And you totally know I'm going to link to this every year

Merry Christmas.

You can just read what I wrote last year (er, actually ten years ago). And while once again things weren't exactly the same, they weren't entirely different, either.




(more holiday goodness over in the photoblog, by the way.)

I feel bad

because today while Christmas shopping at the Christian bookstore, I sneezed, and when the woman working at the register said, "God bless you" I laughed.

Here at AEFD we love our daily doses of irony.

AND YES IT IS IRONIC.

Oh? You were wondering how it all turned out?

Eh. Here you go. THE ROOF WOULDN'T STAY ON!!! It was annoying, and I got frosting everywhere and while my dad was making this little masterpiece:


I was trying to keep my pretty walls from caving in. So my creativity was not at its best when it FINALLY stayed together. I did the steeple decorating, but Jimmy and Laura did the rest. And here is the final product:



Look at that masonry work. Don't hire me to brick your house or caulk your bathtubs.

The Great Gingerbread Adventure II, part 1

This is the second time I have attempted to play architect in the kitchen; the first time I was a senior in high school and for three days, I was on a sugar buzz from frosting and our kitchen was a nightmare. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of that dazzling display of my gingerbread-creation skills, but because my dad got a brand! new! camera! for his birthday today, I was right there documenting every step of the way.

So, here are the preliminaries (I got ambitious and I'm building a church):






Yeah, it's going to be pretty awesome, if I can get it to stand up. But I'm not going to worry about that until tomorrow.

This story just keeps getting better and better

Last night, my dad called me during dinner:

"I just have one question for you."

"Okay."

"Have you ever had a dream where you're watching yourself do something? Like, you aren't in the dream, you're just looking at what's going on?"

"So, a third person dream, not a first person dream."

"Right."

"Yeah, I have those every once in a while."

[angrily disbelieving] "No you haven't."

[the unmistakable sound of my mother laughing]

"Yeah, I have, I--"

"Okay, BYE" [click]

Then, this morning, I got online to post that conversation, and my sister IMed me. I just couldn't leave you all without the rest of the story. (An important piece of information here is that one of Erin's chores is to take the trash out every Wednesday. It used to be my brother's job until he left for college.)

Erin: can you believe dad has never had a dream where he watches himself?
Erin: he was like, "i guarantee loren and jimmy have never had a dream like that"
Erin: and so he bet me that if either of you had, he'd take the trash out every other week
Erin: and yeah
Erin: it rocks

List: Things I want for Christmas that prove I'm a big geeky NERD

• my own webspace (aneyefordetail.com, anyone? yes? it would be fun, wouldn't it.)
  
• an external hard drive (not actually embarrassing, because I don't want to end up with nothing from my computer if it dies/is broken/etc.)
  
• this book about design principles. DESIGN. PRINCIPLES. Neeeeerrrddd.
  
• an extra laptop battery
• The second season of Full House. (quick note here to the parents: I'm pretty much banking on you guys pulling through for me on this one. PLEASE don't let me down.)
• Technically, I asked for a Fussy t-shirt (the black one) but went ahead and bought it in October before the price went up. Then I wore it and people made fun of me. Have you ever been SO EXCITED about something dorky and not even realized it until people made fun of you, and only THEN do you get that you are a big geek? That's the story of my "Writing well is the best revenge" shirt. I've embraced my inner geek and love that shirt and I figure if you think it's dumb it's because you're not clever enough to get it. So there.
  
• Ink cartridges, which I ask for every year

I think that's all I'm comfortable sharing with the general public. Ahem. I'm going to go...do...something. Rest assured, it's NOT geeky.

My packrat tendencies are surfacing

With finals, I was suddenly faced with a novel challenge: sit down and do some hard-core studying. Typically, I'll do my homework on the couch or in bed right before I fall asleep, because I'm usually writing papers or reading something. But now, because I have to actually WORK at things, I need to sit down and concentrate without the distraction of the ability to lean back and fall asleep.

This means I need my desk.

I like my desk. I have great posters around it, and a white board, and a bulletin board. In fact, there are a lot of things I keep in its general area, and I think that's the problem: the little four-letter word KEEP.

Evidently, since I suddenly have ten times more space than I did in my dorm room, I found it not only possible but also beneficial to KEEP EVERYTHING. Every bill I got this summer, every photocopied reading assignment, every schedule, every paper I printed and had to reprint ("I'll use it for scrap paper"), every piece of mail I got this year is currently piled on my desk. And this is great if I need to know how much I spent on electricity in July or what I scored on my very first (or second or third)Italian quiz, but it's a little ridiculous.

And I do need that space to study, but right now I have everything piled on the floor, and I'm wondering: am I going to throw it out? or am I just going to let it sit there because look, it's organized now?

I fear for my sanity and for the few shreds of neatness that I cling to right now, because I'm afraid I won't want to get rid of those articles about grant writing. And for the life of me, I don't understand why.

5 days til freedom

Speaking of which, bad time to be without an ice scraper, no?

Last week was about the fastest week of the semester. I was up until at least 3 everynight but hey! Stereotypical college student stuff is fun, especially the freaking out parts.

One more week, and I'll have fun stories about finals, bridesmaid dresses, and the inevitable snowstorm during the drive home.

Now if some of the good kind of Karma would just come my way...

Last night I had to scrape ice off of my car, the kind of ice that is thick and clear and really hard to break through to start scraping. It wasn't too bad (it was a slippery walk to the car, but that's more along the lines of those "embarrassing stories I don't like to tell" kinds of things), although I did break my ice scraper, one of those heavy-duty-also-has-a-brush-attached ones. And as I stood there with my broken ice scraper, I realized that I am a victim of Karma.

When I was younger, I had great fun riding in my mom's warm, dry van on snowy mornings, pointing out the cars that were unfortunate enough not to have been in a garage.

Oh, oh how I deserve every moment of cold mornings I've experienced since I started driving. I deserve those days of using an old cd case to make a little window to see, and the ones when I had to pray my little Ranger would make it out of the driveway. And I deserved standing there last night, two pieces of dead ice scraper in my hands.

Do not take your garages for granted.

It's just not funny

Something I have a very hard time with is laughing at inappropriate times. I often find the manner in which a statement is delivered to be the funny part rather than the statement itself. Think about that for a moment and you will see that this happens to be a big problem. Sometimes, after realizing that I've been laughing at someone's story since it started, I feel like I must look stupid sitting there laughing.

I guess I just appreciate a communicator who uses more than just words. As a writer, all I've got is words. I'm a terrible speaker and I have a very hard time expressing my thoughts on the fly. I'm not non-confrontational because I don't get mad or because I'm good at letting things go (ha! haha! hahahahaha!), but because I can't articulate myself well enough to form an argument, I keep quiet.

I can, however, express myself in writing, and I admire well-spoken and well-expressed prose. I can read things and giggle endlessly--which is partly me thinking my own interpretation is pretty clever (come on, we're all a little narcissistic in our own ways), but also the writer succeeding in getting the point across. I admire that and strive to become that kind of writer someday. I'm just not quite there yet, and if I don't get there, that's ok--there's not much room for humor in the technical writing field, however unfortunate that may be.

Yesterday at work it was really quiet, and I was reading something online that made me start giggling, and then I tried to stop but have you ever tried to stop laughing? It's such an ugly sound! Which is funny! And then you remember what you were laughing at in the first place! Which is funny too!

And really it's just a vicious cycle.