Today, I was welcomed back to the Northeast by weather that was entirely befitting of my attitude coming back.... crappy. That's right, once again I was plagued by a rather negative mentality in having to come back to Happy Valley and noticing the snow hitting my windshield as I made my way here didn't really make things much better. I have to admit, I usually lose this attitude after a couple of days... but this holiday was a rather intense one and having to leave home was harder emotionally-- as well as physically.
In case you didn't know (and you'd have to have been buried in a hole to not know...), most of the Midwest and Texas Panhandle was stuck in a three-day ice storm. This wouldn't have been so bad at any other time of the year, except this happened when I was trying to leave so I could come back to Happy Valley to start the Spring semester. Believe me, it was looking like it wasn't going to happen at all there for a while-- I mean, I had hell trying to get out of Lubbock on Monday. I was stuck there till almost 2pm while waiting for a flight that was supposed to have left at 10:45am! And of course, in this case-- the big problem stemmed from DFW-- which finally received the ice storm which had been messing with us for days. Now, as if I hadn't had enough of the wintery weather-- this same storm is supposed to be moving our way. What luck!
Overall, I have to admit that as many intense moments as there were this Christmas-- there were ones that reminded me of how valuable family and friends really are during the holidays. I mean, without my friends-- I would have been stuck in Baltimore with no where to stay last night (here's a shout out to Ben and Tatiana for being champs and coming to get me at the airport!), I would have been bored on the first day it really iced over in Lubbock (hooray for Caesar, Julie and Scott!), and my last week there would not nearly have been as fun as it was (yay for Kei, Caesar, Julie, Sarah, Axel, Christina, Logan, etc... and $2 pint nights!). Although there were many more things that I wanted to do while I was there, that's when my family reminded me how much of an obligation the holidays can really be.
It's been about two years (or even more... I lose track of this stuff) since my family from Florida has been to Texas to come visit us in Lubbock. I know my Aunt does a good job of going to see my grandmother, which in my book is more important most of the time, but this time she made a big effort to come and spend a few days with us. My Uncle Joe and cousin Cody also took time off of work to come down as well-- and so that made it one of the largest family Christmases (is that right?) that we have had in a long, long time. It reminded me a lot of what our Christmases were like when I was growing up; there was always football on the TV, moms were running around in the kitchen, kids were playing games (although, then it was board games and not the XBox 360), and there was a lot of joy and laughter. I'm sure most of you can relate to this-- I just think it's amazing that every now and then, you can almost recreate this sort of memory from time to time. That being said, I think we did a good job of it for the most part. :)
So now the time has come to get back into the routine of teaching and working. I'm going to push myself to be diligent towards my goals and achieving them in good time as well. If anyone has tips on how to do this-- please send those my way! I think the first good step would be tossing my TV out the window-- and maybe completely disassociating myself from MySpace. Yeah, that would be a GREAT start. :)
In the meantime, have a great week and thanks again dear readers for keeping up with me!
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