more pictures, again

I hope everyone's Christmas was good. I finally fell asleep at 8:15 AM... but I did fit a nap in at my in-laws house, which was refreshing. Christmas day was great, and I'm thankful for my family and friends' thoughtfulness. My parents even spent weeks/months working on picture albums that span 50 years... hundreds of pictures, all scanned and labeled and touched up... something I've wanted for a while, especially now that I'm starting my own family.

I've been going through more wedding pictures, and here are a few of my favorites. It might seem a little overdone, but I don't care. It was my wedding, and I can show off all I want.

Christmas

I can't sleep.

Remember when you were little and you couldn't sleep on Christmas Eve, you were so excited? It's like that, except I'm not excited. I just can't sleep. I woke up at 4 Am and here it is, 6:30, and I'm wide awake. I'm not even cold, and I'm in my basement. The window was open, even. Did anyone hear the wind?

For those of you married persons: was your first Christmas hard? Were you homesick for the things your family used to do?

This is only the second time in recent memory I've suffered from insomnia... and I really want to go to the store and get something to eat, or drink, or play with, but being Christmas Eve, everything's closed. Oh, my luck! I don't remember the last time I had a normal Christmas.

Oh, and I've been reading "A Christmas Carol" and it's really rather amusing. It usually takes a few chapters for Charles Dickens to really warm up (he was paid by the word, so before he really gets into his story, he's just interested in a paycheck... hence, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of enlightenment, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the blah blah blah for a whole paragraph, just trying to fit as many words in as possible). This one, he jumps right in!

Okay, I'm going to try to sleep again. Wish me luck.

graduate school

Well, I officially applied for Concordia University today.
*phew*
I did that while taking a break from jobhunting. For a year and a half, my professional life has been pretty steady, and now it feels stagnant. Now, since I quit my job and I'm going on to grad school, I feel I'm accomplishing something... even if I don't have another job yet and I haven't been accepted to school. It's funny, how this would freak me out a year or two ago, or even the past 24 years of my life, but I feel so confident and right and at peace with it.

So, hallalujah for school, and for quitting, and for moving on! I embrace it!

Concordia, it turns out, is much smaller than I thought it was... it's even smaller than my high school. 1100 students! 57 faculty members! Ah, personal attention... this will be refreshing. Check it out: www.cu-portland.edu