Some Houses Wear Christmas Well

Above are a few photos of Thomasina in festive mood. I like that our house is turning out to be particularly Christmas-suited. Perhaps because it's Victorian and angle-y and cozy in size, it's been happily fulfilling my ideal of cottage living, despite all the boxes and unpacked items that continue to clutter the floor.

Ummm....hi

So, what's going on? Just a little too much. There's the new house that needs a bottomless amount of attention. Still unpacking, still finding places for stuff, still fixing things, still needing to buy furniture and rugs and a 3-page list of other items. It seems like every little thing needs to be thought through, just like when one starts a new job and every task that in a year's time will be second nature is for the moment a frustrating process of looking up information, asking for help, sorting through documents, and making mistakes. What do we do about recycling? How do we change the filter on the furnace? Should we keep the mops here, or here, or here? What happens if I push this button on the oven? I know we have lightbulbs somewhere, where are they? How would it look if we moved the phone stand over there? What color rug should we get in here? Just, so many discussions and decisions and things to be "looked into" or "figured out". On top of that, there has been drama at Dave's workplace that's set askew our still-shaky sense of security. And I'm learning that BIG things are sometimes too big for blog topics. But here are some little things I can share!

We set up our first Christmas tree this weekend. And I had a sublime moment on Sunday night as I curled up in our recliner, cozy under a thick green fleece blanket, in full view of the lit tree, drinking a glass of egg nog and reading Nigella Lawson's new Christmas cookbook. Very nice indeed!

Over the weekend I seem to have forgotten ALL my various work and Internet passwords. In fact, I had to reset my password just to post to this blog.

I washed dishes in our dishwasher this weekend! And as a result felt somewhat left out. Cheated. There's something satisfying and zen-peaceful about washing dishes, and I think I'll probably continue washing dishes by hand except when there's quite a lot of them or they're particularly icky.

Shopping the sales of Black Friday was a terrifying experience, and I won't be making that mistake again. Except that I did get a number of things we needed for pretty decent prices. But still. Not again. $10 off a blender just isn't worth it.

I find it odd that I'm not afraid of my basement. It's a scary 116-year old basement, with dangerous and uneven stairs, low ceiling, multiple doors behind which anyone could be waiting to attack, and going down into it feels remarkably like walking into an open grave (seriously...it's exactly grave-shaped), and yet this is the only basement I've ever been in that hasn't made me want to finish my business and hurry upstairs with borderline panic. Curious. I just realized that this weekend when I was humming and puttering around the basement -- at night, no less!

Our house looks awfully cute with a wreath on the door!

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving and can enjoy pre-Christmas!

Nesting

Things are heating up, as we endeavor to make Thomasina (our new house) a home.

She got a fresh coat of paint, turning her (in just one sunny Saturday) from a frousy, fussy stripe-wearing matron into a witty attention-grabbing sophisticate. Or, at least I like to think so. Judge for yourself:

And now there's also furniture, finally purchased after a full-month of measuring and comparison shopping. The furniture is assembled and fits Thomasina's new look. We seem to be going for a slightly bohemian look but with the organic symmetry of Arts and Crafts style. A place where perhaps Christina Rossetti might have felt at home, except in this case with television and multiple bathrooms.

And now Saturday we usher in the remainder of our dusty and confused belongings. They're not exactly being as thoughtfully packed as I hoped, and are instead being dragged out unprotected by tissue paper or bubble wrap, heaped together in laundry bins and trash bags, a confusion of things we forgot we even owned. The impending move apparently freaked our DVD player so much it simply quit working, choosing death over the chaos of a new home. The TV is threatening to follow suit. However it happens, we're moving as much as we can on Saturday.

It has been nice living with less at the house. There are a few things I'm learning we can do without...quite easily. For instance, since we don't yet have a TV at the new house, we've now gone without it for about 2 weeks. Actually, I do miss that a little. Especially watching movies. But we don't really need it. Same with the Internet and our land-line phone. I only have maybe 1/4 of my clothes and shoes at the house, and turns out that's actually about all I need. It gets boring after a while, but that's it.

On the flip side, we already managed to bring all our books to the house...and while unpacking them yesterday I discovered that Thomasina hasn't really felt like a home until that moment. Could we do without our books? Of course. But what, really, is a home without them? I unpacked those books with a contented sigh, just as I would after a feast of comfort food.

And one of the strangest aspects of all this is the ambiguity with which I've been viewing the home we're leaving. For so long all I could focus on is getting out of that little apartment, away from the rude neigbors, the sound of other peoples' stereos and arguments, the smell of other peoples' dinners, the space that never could contain all we needed and wanted to do with our lives. But now that I'm packing it all up I feel a real sense of loss. I miss always being so close to Dave. In the apartment, physically we could never be further than a room away; now, an entire floor can separate us. I remember not just the bad times we've had while in the apartment, but the many, many good times...reading Rebecca on the couch, glancing out the window while the snow falls quietly over the trees and electrical wires of the alley. How our little space shone at Christmas because our decorations filled it to the brim. They won't make much of a dent at the new house. I even kind of miss the noises and smells and the buzzing of lives going on just outside our walls. I suppose it's because we were caretakers for the building. I knew the place like most tenants wouldn't, and feel a sense of responsibility connected to it. While it was a hard place in which to live, it also served as a cradle for our goals and dreams. I owe it my thanks, and it deserves the dignity of a proper good-bye. After removing the last of our belongings and cleaning it for the last time, I plan to spend a private moment there before turning over the keys. I hope it's refinished and polished to a gleam...and eventually filled with another newlywed couple excited about their future.

The Mysteries of October

This has been the weirdest month.

First, the snow. Not even sleet, but real tree-padding snow. I'm out there at 6am, trying to leave for work, still wearing my spring jacket, desperately searching for an ice scraper, but at the same time distracted from my swearing and car-scraping task by the breathtaking, sparkling, otherworldliness of the first snowfall. And this year it turned out to be even more otherworldy because of the leaves still on trees, making it appear as if we lived in a world of giant cauliflower. For awhile, I felt awfully happy to live in Minnesota.

Then, Dave and I close on our house this Thursday. Which is also weird, because just a little over 2 months ago Dave didn't even have a job and a little black cloud constantly hovered over our heads. So how WEIRD it is that all of a sudden now we're going to have a house? How did that happen? It has a "poof!" wish fulfillment quality to it, even though clearly we put in a lot of work to make this happen.

Also weird: being a student again. The reading, the group work, the awkward ice breakers and small talk during breaks, the research papers, the funny little cliques and battling egos. It's pulling me back to the late 90s-early 00s when I was last a graduate student, feeling those insecurities and ambitions once more. But this time it's more complicated because I'm used to being in charge of the classroom now, and it's hard for me to not jump in and take the lead. After the first day I thankfully realized that I needed to tone down the Hermione Granger stuff, and allowed myself to be appropriately passive...which in the end made things nicer for all, myself included. But it only adds to the mysteriousness of this October...me sitting there in class thinking "what am I doing sitting here in a class?" as if just waking up from a fitful dream.

Hope your October is full of happy and mysterious surprises as well!

Neglectful

As it's been pointed out to me, I've been rather neglecting the blog. Not so long ago I was thinking of doing two blogs...and yet now I can barely maintain the one. Shows what I know.

But here comes the excuses.

Since Dave is now once again employed. And while neither of us make great money (that's what you get for going into social services), together we do ok. So we decided to gather all our resources, time and energy together and make the Big Move. Turns out buying a house is kind of an involved thing.

On top of the Big Move, I started my graduate program. And Dave, of course, is getting used to his new job.

Anyway, we found our "dream" house! Thank goodness, because for awhile there I was thinking we'd be stuck with "frustrating compromise" house. This afternoon we have the inspection, which is causing me some anxiety. I mean...it's become pretty obvious by now that things in my life do NOT often travel a smooth road. So I'm holding my breath, waiting for the next crisis to occur. Hopefully I'm wrong and those "wait...you CAN'T have what you want after all!" days are behind us. But I've thought that before, too, and have been proven wrong. Which is why I'm wringing my hands over the inspection.

I'll continue to post updates, and after today I should have some photos to share as well.

Oh Deary Me...

This has been a roller coaster summer. No lazy, carefree days...just arms-out screaming as life plunges us to the depths and then just as fast raises us to the heights, and nobody can see anything because everything is just moving too fast. Hair in our faces. Whiplash necks. Hoarse throats.

But at least we're on the upswing of the roller coaster now. Dave got a new teaching position, after a summer of much anxiety and dark imaginings. Which means we'll once again push forward on the house-hunting. It's funny how Good Things tend to come on their own terms. We wanted to buy a house in June/July because we knew that period offerred the rare window of time when we wouldn't be swamped by the "education calendar" ~ if you work in education, you understand the importance of timing everything out just so. So it's kind of another little test that we'll be (hopefully) buying a home/moving right at the beginning of a school year, while Dave is adjusting to a new school and while I'm adjusting to balancing full-time work with full-time graduate school. Literally, the timing probably couldn't be worse. But we really need to make this happen before the snow flies and (perhaps more importantly) before certain tax incenstives expire.

So I won't complain! Not complaining! We're very happy with this development. Perhaps it's just that the universe really, really wants to make sure we want this house...I mean, short of an avalanche or falling trees, it seems every obstacle has been thrown at us. Actually, I take that back. I better not tempt fate by saying more ~ I can already hear it mocking "I'll give you something to complain about!" All the best things in my life have come on their own tardy schedule, so I'll just be content that we're able to move forward now. But do know this. If we've ever done favors for people, we'll be calling in those favors over the next few months (I feel like the Godfather when I say that..."there may come a time when I call upon you to perform a service"). And I also suspect I'll be using my full allotment of vacation time by the end of December, which will make for a very grumpy spring.

Other than that great news, we've been getting healthier. I've been happily losing the weight I gained over this summer (at some point, both Dave and I decided that since life had become particularly hard, it meant that calories suddenly wouldn't count...like a free pass or compensation).

And for being such an axious summer, we have had a particularly good summer in terms of getting together with friends. Our friends are such a blessing! Never has that been more apparent.

Funny how all toppled things end up righting themselves in due time.

And now, I'm taking tomorrow off! We're meeting with a mortgage broker and enjoying one last splash of free time before Dave officially starts his new position on Monday. Yay!

HP Update

I've had some questions on where HP is at. How lovely! Thanks for asking.

This blog was meant to chart HP's progress, along with my thoughts on the struggles and victories found in writing my first novel. But it's turned into a more general "what's going on in mylife" blog. Especially because this has been such a frustrating and tumultuous year, it's been quite therapeutic blogging. Thank you blog! And thank you commentors! And more often than not, I find it difficult to talk about my progress on HP. I mean...I'm at the revising stage, so it's really the writing equivalent of cleaning out and organizing a closet, which is very time-consuming and involving for me but maybe not so interesting to other people. Earlier in the writing process would have been a better time to blog ~ that's when all the exciting stuff happens! But at that point blogging would also have been an unwanted distraction. So I've just been updating about HP when something interesting happens, rather than sharing what's been going on for the last month or two...which includes weeding out excessive "to be" construction, clarifying time shifts, questioning my overuse of adjectives, and other "house-keeping" (boring but necessary) tasks.

As for the blog itself, I'm finding that I'm not sure where I want to keep its focus. If I'll return to focusing primarily on writing/teaching/etc., or if I'll keep it focused on the general doings of my life. I need to think about that. The blog is 1-year old now, so perhaps it's a good time to decide what I really want it to be.

But to answer the questions about HP...I am working on it. Every week. In some cases every day. Never fear! Progress is being made. It won't be long before I'm trying to pawn copies off on people and begging for feedback. So, what IS happening?

Well, I thought the first 100 pages were totally finished. But then I read a printed version of those first 100 pages...and for some reason reading something in print is a very different experience than reading something from a computer screen. I tell my students that all the time. In fact, I go so for as forcing my students to bring actual printed copies of their drafts to their writing groups, and then read those drafts out loud to each other. And when meeting with students, we always start by reading part of their work out loud. The flaws usually become immediately apparent. I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps when seeing something on a computer, your mind goes on auto-pilot and compensates for problems...or at least makes them easier to deny ("hmm, that doesn't seem right but nobody will notice"). But on paper it's far easier to read something the way other people will read it. It's kind of like the difference between purposely looking at yourself in a mirror versus accidentally catching a glimpse of yourself in a mirror. Know what I mean? So when revising this section on the computer, I was like "sure, that's good enough" and felt ready to move on. But by the time I finished reading it on paper, each page was covered with red ink, question marks, and frownie-faces.

Anyway. It needed some clean-up. Nothing creative or fun. Just proofreading. So that's what I'm doing now, and hope to finish today so I can finally move onto the middle part of the novel... which I've been talking about doing since last fall.

All this trouble will serve me well as an example next time I teach, when students suggest you can just read a paper over once and call it "revision."

Tall buildings, Impressionism, and Buddy Guy

Dave and I have returned from our escape to Chicago! What a swell way to celebrate my birthday. I'm going to be a lazy blogger and just list some of the fun things we did on our jaunt.

~ Took Amtrak down and passed the time listening to Devil in the White City on my iPod

~ Ate macaroni and cheese in the dining car (I've always wanted to dine on a train)

~ Deftly avoided most beggars

~ Had popcorn at Garrett's

~ Enjoyed brunch at the Signature Lounge on the 96th floor of the Hancock Building

~ Explored the Rookery and its Frank Lloyd Wright designed lobby

~ Ate hot dogs and chocolate cake at Portillo's

~ Saw authentic pirate ship treasure, dinosaur skeletons, almost every conceivable animal (in stuffed form), Egyptian sarcophogi (sp?), and took a stroll through the Earth's evolutionary history in the Field Museum of Natural History. Oh! They also had those cool plastic-molding machines that they used to have at Como Zoo!

~ Splashed around the fountains at Millenium Park

~ Saw French Impressionist, modern American, and modern European paintings at the Chicago Institute of Art (and yes, we did pose fittingly in front of American Gothic = see photo)

~ Saw these weird minature rooms at the Chicago Institute of Art...I can't describe them, nor did we think to take photos. They're like dollhouse rooms, except made with obsessive authenticity and craftsmanship, each room representing a specific country and time period

~ Saw Buddy Guy perform at his own blues club, and got his autograph

~ Successfully avoided shopping on Mag Mile (ok, I did stop in Macy's and Nordstrom's for somethings in particular but that was it)

~ Took tea at The Drake's Palm Room, and then spent the night (my birthday night) in one of their fancy-shmancy executive suites

~ Received a gorgeous (albeit cumbersome) bouquet of birthday flowers from wonderful Dave

~ At Oak Street Beach we fed a seagull some Garrett's Popcorn. He liked it.

~ On a blustery evening we walked along the lake to Navy Pier

~ Visited Navy Pier's stained glass museum

~ Took a skyline boat tour

Things we wish we had time for, but will have to wait until next trip:

~ Ride the El (didn't do it on this trip...we were within walking distance to just about everything and our hop on/hop off tour did the driving for us)

~ See more of Chicago's neighborhoods

~ Visit the Shedd Aquarium

~ Dave wants to see the submarine at the Museum of Science and Industry

~ Hit more nightlife (I was being kind of Old Lady on this trip; except for the blues club we took it easy at our hotel most nights)

~ Get some deep dish pizza (we did have stuffed pizza on this trip, but didn't make it to Pizzeria Uno or Gino's)

~ Do the architecture boat tour (and a history tour to boot)

~ Get on Oprah

David Day and Terri Day

Every summer Dave and I indulge ourselves with special days meant to celebrate all we've each accomplished over the year...and to counteract any tendencies toward taking each other for granted. And plus, don't you think we all deserve more attention? Adults barely even celebrate their own birthdays! That's crazy! There should be multiple days every year where each of us holds the world back and devotes some focused time to celebrating our own unique brand of amazingness. Or, even better, allows someone else to shine the spotlight on us. So I host "David Day" and Dave hosts "Terri Day" and it's chock full o' fun! Frankly, I think I enjoy planning "David Day" even more than having my own "Terri Day." It's so fun planning a whole day around a single goal: showing someone you love how much you love them.

This year's round of "days" turned out to be more low-key than previous years...but more relaxing.

Dave woke up and was given a printed "David Day Agenda"along with a gift (books). I also made a huge breakfast for him, including eggs, sausage, butter-fried mushrooms, and homemade lemon/raspberry muffins (I got the recipe from SmittenKitchen.com, and I tell you it's freaking amazing!):

Those of you who follow this blog know that sometimes I force spa treatments on my long-suffering husband. Well....we has some left-over cuces, so I thought he might enjoy a cooling eye treatment to relax him before our day o' fun.

Then we went for a long walk at Hidden Falls and eventually enjoyed a picnic lunch (you can see some of the left-over lemon/raspberry muffins there...I wish I had one right now).

Then it was off to the MN History Center to see The Greatest Generation exhibition, the main attraction for Dave being this here armoured car. Dave sure loves armoured vehicles.

Since he loves armoured vehicles so much, I bought him this little souvenir.

Then we had a relaxing evening at home, where I made fresh salsa:

The next weekend was Terri Day, and since Dave is not as much into taking photos of every detail as I am, we don't have many photos to share of Terri Day. But Dave made breakfast in bed for me...quiche, scones, clotted cream, fresh pineapple, yogurt, and something called "wine soda." All things I love. He also bought me this beautiful bouquet:

Then we went to the Titanic exhibit at the Science Museum, had lunch on the terrace of The Liffey, and spent a relaxing evening watching a travel DVD about English villages that Dave surprised me with.

The video was hilarious (not intentionally). In one village by the sea, the tide would come and flood what looked to outsiders like a parking lot (or "car park" as they'd say). Rather than putting a sign up for visitors alerting them that it wasn't a car park, they instead just let people park there then gathered to laugh at them once the tide came in and visitors returned to find their cars underwater. They even took photos of the distressed car-owners as they struggled to move their cars, and then posted all the photos in the local pub....like a "wall of mockery." They interviewed one toothless nasty person from this village, who was like "ahh...we sympathize with the visitors, it's a tough thing..." Well, then how bout this. PUT UP A SIGN! How about doing something to stop it from happening, rather than just taking photos and laughing? Answer: it's more fun to mock. Dave called it Schadenfreude Village. In fact, every village they featured had a subtle (or not so subtle) "damn tourists" subtext. And while it was all obviously scripted, the villagers couldn't even pretend they were speaking extemporaneously...they'd insert pauses where they shouldn't be, stumble over their words, or speak all their lines in one breath: "You (pause) should-go-see-Aunt-Madge-she (very quickly, then followed by awkward pause) will set you up with a nice (long pause) pint." Anyway, it was very funny.

So, that's the story of David and Terri Days.

Since Last Time...

We've been busy, and so have had little time to blog. One of the fun things we had going on was bringing our nephew, Nick, to the slotcar track at Dave's favorite hobby store. Nick had a great time racing his slotcar, and we had a great time too. Nick is some kind of slotcar wizard. Neither Dave nor I were able to beat him in a race (and believe me, we tried...none of this "oh, let the kid win" stuff), and eventually the guy running the place gave Nick a more difficult track because Nick had so clearly mastered the track on which he started. And even with the more difficult track he figured that out pretty quickly too. There's skill to the slotcars...you have to ease up on the handle things (you can see this in the bottom photo) around the corners or else your car will go shooting off the track like a freaking bullet. So the trick is to keep the car going as fast as it can, but also to stay on the track. The cars we were using go about 80 miles per hour, but there are specialty-built ones that go well over 100...which is insane. After slotcars we went to the military museum...somewhere. I don't really know where it is ~ I'm a girl. That's Dave's kind of stuff, and I basically just went along to take photos. And finally we went on the trolley over by Lake Harriet. A really full day of various vehicle-oriented fun! We love spending time with Nick. He is such a sweet, smart, patient, and pleasant young man.

~

Other than that, there's been Dave's job search. He has an interview on Wednesday, but not for a teaching job. I don't know how I feel about that. Maybe that's a good thing? I mean, perhaps being a teacher is just more hassle than it's worth, especiallys since one could do many other (far easier) things and get paid more money...and not have teenagers swearing at you, parents blaming you because their student doesn't do their homework (yes...some parents do believe that teachers are merely hired parent-surrogates), and dealing with almost criminally insane administrators. Maybe THAT'S why the average career-span of a teacher is a mere 5 years ~ work constantly, little pay, and treated like poo. But on the other hand, Dave went through considerable time, sacrifice and money to switch careers and pursue teaching, and I'd hate for him to give it up so soon. He does have the "calling." And maybe there IS some magical school where he'll be treated as the well-educated, dedicated professional he is. Maybe he can find that school and be happy there. It could be just around the corner. So I have mixed feelings about him interviewing for non-teaching positions. But, goldangnabit, I also want to move...NOW! So I guess wherever the money is coming from, maybe that's ok for now.

~

As for me, I have been writing. I'm stuck in the revision whirlpool, however. I keep revising the same things over and over and over. Then I say "I promise next session I'll move forward" but then the next session I read over what I revised the previous day and see all kinds of little things that could be improved. The other day I spent 2 hours revising a single paragraph. At that point, it's not even "revising" anymore. Does this kind of nit-picking make the novel better? Well...yes, I do believe it does! A novel is nothing more than the sum of its parts, so each sentence needs to be improved if it can be. But it's also making it nearly impossible for me to actually finish the BIG revisions that are still awaiting my attention. They're like "hello! Over here in chapter 21! We've got faulty character development going on, so maybe you want to stop fretting over subject-verb agreement in that single chapter 3 sentence. We've got plot holes to fill! How about spending a little time on that, lady?" I need to pull myself away from this charybdis and move forward toward bigger revisions.

~

Finally, we decided to head to Chicago for a week this summer. Yay! Even though suddenly one of us is without a job, we're STILL going to take a vacation. Take that! Take that, unemployment! We're going on vacation anyway. Neener, neener, neener! So what if you suddenly tanked our new home-buying and new car-buying plans. You can't keep us down! Maybe we'll get on Oprah and that will be the day she doles out both new homes and new cars to everyone in the audience! Maybe if we spend some time around her studio, telling passers-by our story, one of her producers will go "they're the face of this horrible economy!" and have us come on her show...which will somehow result in our own reality TV show! Ok, that would be pretty boring...pretty much just us going to Target, working at computers, and periodically getting up to go look in the fridge. So maybe we'll have our own talk show instead ~ I have ideas for that! And then while I'm on her show, I can slip her the MS of my novel and she'll LOVE it and make it the first in her "Unpublished Book Club" series, and then it will be made into a movie starting Toni Colette and Conan O'Brien in his first film role. And even if none of that happens, I hear Chicago has good pizza and a couple museums, so we're bound to at least have fun.

The Creativity of Sadness

As fate would have it, the same day as my "the bad times are behind us!" anniversary post, my husband was laid off. This was his first full-time teaching job after getting his licensure, and we hoped he would be there long-term ~ it was close, paid pretty well, and he was finally getting into the swing of things. Plus, we were planning to invest in a new home this summer. After years of struggle and uncertainty, we finally thought things were calming down and we could move forward on all the plans we'd put on hold. But fate has not finished with us, it seems. Apparently the universe keeps thinking "hmmm...they are STILL not toughened up enough yet! Let's keep messing with these folks."

Certainly, we aren't the only people experiencing tough times now, and luckily we're not in danger of losing our home or in financial straights...we really did make hay while the sun shone, so we have a nice safety net for the time being. But the "thwarted hopes and dreams" quality of this loss is really slapping us around and making life seem, well, for lack of a better word: mean. And being this sad when it's spring and birds are busy and lilacs are about to bloom...well, that makes the whole situation even more taunting.

But, hell, I'm a writer. And it occurred to me that, hey! The novel I'm writing is about "thwarted hopes and dreams," and how a major loss can end up putting someone on a better path in the long run. It's about struggling with "should have beens" as opposed to realities. It's about grief, madness, and fears so deep they're supernatural. I mean...yeah, things really suck right now, but holy moly am I in the right place to start tearing through the novel revisions. What better time could there be to dig into my ghost story. So this coming weekend, instead of feeling sorry for myself and walking around crying and eating nothing but toast, I'm going to put all that foul energy into Haunted People and make it come alive like never before. There are advantages right now to being in the middle of final revisions to a gothic novel, and I better make use of my melodramatic mood before things start getting all happy again.

Silverware Anniversary

Apparently the modern 5th anniversary gift is silverware. So Dave and I went out to dinner and USED silverware to, you know, eat our fancy food. Because who buys each other silverware for an anniversary? Although...in the midst of my mocking I realize that we could use a nice set of casual flatware. And I wouldn't turn down a silver tea set.

Anyway, Dave and I celebrated our 5th anniversary on May 1. So I want to ignore novel-writing updates for the moment and devote a few words to this anniversary. Life has been far from easy for us over these five years. Probably more difficult than either Dave or I have ever admitted to each other, in our efforts to protect each other from our darkest feelings and fears. Marriage for us did not initiate the typical future of a nice home, children, or even a comforting ritual of domesticity. The first 5 years of our marriage have been typified by flux and struggle, but also a brilliant awakening to what marriage really is.

In that way, I think the first five years of our marriage changed who we are. And it is that I celebrate on our anniversary, and it's for that I thank Dave. My idea of marriage has grown from a pretty thing to celebrate with gifts and flowers and simple words of love, to something boundless, bold, alive, and selfless in ways previously unimaginable. As we look toward the next five years I pause to appreciate the many blessings of the first five, when the bond of our marriage was forged to such strength and "love" stood to its full -- astounding -- height. I am so damn happy.

So happy anniversary, Dave. Like the little comic book I made for you concludes, "I'm more in love with you than ever."

Dating Again

This Saturday I attended a class at The Loft on publishing, and learned that getting published is pretty much like dating.

1. The more you get your stuff out there, the more likely you'll find someone who is interested.
2. You can't be shy...force yourself to approach as many publications as possible.
3. Contact publications in as many ways as you can (email, snail mail, websites, social networks).
4. Ignore what publications say they want (formatting/style): just send them your stuff anyway.
5. Don't let rejection get you down.
6. Aim low at first ~ certain, less-desirable, publications are more likely to say yes.
7. Once you've conquered the less-desirable publications, ditch them to aim higher.
8. In finding "the one," remember you just need one yes out of hundreds.
9. If two publications are interested in you, play one off the other to get what you want.
10. View "the one" as a partner ~ neither you nor your publisher is more or less important.

Now, that's not really how I, personally, dated. My dating strategy was to just go out with whoever asked me out, keep going out with them if I liked them but not if I didn't want to anymore, and if nobody asked me out just keep doing my own stuff. So, I may be in trouble with the publishing thing. I'm not too lazy to write a frickin' novel, but I may be too lazy to bother with the publishing game.

So here's my plan, if publishing is like finding "the one". I met my husband simply because he was seated next to me at our graduate school commencement ceremony, so perhaps that's also how I'll meet my publisher. From now on, wherever I am, I'll ask the person sitting or standing to my left if they want to publish my novel. Problem solved.

That Ben Franklin Sure Liked to Keep Busy

So, Philadelphia was flag-freakin'-tastic! The conference was great. Not only was the convention center itself aesthetically appealing, but the sessions were informative, well-organized, and practical. Maya Angelou rocked the house as keynote speaker, by the way. She's saucy + wise, which is a winning combination. I can't even explain how great she was. The word "profound" will have to suffice. And the session that my colleague Wood and I presented went perfectly well. 200 people signed up to attend, which had me a bit worried, but of course thinking about it is far more stressful than acutally doing it. We put a lot of work into our presentation, so are happy with its success. And that it's over.

Dave joined me in Philly so we could twist a mini vacation out of my free time, and we tacked on a couple extra days after the conference as well. We're so glad we did! I'm not sure if it's because Philly is that amazing, or merely because we've been starved for fun, but we had a bu-last! A BLAST! Even walking around the olden graveyards, we were like "this is the best old graveyard EVER! This is so FUN!" I felt like we'd been living on gruel for a year and were finally given a cookie or something. Not even an especially nasty bout of food poisoning tainted our experience. I think someone could have shot me in the leg and I'd still have hobbled my way over to the Liberty Bell, exclaiming "This is the best bell EVER! I love it here!" So regurgitation be damned...we were gonna enjoy Philly! We ate cheese steaks (more delicious than expected), saw a crazy number of "first American" things, like the first bank, first post office, first fire department, etc., visited Independence Hall, and even passed Danny Bonaduce (and his posse) on the street. Dave also got to visit the Ordinance Musem at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland. In case you're wondering, his favorite tank there is the Grizzly.

Meanwhile, I'm left to ponder Ben Franklin. I suspect people secretly hated him and all his "I'm going to start this up, I'm going to do that, I'm in charge of all this here!" I thank him and everything, but I also think if I knew him in person I might want to slap his glasses off and yell "calm down, already!" Nevertheless, here's to you BF.

Strategic Procrastination

So, how's HP going? I was progressing pretty well, but then decided to start at the beginning again. I'm just not happy enough about those earlier chapters. They need further refining. Part of me thinks I'm procrastinating about moving forward to the really difficult chapters...the chapters that really need work. It's like someone who maybe has an entire garage to clean, but instead spends their time polishing the already-shiny silver. But the other part of me thinks I'm being strategic. The first chapters set the stage for everything that follows, and if the first third of the novel isn't really tight nothing else will work. Adding to the "smart" category is the fact that whenever I change something in the beginning of the book, it has to be followed through during the rest of the book. So if I'm really happy with the first third, then revision in the rest of the novel will go that much smoother because I won't have to re-tie all my literary knots. Whatever it is, I'll be patient with myself. As long as I'm writing, and as long as the novel is improving, then why worry.


Also, quite a while back my super-smart writer friend -- known as JoJo -- read and critiqued my earlier revisions. I read and printed her critique, but then put it aside...thinking I would finish the entire revision first, and then go back and make updates based on her wise critiques. I recently re-read her critiques and decided I should make some of those revisions right now. I'm going to take most of her advice because she's so perceptive, creative, and also because in my mind she kind of represents my ideal audience.


Anyway. Part of me feels I'm spinning my wheels, part of me thinks it's important I take my time with the all-important first third of the novel. No matter what happens or how far I get, soon I will need to start learning about publishing. I don't need to have the whole novel totally revised to start trying to gauge interest. This April I'm attending a class at The Loft on publishing, since I really am clueless about selling my work. I hate selling things! I've been published before, but I'm so lazy about the whole process. That's one thing I will for sure need to correct this summer.

Nothing else going on. This weekend I was sick, Dave spent the ENTIRE weekend hunched over close to 100 student papers, and we watched my parents' cat...whose favorite passtime is watching water drip out of a faucet.

No More Crazy Lady

Dave and I have officially resigned our caretaking position, effective March 1. We'll still, obviously, live in our current place until we buy a house. But now we no longer have to clean up after our rude and careless neighbors (honestly most of the neighbors are nice, but three of them cause at least 90% of the work). And we no longer have to "work" where we live, which means no more dealing with unexpected emergencies, no more knocks on our door at 2am, no more dealing with tenant complaints/issues, no more being on call, and -- best of all -- no more of us having any contact with the screaming, verbally-abusive crazy lady who has been the bane of our existence since we moved in. I could go into all the various ways and reasons we hate this woman, but I'm just letting it go. As of March 1 she simply no longer exists to us.

The caretaking has saved us about $40,000 over the length of our service, and it was a great deal. Despite all my complaints above, it usually was not that much work compared to the money we saved. It allowed us to pay for our wedding and honeymoon out of pocket, go on a few trips, pay off all our debt, live on a single income after Dave quit his job to go back to school full-time, and has now allowed us to save a nice chunk for a house. The demands and frustrations of the caretaking was definitely worth it, considering what the savings allowed us to accomplish. But with both of us working now and with our goals for the most part met, we don't really need the extra savings. At least, we don't need the extra money as much as we need the extra time. As early as September we were talking about quitting, but decided to hold out as long as we could. Now with spring coming up -- and all the annoying duties that comes with that -- we decided now was the time to pull out.

It will seem a luxury to just come home from work and not need to even think about when/if the building needs to be cleaned. I can't remember a weekend where we didn't spend our Saturday doing some kind of caretaking. And how nice it will be to enter our unit and know for certain there will not be a little note under our door alerting us to some new problem or issue that needs dealing with. How amazing it will be to actually feel comfortable spending an evening at home, knowing that our movie or dinner will not be interrupted by a knock on the door. And it will seem blessedly odd to not have to shovel snow or mow the lawn...and to be able to go out of town without making complicated arrangements to cover our duties while we're away. We won't have to police the landlord's policies and deal with the consequent arguments, complaints and (in case of the crazy lady) threats. It's been about 6 years since our home has just been a home, and not merely another place where we work.

So, financially this means less eating out, less spending money, and more strict adherence to our budget. But personally this is a big step toward us taking better care of ourselves and focusing on what's really meaningful right now. So goodbye caretaking! Thanks for everything you've done for us. Goodbye tenants! We'll see you in the hallways, but we no longer care if your toilet doesn't flush or if your neighbor is being loud. And goodbye crazy lady! We never have to speak to you -- or your case worker -- again!

Dave's birthday is Monday and he said quitting the caretaking is the best gift he could receive. Which is good, because now we'll have a lot less money for gifts :)

That said, we're still caretakers through Saturday, and we promised we would clean the building one final time, and sounds like the giant snowfall is not going to wait until our duties are done. Why can't it just wait until next week? So looks like there'll still be shoveling to do. But it will be much sweeter knowing the next time we're shoveling it will be at our own house, and not for people who don't even wipe their feet when they come into the building. And how nice it will be when Dave and I can be the people who don't wipe their feet!!

Valentine Spa

Dave is so patient with me. So, for Valentine's Day we didn't really have specific, directed Valentine's Day plans. But I thought..."hey, wouldn't it be FUN to give each other facials?" All my girlfriends are thinking "totally!" and all my guyfriends are thinking "I could come up with a million things that would be much more fun." But Dave wants me to be happy and is willing to put up with just about anything if it puts a smile on my face. So I gave him a Lush blueberry facial:



During facial (skin tired and worn out, plus general unhappiness about having blue stuff on his face, despite my attempt to convince him he looks like a warrior from Braveheart):

After facial (skin refreshed and renewed, plus general delight that the facial is over and he can get on with his life!):

I had one too, of course. We also had brunch at W.A. Frost's on Sunday, exchanged gifts (I made a small book for Dave, and he gave me unnecessarily expensive diamond earrings even though I particularly asked him not to spend too much money on me), and we watched the movie Sweet Land. Overall it was nice, although we do need to do something to cease the "unending-chore" quality of our weekends. Maybe we need to stop with the caretaking finally.

I also did some work on HP. I'm very happy with the changes I've made. Slow-going as usual, but as long as it's going in the right direction I'm happy.

OMG...I'm NOT Writing!

I was doing so well....and now, not so much. Things get busy. People need one's help. American Idol starts sucking one in to its evil maw. One falls prey to seasonal affective disorder and decides to sleep for an entire month. You know, the usual things. No more excuses, though. This weekend I'll revise and conquer another chapter...and one that requires extensive rewrites at that! Take that, Book! Ha!

I'm looking into all the various methods for self-publishing. Self-publishing is quite the business, I'm learning. Now Amazon has something called BookSurge, which sounds interesting. It would be nice to avoid the whole "trying to sell myself and being repeatedly rejected" thing I would naturally face with traditional publishing...but then again, if I self-publish nobody will ever read my book because I am the worst networker ever and would never sell any copies because I hate selling things in general. Even things I like. But it would be on Amazon.com, and I could publish under a psuedonym and just email people and say "oh, hey, look at this random cool book!" and then it wouldn't be like I was pushing my own book on people. I'm not writing this to make money, but it has taken a big chunk out of my life and it would be nice for something to come of it beyond just being able to smugly say at parties "oh, yeah, I wrote a novel".

That's all I have to say about HP.

Hope everyone has a happy Valentine's Day. Dave and I are celebrating on Sunday with brunch at W.A. Frosts, gifts, and a romantic afternoon of dusting and vacuuming our building. We may also watch Amelie, which is our official Valentine's Day movie.

And happy birthday to my brother Andrew, who doesn't read this blog but deserves a blog-mention nonetheless.

And happy birthday to Abraham Lincoln, too. What a cool guy he was.

And hey....remember summer? That was cool too.

Extra Spooky

In case you didn't realize it by all your electronics turning demonic, people acting unusually brittle, and simple tasks becoming monumentally difficult, we are again in a Mercury retrograde. It's almost over now, though. This one was especially tough on us; even Dave (normally critical of my "retrograde rantings") asked me "when is this retrograde over?" (answer: Feb. 1). He's had a plethora of problems at school...oddly enough, they've so far been isolated to the retrograde period, which is I suppose why he's becoming a believer.

Retrogrades are, however, VERY good for working on existing projects, rethinking plans, and looking ahead. So the retrograde has proven quite useful for HP. I've gotten a lot done, although revising always seem to take three times longer than expected. Last weekend I got through my first "ghost" chapter, which has been haunting me (see what I did there?). I initially meant this novel to be rather serious and dark, but over time it has become much lighter and funnier...more of a parody than an actual gothic novel. That's fine, but the question becomes how to balance that tone with the ghost story? I don't want the ghost to be a joke. So I'm very happy to have tightrope-walked my way through this chapter, where I establish the haunting. On top of that, it's also a chapter where I try to establish a connection between Ana and her love interest....this is tricky because there initially wasn't a love triangle in the novel. Now, suddenly, I decided there is. Yes, it's a bit conventional, but I'm trying to find ways to spice it up or make it unusual. The point is, I'm happy to have improved this dasterdly chapter. As with my other revisions, I ended up cutting quite a bit out...but in the end, I think I've made this chapter Extra Spooky!

Other things:

Dave surprised me with gorgeous roses for no reason whatsoever, other than my being awesome (see photo)! He also bought for me a sweet little 1918 hardcover edition of Through the Looking-Glass.

We still haven't packed up our Christmas decorations, resulting in me being for the first time in my life sick of glitter.

I joined Facebook, which I have mixed feelings about.

I'm halfway through War and Peace, which is beyond-amazing.

This morning my friend Cory and his wife had their first child, who wins the "best baby name I've heard in a long time" award: Robinson Gary Funk. Congratualations Robinson! He also happens to be extra extra cute.

OMG...I'm Writing!

I surprised myself. I thought I would continue to procrastinate and hem and haw (whatever that is, but I've heard that people do it when they procrastinate). But I actually have a whole other chapter under my belt! Better yet, I feel wiser approaching the revision this time.

Last spring I remember looking at my novel again after a long break and thinking "wow...this is way better than I remember it being." This time, picking up my novel again after a break, I thought "wow...this is way worse than I remember it being." It doesn't help that I'm reading War and Peace right now. Compared to that my novel seems like a magazine article and barely worth the effort.

My improvements this week have almost exclusively involved taking things OUT, whereas last year it was about putting scenes IN. I'm taking out every sentence that is repetitive or that "tells" rather than "shows." The whole "show, don't tell" cliche is one of those cliches that deserves to be repeated by everyone because it's pretty darn good advice. For instance, I have one scene where my main character Ana stays up all night baking hundreds of cookies for her office. After describing her actions, I have her say (this is all in first person) how she feels obsessed and can't sleep. Do we really need to be told that? Wouldn't it be better to just see her doing something obsessive and staying up all night to do it? Do we need someone who is doing something crazy to turn to us and say "look, I'm doing something crazy"? Anyway. I fired a lot of sentences this week. Sentence unemployment is on the rise.

I'm not happy with my description. It's unsurprising and filled with adjectives and adverbs, rather than a magical combinations of words that convey experience or emotion with strength, efficiency, and freshness. The key is not finding more words, but finding the right words. I have worked on plenty of creative projects in my life, and so far nothing has been more difficult than this. So perhaps reading Tolstoy right now is serendipitous.

I'm also removing or limiting long stretches of Ana talking about her feelings, and moving more toward action...having her do things, talk about the things she did or what other people did, and basically interact with the world more. There's still reflection, but I want the novel to do more, not think more.

Dave asked me if it was hard to cut out so much. It kind of is. I'm cutting some parts that are well-written, funny, and in other ways wonderful....they just don't contribute to the novel and each sentence needs to move it forward or contribute. It can't just be there because I like it. Otherwise it's like that person we've all worked with who is nice enough and makes us laugh, but after awhile you notice they never really contribute and you wonder "what IS it they do all day?" So it is a little bittersweet to hit that delete key, but at the same time it feels good...like cleaning a closet of things you no longer need or wear. It makes room for something better, even though it's hard to let go of what you have.

I'm hoping this weekend to finish the VERY difficult chapter I'm working on right now...it needs a lot of work. This is the chapter where "everything changes". Hope you have a nice weekend and MLK Day!

HP Update!

It's no secret that I haven't made a ton of progress on HP since my fall semester class started. I had time for a few pokes, prods, and fluffing up, but nothing that I would call "real" writing. However HP is never far from my thoughts and this fall was particularly glistening with ideas! So now that I am ready to start work again, I have a messy series of notebook pages filled with possibilities and am excited to see what comes from them.

I took the holidays off to recover from a trying semester of teaching, enjoy time with Dave, and build strength for the hard-core writing schedule I'll be kicking off this weekend. I'm planning to write after work on Tuesdays and Thursdays and for 8-10 hours each weekend. Let's see how that goes. It doesn't hurt that Dave is also spending his weekends on his class stuff, so I don't feel like I'm ruining any potential "couple time" we'd otherwise have. And I think a limit of 8-10 hours will still give me some time to do other chores, caretaking, and still have a piece of Sunday night for myself. My goal is to totally complete this revision by the end of the month, and then in February write and revise the final 3 chaptes...which as of now do not exist, not even in my head.

I'll keep you posted. I'm still now sure how/when/if I'll be sharing chapters of the novel. I'll think on that....

In the meantime, raise a glass and wish me good luck!

Get-Away Foibles

Oh, hi there!

Ok, I promised you details on our semi-botched attempt at a romantic get-away. I say "semi-botched" because even though so much was sub par, any time with my husband (especially away from our normal routine) is prized above all else. We can manage to have fun in any overtly un-fun situation (see earlier post on camping). Nothing can ruin the inner core of our fun...not even the Hyatt or a Minnesota deep freeze. Keep that in mind as I proceed on to my complaints.

First, the freaking frigid frozen weather (the alliteration, there, is meant to give effect of shivering). Keep in mind...our get-away was in Minneapolis. Seriously. This should be the easiest get-away ever. It's even pushing the boundaries of the term "get-away", since we're maybe 15 minutes from our destination. But because of the snow, we had to prepare as if we were getting on a plane to Hawaii. For instance, we can't just leave and not shovel, since we're caretakers. So we arranged for a friend of Dave's to shovel while we're gone. Ultimately, there was only one day we needed covered...but the forecast for that one day called for massive amounts of snow. So I asked Dave to confirm with his friend....I mean, people may agree to do things, but actually doing them (in blizzard-like conditions) is a whole other story. Dave cannot reach the friend, and furthermore we do not know if the friend has a key or needs a key, etc. Also, we only have on-street parking so we need to find a place to bring our second car in case there's a snow emergency on the single day we'd be unable to move the car. This involves another long complicated story, the result being that we drive to South St. Paul in the before-mentioned blizzard conditions to drop the car off at my parents' house. This ends up taking about 40 freaking frigid frozen weather minutes because the roads were so bad. The experience was terrifying. There were tears. After that, we still had to drive back to our place, gather our stuff, shovel the snow that has already fallen and hope that Dave's friend will in the end keep his promise to shovel the next day, and then make our treacherous way to Minneapolis...passing at least one major accident on our 20-miles-per-hour way.

Yay! You'd think since we arrived safely at the hotel we could finally relax and enjoy. Except there's a high school debate conference going on at the hotel. The weekend before Christmas, and there's a high school debate conference?? Seriously? We ignore the implications of this and simply check in to our room, relax, and then dress to go down to dinner in the hotel's restaurant...which I checkout out on the hotel's lying-though-its-digital-teeth website. The hotel's restaurant is mysteriously closed for dinner. Which, you know, makes sense. Why would a restaurant be open for something like dinner? Especially when on the deceptive website it says they're open until 11pm? I know. Stupid of us, right? Nobody can give an explanation, making it seem all the more part of a nefarious plot. So we're stuck eating at their lame "sports bar" (I guess we could have eaten somewhere else downtown, except it was 100 degrees below zero and we'd rather face a sports bar than go outside again).

The sports bar is even more annoying than most. There are TVs everywhere; we even have a TV at the table. We can't turn this TV off. Plus, there is apparently a single waiter responsible for the entire place...and the place is packed, since there is nowhere else to eat in the hotel (except fancy-schmancy Oceanaire...for which us, the high school debaters, and all the fat people wearing Vikings jerseys neglected to bring appropriate attire). Also, the food is crazy expensive. It's like extortion. They remove all other food-sources, they know a certain number of us did not bring appropriate attire/funds for Oceanaire, and they know most of us won't venture into 100 degrees below zero weather. So why not charge $15 for a cheeseburger! Bastard people.

That's not the worst, though. Remember the place is packed, so we took one of the few remaining places to sit...which was directly across from a young debater and her elderly coach (or something). They were both crazy-loud...in that really loud way drunk people talk, especially when they think they're being clever or funny. The girl in particular was not only loud, but talking at hyper-speed and interspercing every other word with "like." It went: "IwassolikeupsetlikebecauselikeI'mtheonlypersonIevenlikeknowwholikereadsanythinglikeseriousor importantyouknowandliketheresnobodylikeIcanevenliketalktolikewhoislikeevenatmylikelevel." And the old man was drinking, nodding, staring at her chest and saying "totally, man, I totally know what it's like!" For a moment, I thought they must be fake people. You know? Maybe these were theater people rehearsing for a comedy; maybe its improv. Maybe parody. But they were so loud that Dave and I couldn't hold our real-person conversation. Then the worst thing happened. The "like" girl started talking about James Joyce, and making incorrect (yet arrogant) assertions about Ulysses. Now, I imagine James Joyce might be a topic that...if you're an insufferable teenager trying to impress a drunken older man with how well-read you are...you may feel is safe enough to tackle. The chances that you would be seated next to a couple people who know quite a BIT about James Joyce and Ulysses, and who could totally get up in your face and correct you on every point, probably wouldn't occur to that insufferable teenager. This was causing a painful physical reaction in Dave. I mean, imagine the MOST annoying people you have ever been around, and they start talking about a semi-arcane subject that you just happen to have studied in graduate school, and they're making tons of huge errors but nonetheless remain quite openly and loudly impressed with their "knowledge". Dave wants to go over and have a Joyce-knowledge slamdown; he's squirming and can't concentrate on anything except all the misinformation about Joyce that's being bantered back and forth at the table across from us. But I think that perhaps the one thing more annoying than these people would be us, in a sports bar, getting into a fight with drunken people about James Joyce. We desparately start looking for a different place to sit but it's packed. So we try to ignore them ("tune it out, Dave....seriously, look at me...look into my eyes....ignore them!"). Our lukewarm food arrives. We try to refocus our annoyance on that. Finally, they switch subjects (at least) and eventually they finally leave altogether. Soon we leave as well, after grudgingly shelling out $50 for two burgers and two beers.

Things go pretty well after that, until about midnight...at which point, we hear lots of doors banging, arguments in the hall, raised voices. After about 30 minutes of that, Dave calls the front desk and asks for the manager on duty. He's on hold for a long time, then finally talks to the manager and says there seems to be an argument in the hall that's been going on for some time, and could they send someone up. He's told (seriously) that unless they get more complaints, they're not going to do anything. It goes on for 30 more minutes and Dave calls again and this time his call is "disconnected". Around 1:30 it's still going on, plus there's loud noise coming from the room next to us as well. Dave calls again and basically says if they won't do anything about the noise they better move us. They send someone up right away, while we're packing up all our belongings at 1:30am. We now hear security banging on doors and telling people to be quiet. When security comes to our room with a new room key, there are four guards in the hall. Our guard escorts us to the executive floor, and he's super apologetic...but we learn from him that they've gotten a LOT of complaints and have moved quite a number of couples. Dave tells him what we were told the first time he called, and the guard seems disgusted that nothing was done with the first call (note: I have since wrote a letter of complaint about all this).

The good thing is that we have a fabulous view from our new room, overlooking Nicollet Mall. They also comped us a breakfast buffet (not really adequate compensation, but especially considering how expensive their food is we happily took what we could get and ate enough for five people -- take that Hyatt!). So, we're trying to make the best of things. We decide to go to Macy's to see their 8th floor display, and we take the skyway since it's still 100 below zero. That's all well and good, but about halfway there, the skyway is closed. Us and a young family are forced out into the cold, even further from our destination then if we had just walked right from our hotel in the first place. Futhermore, it's seriously icy and I can barely walk...both Dave and I came close to falling a number of times. Additionally, we're not really dressed for the cold because, well, we thought we'd be in the skyway!

nyway, we do make it to Macy's....shaken up but ok. I overhear a family talking about the Holidazzle Parade and it occurs to me that we'll be able to actually watch the parade from our new hotel room! Things turn around a bit....we have a fun day, we buy hats and scarves for our trek back to the hotel, we have a lovely lunch at the Oak Room.

We get back to our room around 4:30...the room is not made up yet, but compared to everything else that doesn't seem like such a big deal. We decide to go hang out in the hot tub...which, I guess, now is part of their big fitness area that you have to pay extra to enter. So. Thwarted again by the nefarious plot. We decide to order room service for dinner, which is still expensive but at least tastes better than the sports bar food. Plus...they charge a $5 delivery fee, a $2.50 service fee, and automatically add on 18% gratutity. So...seriously? Aren't we paying for the same thing, basically, in three different ways? Then on the bill there's a place for "tip". Oh, those crazy hotels! Whatever. That's the way of the world, I guess. We had our dinner and got our chairs positioned to watch the Holidazzle Parade....only to find out the parade was cancelled due to it being 100 below zero.

The next morning we check out and our stay was topped off by problems with the "automatic" parking payment machines (yes, on top of all this we had to pay $17/day for parking). We followed the directions on the machine, paid via credit card, but did not get the receipt we supposedly needed to show on our way out of the ramp that we paid. Dave had to call someone on the "help" button, and that didn't really get anywhere because of the language barrier and also because it was clear the guy didn't know what to do about it. In the meantime, a group of people had gathered around and were watching this interaction, making comments to each other ("What...he didn't get a receipt?" "I guess not, they're calling for help." "Is the guy going to come up?" "Let's see what happens!"). I finally snapped at these people and then felt bad about it later. Finally we just said forget it and left...only to realize we neglected to note where we parked (I suppose we were just so stressed out about the getting-there, that once we arrived our brains shut down). Finally we found the car, but upon attempting to leave were told we owed $2 to account for all the time we took after initially paying for parking (basically, paying for the additional time it took for us to attempt to get a receipt in order to prove we paid). Frustrating conversation ensued, the result of which was that they "waived" the $2 so we could exist this hell.

Things were much nicer once we got home. Dave's awesome friend shoveled, it was quieter, we had better food, and I finally was able to catch up on my sleep. Like I said, we did have fun just being together. But I think we'll do a B&B for our next get-away.