For the sake of narcissism

For those of you who haven't heard, this is what I am currently reading:



This is exciting for two reasons: nobody has my name. NOBODY. When I was a young child, I would pretend my name was Melissa and buy the key chains/random trinket at ocean city with my "name", Melissa, on it just to fit in.

So, as you can imagine, I was ecstatic when this was one of the titles in the elite "front table" at the Richmond Barnes and Noble.
And you wouldn't have imagined my horror when it wasn't at said noted table in the Charlottesville Barnes and Noble.
I filed a strong complaint, found copies of Nefertiti in the stacks (who gets books from there anyways?!), and then sneakily started my own pile of Nefertiti books on the elite table. Noel watched this all from afar, amused and as he said "not surprised."

If anyone wants to read along with me, feel free to start on page 177 when Nefertiti is rumored to be refered to as "Neferet" by the townspeople, an even better and hotter name that Nefertiti. ( !!!!!!) I almost peed my pants.

All to say, it is good for my ego.

Lets back track to December...

15 hours in the chicago o'hare airport, crappy chinese food and its' consequential stomach ache, and a lost drivers license (yes, I had to go to the dmv AGAIN and take another crazy non-smiling picture of myself) later, we finally made it to Lincoln, NE for Christmas.

This is what we did.



After 5 days in the blinding snow with lots of wonderful crazy indoor quality time, we went swimming with the Visedal ( visedal.org) children in Managua, Nicaragua.

This is our little girl we sponsor, Ana. She is wearing the cutest hooded towel in the whole entire world.






Noel is smiling so big his eyes are closed and we are all so sweaty, but that pretty much summarizes the trip anyways. Thanks, dy-lan, for becoming friends with all those sweet kiddies...they are the bomb.

PS- Dylan gave me the job of giving the older girls a "growing up/ sex talk", which really included me reminding the girls to be careful with their bodies over and over again. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I do not have the spanish vocabulary to go any further than that.

NOEL was born....

TODAY ! 25 YEARS AGO !



This is Abraham Lincoln's favorite cake ( with its own flavor suited for Noel)

Yes, this does say Happy Day. The B did not fit in my sloppy chocolate-shell handwriting.

It was well enjoyed by our friends and half left if anyone wants to try Abe's fave!

snowcation

This was the itinerary of the snowcation ( or as the Daily Progress is currently calling it, snowmageddon).

Noel wrote his final papers. And shoveled. When he would resurface from his paper to go shovel, I wouldn't see him for hours, because he would be outside shoveling everyone's driveways and parking spaces.

My snow days consisted of a) going stir crazy in our apartment and baked so much, I just about broke my arm off with a whisk still in my hand, and b) rediscovering my love for sleeping in and taking 2 showers a day.

Also, I love my snow boots.

My camera broke, so I have no proof of the snow. If you do not believe me, check this out: WOA


Oh, and I am going right back into the thick of it. This time I am bringing my pick ax to make ice sculptures and snowmen with real buttons on their jackets. Also, I am going to win a snowball fight against Noel.

weepy gurgle face

This week I received an email from William and Mary saying that my personal website would be erased from the internet within a couple weeks. In curiosity, I checked to see what exactly my college site had been.

Is anyone else amazed and astounded by the amount of spelling errors on my website?

I sure am. I clearly didn't finish it....but here's to the gurgle face AND the weepy face, hot hot hot, the dot com, and the fact that we obviously had dinner both on tuesday and thursday nights. Or do you think I made that mistake by accident? We can all thank Katie Shields again for giving us the best 2005 Christmas gift that a girl could ask for.

(Note this very funny convo in the discussion board about who will cook with me...Can you believe there was even a debate on that?!?! I am surprised everybody wasn't rushing at the opportunity. I was always an expert at frozen lasagna.)

2 things

I forgot to mention a couple things that are obviously significant enough for me to backtrack to tell you...


First thing:


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




Wendell Berry came to speak at UVA! Noel saved us seats, I left work early and biked franticly to the UVA library, and in the crowd of people, I sat, legs twitching in excitement and anticipation. I was so happy! Thank you, Wendell Berry, for making my day, and inspiring me to ask my landlord if I can grow a garden and have a chicken coop in the backyard.



Second thing:


Both rain coat and pants have been returned from the dry cleaners. Raincoat now smells strongly of soap. Noel says he can smell the soapy jacket from across the room. The lady at the dry cleaners told me they use the same potion to take out cat urine. eek. And yes, the pants still smell like skunk. I am considering it a lost cause, and thinking about throwing them away unless anyone has any more suggestions...a month later, and the skunk is still haunting me.

Triple Date Christmas Vacay

This is what happens when you combine beautiful Charlottesville snow, Alice's amazing craft skills, Allison's baking skills, some football for the men, and enough Christmas cheer and ice cream that your head might explode...Oh, and did I mention handfuls of WaWa Chex mix?!

I haven't had a real Christmas tree since I was 11. Who is impressed with me !? It was barely fastened to the car, but somehow we made it home in one piece.




I decorated my own gingerbread man ornament to put on the tree. It was supposed to be a lady, but by mistake I drew a beard and then quickly recovered by making it into a scarf. The bearded lady now hangs high on our lovely Christmas tree.


This is my favorite ornament, borrowed from Sawsan's collection. It actually is about double the size of the star on top. Our tree leans a little over where King Tut hangs.




Enough said.


Now I must go eat all 3 days worth of advent calender chocolate that I forgot about in all the excitement of this weekend full of fun visitors.