The most wonderful time of the year

I've been getting into the holiday spirit this week. Carolling with the Catatonics, visiting the Christkindlmarket downtown, baking cookies (mmm... Elizabeth's great Snickerdoodle recipe) and last but not least, decorating my apartment this weekend with Mike!

Check it out:


You can barely see in the photo, but the ridiculousness of our little tree is impressive. Mike bought it on sale at the end of the holiday season last year. We were a little surprised to find that the base section had colored lights since the box showed white ones... and then we unwrapped the top section. Which did have white lights. Even better, several branches remained dark when we finally got it plugged in. There were no hooks included in the ornament box, so we had to adapt some paperclips to the task. Still, it's our little pathetic tree. Awww...

The heat is on...

woah-oh-woah-oh!

(I'm a nerd. But a warm and happy one.)

Brrrrrr...

I was feeling bad earlier this week for folks back in St. Louis (parts of my family included) whose power got knocked out by an ice storm last week, but apparently I should have saved my pity for myself. I went to bed last night noticing that my radiators weren't putting out much heat, and woke up to an ice-cold apartment this morning. Three phone calls to maintenance (or their answering service, since it's Sunday) were apparently fruitless... no returned calls or helpful visitors. I'm bundled up in four layers on my own sofa.

I should mention that it's illegal in Chicago to maintain an apartment temperature under 68 degrees during the day or 66 degrees at night. I wish I had a thermometer.

Did I mention that the local news just said tonight will be the coldest night so far this year?

Results & such

It's not official, but I think I aced my final and the take-home as well. Yay for not failing grad school! Also, after a week of hard-core book-hitting, I'm finally allowing myself to plug the TV back in. Whew.

In other news, I've got big plans for next weekend... heading to Gambier for the Cornerstones fall concert! Not only is it my first chance to get invited up to sing "The Stone" after the last song, but it will be my first return to that lovely hill since the festivities of May 2005. I'm flying up on Friday and returning to Chicago on Saturday, so I hope I have enough time to track down everybody I want to see on campus. Also, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the weather will be decent. The flights are direct, at least, which would make delays less of a big deal but still unpleasant.

Oh, and my Thanksgiving was awesome. My sister had the fabulous idea to take me to see "Spamalot!" at the Fox, and the whole family ended up coming along. T-day food at Grandma's: good. Getting up at a quarter to 5 to shop the day after was as appalling as ever. In all, a fabulous week even despite car troubles on the way there and Mike's disappearance to Wichita. 2 weeks to Christmas break!

T-minus 18 hours...

...until my second big exam of the quarter. Third if you count the take-home, but I can't: a take-home is open book, there's no pressure of the clock tick-tick-ticking the allotted time away, I can put it away when it gets frustrating and pick it up later when I start feeling smart again.

Gotta nail this one. Wish me luck.