbread "house" over the weekend (technically everybody in the family took part, but they did most of the work), of which I will have to post pictures when I'm at home on my own computer. It's pretty impressive.

My parents just redid the kitchen and it's beautiful. Thanksgiving was actually the fifth day it had been done -- and we put it to good use. Poor Mom ... It didn't stay clean for very long.

They've also acquired a new family member since I was last home -- a cute grey kitten named Edgar. He's surprisingly mellow (he's something of a Play-Doh kitty) and is DEFINITELY a lap cat. Which is unfortunate for me, since he also makes my eyes itch and my nose run.

Since then, I've managed to work roughly 20 hours (stop: realize that it's only noon on Tuesday) and sleep 6.5 hours (partly due to insomnia and partly because I was working 20 hours).

And it's snowed. I woke up this morning to a dusting of the fresh stuff. Gorgeous.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

?

The confusion continues. Tuesdays seem to be the days for odd discoveries. Hmmm ... Much stress. Big presentation for work tomorrow. I'm downright scared right now, but that's probably mostly due to the fact that I have NO IDEA what to expect. On the bright side, in 24 hours, it'll all be over. Thank goodness. Then there are just papers left, but papers I can handle. And a presentation for senior design, but that's a group thing. Ten days and it's just finals week. I like finals week. Things are oddly easier during finals week.
Read more

The Ashley Files: The Gerbil Story

I'm not totally sure what spurred this memory, but this is a story that needs to be told. Over the years, I've had a lot of random jobs. It started when I was young and glued pictures for bridge reports (my family's version of "working with the family business). I had a job at Subway one summer (easily my least-favorite job), was a bridge inspection field technician with the family business, worked in a church camp kitchen, and was a lab assistant. The summer I started this blog, I was working at the school's day care. It was my second summer there. The job was certainly not what I was hoping to do the rest of my life -- but for a nineteen-year-old it was decent money and okay hours. And hey, a couple times a week I got to hang out at the pool and get paid for it. Not a bad gig. [My dad also referred to it as the "world's best birth control" and he may have been right.] I don't remember a lot of the ins and outs of that summer -- most
Read more

2019 Year In Review

It was awful. Fine. It wasn’t all bad. I have a niece now. My job is pretty awesome. I like my residence fine. I … avoided all parking tickets? But wow, was there a lot of garbage in the meantime. An unexpected funeral for a friend who died decidedly too young. Family members in and out of (and back into) the hospital. And throughout the last third, the specter of cancer hanging over everything. While a part of me keeps saying, “There is no need to dwell on all the crap, Ashley,” the rest of me is almost too exhausted for optimism. 2020 has potential, yes. Buckets of potential. Oodles of it. 2020 is chaotic neutral staring us in the face. Switzerland with anger issues. Taunting us with its possibilities. RIP 2019. 2020... Please don't be a jerk.
Read more