Skyfall

I went and saw Skyfall this afternoon. And it was awesome. I think Casino Royale has a better story, but Skyfall is definitely more epic (we won't worry about that other movie). The cinematography was fantastic, and I loved the lighting, too. Plus I enjoy how Daniel Craig plays Bond - much more restrained and dryly humorous than any of the previous actors. Not quite so smarmy as Pierce Brosnon (but I'll always love him nonetheless), but still suave. I thought the opening credits were fantastic, and the titular title track [is that redundant?] was an instant hit with me.

All in all, it might be a movie I have to see twice in theaters. Yes, it will come out on DVD and still be awesome...but not as awesome as seeing Daniel Craig's face five or six times as tall as a man on the big screen.

I'll Tell You What I'm Not Thankful For

...the GRE. Specifically, that I have to take it in T-6 days. The Quantitative Reasoning sectioning is gonna kick my booty. Just reviewing the properties of numbers -- you know, with those fancy ones like exponents and roots thrown in for fun -- is giving me headaches. And obviously my times tables have suffered a little since I memorized them in second grade and was quizzed on them in fourth. And it's been ten years since my last geometry class. Well, okay, only five and a half technically, if you count Euclid freshman year at SJC. Which was awesome, but it's not algebraic geometry. Sadly, the GRE isn't going to ask me to construct an equilateral triangle using only circles and a line. (I probably couldn't do that, either, but I bet I could make a decent go of it. A better one than remembering the rules of exponents or roots.)

2 + 2 = ...4? Really?

If the GRE tested on Korean pop culture, I would totally rock that section.

Gratitude, Part I

November is the month of Thanksgiving, but that's not the reason I've decided to list at least five things I'm especially grateful for each day. It's just a happy coincidence. That being said, here are today's five things.

1. I'm grateful I have a job. I have spent too much of my recent life unemployed to not appreciate being able to bring home a paycheck each month, even if my income and my time is split up among three different jobs. I may not have been particularly productive this last summer, but I have learned a valuable lesson about work: work is not something to be avoided (which is my first inclination), but in fact a divine principle. Work is enlightening and ennobling. Unemployment is degrading and soul- and self-esteem-destroying.

2. I'm grateful I can walk to my job. It's not terribly fun to be without a car, but every time I'm tempted to grumble (...very loudly...) about it, I remember that I'm so blessed to be so close to my various forms of employment. Without a car I could be jobless, but I'm not. Plus, walking is healthy and keeps me active. 

3. I'm grateful that the local public transportation is reliable and free. It's not as nice as Seoul's public transportation, which is both vast and much more efficient, but I save a tremendous amount of money each month by not having to pay anything for transportation costs. Yes, it's inconvenient when I want to go grocery shopping or go anywhere after 8:00pm, but it's hard to argue with free and reliable.

4. I'm grateful for a good education and parents who value education. For this reason taking the GRE with only two weeks of preparation is only stupid and stressful instead of impossible.

5. I'm grateful that I listened to the prompting of the Spirit when I walked out of the library from picking up my GRE prep book (see above) and stopped to ask the girl crying on the bench if she was okay. As soon as I saw her I knew I needed to ask if she was okay. [Side note: It always puzzles me that we ask that question when people are obviously not okay.] I walked out the door of the library and immediately made eye contact with her tear-filled, red-rimmed, pleading eyes. As soon as I did I knew I needed to talk to her; as soon as I knew that my first impulse was to squash that knowledge and walk on past pretending she wasn't sitting there crying her eyes out in public. I took a half step past her and immediately felt horrible about myself, so I stopped and asked, "Are you okay?" I asked if she needed anything. She gave a half-choked sob-laugh and said something about relationship stuff. I sympathized a little bit and tried to be comforting. She stood up and gave me, a complete stranger, a hug. I think it was more for herself than anything, but it felt like a thank you. I complimented her scarf and told her to have a good day. I hope she did have a good day, because I sure felt fantastic as I walked to the bus stop to catch the bus home.

6. I'm grateful for friends who are awesome enough to crawl under my bed to help me put it on risers. No kidding, my friend Wendy did this last night, and in a dress no less. That's friendship, people. Thankfully for my embarrassment level under my bed is clean, uncluttered, and dust-free so it wasn't a terrible ordeal for her.  

7. I'm grateful for gorgeous fall colors. I love fall. Right now the tree in our front yard is a stunning, intense yellow. Sadly most of the trees have lost most or all of their leaves, but a few brave souls are holding out. 

Presto Clean-o!

I spent my Halloween 2012 making this...

 ...into this.

If only the actual cleaning was as easy and instantaneous as the pictures make it seem. I still have my desk left to tackle, but first I have to figure out where to keep all my hoodies (which are currently draped over my desk chair). My closet is full to capacity; I certainly can't fit four bulky hoodies in there. The two peacoats in there already are pushing it.

You can't see in the first picture, but the bookcase that is now on the far wall used to be where the shoe crate is now. I liked it there better, but since I put my bed up on risers (which have a wider footprint than the bedframe) it doesn't fit in that space anymore. Boo. But I need the storage space under the bed more than I need my bookcase within arm's length.

Just FYI

In case you were wondering, if you're "smart" enough to wrap your chicken breasts in saranwrap before you freeze them, in an effort to save time so you won't have to unstick them when you want to use them, you will spend approximately 20 minutes trying to pry saranwrap out from in between the parts of the chicken that have been frozen together. You know, just a helpful life hint.

Yeah, Baby

Life and Timing and Lack of Control

Not long ago I was talking to my dad on the phone. With a very few, rare exceptions this is an activity I enjoy immensely. While I no longer think my dad knows everything, he has the advantage of years of experience and has struggled with many of the same things I do. On this particular occasion we were discussing life, and how it never seems to go the way I want/expect/hope/plan for it to. I am hard-pressed to come up with even a single example of life working out that way. On the other hand, the list of things that have gone in a completely different direction than I thought they would is long. 

During this talk with my dad, I brought up something a friend and I had been talking about previously, about how very little of what we want for ourselves seems to be what the Lord wants for us. We both confessed to being concerned about this -- are we too stubborn? too prideful? not in touch with the Spirit enough? Surely I should be concerned that every single big life-changing event in my life has included a long period of denial before I finally resigned myself to it, and that none of my life plans have unfolded remotely like I wanted them to.

Just a little while later, that same friend was teaching in church and shared this quote from this talk by Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles:

"How fundamentally different my life is than I had sought to plan. My professional life has changed. My personal life has changed. But the commitment I made to the Lord -- to put Him first in my life and to be ready for whatever He would have me do -- has carried me through these changes of eternal importance... It never ceases to amaze me that even when we plan out our lives to match up what we think would please our Heavenly Father we very rarely get the plan quite right. It's a good thing he is willing to make changes to our plans even when we don't understand the changes. It allows us to grow and become so much more than we ever would have made of ourselves had we stuck to our original plan."

It struck me upon rereading it today: If an apostle of the Lord hasn't had his life work out the way he expected, I'm certainly in good company.

The difference is, I'm sure he has handled it with much more grace and faith than I have. Particularly lately. I have been struggling so much with finding purpose and direction in my life when I know whatever plans I make will ultimately just get interrupted or derailed. I struggle with flexibility and adapting myself and my goals to situations that are thrust upon me. I feel overwhelmed with the magnitude of the choices facing me and paralyzed at the thought of somehow screwing up and loosing opportunities I desperately want, personally and professionally. But, as my father has told me repeatedly throughout my life, making no choice is still making a choice. The irony of the situation is that by procrastinating or shelving making decisions I end up losing all the opportunities before me I'm delaying having to decide on and am forced to choose things I would never have wanted for myself.

The truth is that no one's life works out exactly the way they thought it would, because no one can know what's waiting for them just ahead, invisible around the bend in the road. We cannot control the decisions of others or the Lord's timing, both of which have tremendous impact on our lives.

However, Elder Oaks addressed this in another version of those same remarks:

"Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ prepares us for whatever life brings. This kind of faith prepares us to deal with life's opportunities -- to take advantage of those that are received and to persist through the disappointments of those that are lost. In the exercise of that faith, we should commit ourselves to the priorities and standards we will follow on matters we do not control and persist faithfully in those commitments, whatever happens to us because of the agency of others or the timing of the Lord. When we do this, we will have a constancy in our lives that will give us direction and peace. Whatever the circumstances beyond our control, our commitments and standards can be constant."

As much as I'm resisting what I'm being taught, I know that this is what I'm supposed to be learning. To let go of my rigid, detailed expectations and trust that the Lord knows what is best for me, and the best time for those best things for me.

"It is not enough that we are going in the right direction. The timing must be right, and if the time is not right, our actions should be adjusted to the Lord's timetable." 

Not that that faith and trust is a passive thing. It requires me to make those preparations so that I can take the opportunities that the Lord would have me pursue. And I also need to remember something my father said wrote:

"The lesson for me is that, certainly the Lord shapes us, but he does so chiefly within the circumstances we are handed and we choose. He helps us make the best choices based on his vision and our willingness to be shaped and to be patient. The lesson is that “this is a test,” and that as a test, it will hurt sometimes. In the end, however, the atonement is large enough to “wipe away all tears.”"

Sister Therapy

Amen.

Night Hiking: NOT a good idea

None of these are from this hike (my camera's  dead). They're from my mission.

It's officially fall here. It's been getting gradually cooler and the leaves have been starting to display hints of color for weeks, but this last Wednesday it was like someone suddenly flipped a switch and it was autumn in earnest. The daytime temperature dropped about fifteen degrees Fahrenheit and the nighttime temperatures dipped into the low forties. I woke up Thursday morning shivering (I only had one blanket on my bed and my bed is right under the window) with a cold nose for the first time since probably March. Since autumn is my favorite season this isn't really a bummer. I enjoy cardigans and sweaters and hoodies and I almost always wear long pants anyway.

But that's not the point of this post. Or rather, that's only to give you the necessary background for this post. Along with the gorgeous autumn leaves and the cooler temperatures comes the only thing I don't like about fall: less light. It gets darker faster. Well, a friend and I, hearing how gorgeous the canyon was with all the fall leaves, decided to leave right after work to go do a hike up there. We'd decided on a 3-miler that winds up the mountain, across the top of a small ridge, and back down again. Since it's not an up-and-down hike, we'd also have a 1.5 mile walk back to the car once we got back down the mountain: all together, 4.5 miles. We got there in pretty good time, and we started up about 5:30. The thing is, that hike is steep. And I am out of shape. Plus, I like to stop and admire the scenery from many different angles on the way up (and rest, because I'm very out of shape).

The rumors weren't wrong -- the trees were stunning and the views on the way up the trail and at the top were gorgeous, especially as the setting sun sunk behind the mountains. The problem is that we were only about halfway done by about 7, which is when (right now) the sun starts to set in earnest. On top of that, instead of hiking east to west so we'd be on the west side of the mountain coming down, we'd hiked west-to-east and were making our way down a very steep path in the rapidly fading light. And we hadn't thought to bring a flashlight. Or rather, we'd thought, but hadn't turned that thought into action. Let me tell you, coming down a mountain when you can barely see five feet in front of you is a little nerve-wracking. Thankfully (and with the help of some whispered prayers), we made it to the bottom right as full dark fell. That still left us with a 1.5 mile treck along the river at the bottom of the canyon to make it back to the car in the dark. With no flashlight.

Well, obviously this story ends well since I'm here to update about it. But it certainly wasn't my finest hour. Nor am I particularly anxious to reprise the experience. Once was one time too many. And it was great to sit in a car with headlights (the climb up did something painful to my left hip flexor, and the climb down made my knees and toes very unhappy). However, it was almost worth it for the chance to see the amazing fall foliage up close and breathe in the crisp, autumn air. On the other hand, my poor legs hate me today, particularly that hip flexor. I've been hobbling around like an old person and avoiding stairs (a challenge, since I live in the basement). Next time I'm going to take a sturdy walking stick with me. Gandalf's staff with the glow-y crystal would have been handy.

September Recap

Green Day released a song when I was in high school called "Wake Me Up When September Ends". Now, I've never wanted to sleep through September; it's one of my favorite months, and not just because I was born in it (though that does make it pretty awesome). But it does feel rather like I have slept through it, just because it's zoomed by. A lot has happened this month, actually -- I moved, I got my first grown-up job paycheck, my mom came to visit, I had a birthday, I got a second job, there was a temple open house and dedication, my best friend left on a mission, I made new friends, and I made old friends better friends. Oh, and I ripped my favorite pair of jeans. You know, got to make sure I get in all that really important information. So, since much of that I neglected to blog about, here's a short recap of September.

1 September: I moved out of my friend Jordanne's house, where I'd been living all summer with her and her family while I figured out what I was going to do with myself. I also got my very first grown-up job paycheck from IELI (albeit only a half of one, since I only worked half of August).

2 September: The high councilman over stake emergency preparedness asked me to accept a calling as the stake emergency preparedness committee co-chair.

3 September: I finally got all my boxes and the furniture in my new room unpacked and organized. And it was my first official paid holiday, too (yay for Labor Day!).

5 September: My mom flew into Utah and stopped by to see me for about three minutes on her way up to Bear Lake with her sisters and cousins for a reunion. She also dropped off a memory foam topper for my bed, which has radically altered my life for the better.

7 September: I left work early for the first time to go to Shannon's (my best friend's little sister) own endowment session. Afterwards, I met up with a friend to explore the Gallery Walk downtown, and we hung out at Coldstone afterwards, eating ice cream and listening to the screaming in the stadium during the Utah State vs. University of Utah game. (It was loud screaming, people. We could hear it a mile+ away. For the record, Utah State won. Go Aggies!)

10 September: My mom back from her reunion, she picked me, my brother, and my cousin up to drive over to Brigham City (about a half-hour away) for the Brigham City temple open house. We meet up with some of my dad's sisters and their kids (and one husband) to tour the temple before it's dedicated. It was absolutely gorgeous! My favorite part, though, was the ceilings in the sealing rooms. The picture below doesn't show it, but painted on the ceiling was a large circle of brilliant blue with flowering branches of peach blossoms. They were stunning.

Picture here from hjnews.com

After that, we drove to my aunt and uncle's house for a family dinner of delicious minestroni soup and fresh french bread (with donuts for dessert!). My uncle asked if I'd like to drive his manual 1963 Jeep, which in his words has "no power-anything" (no power steering, no power brakes, etc). I drove down to the river bottom and up and down a veeeery steep hill. That was a blast, even if my 15-year-old cousin drove on the way home. I only thought we were going to die about three times, so she did pretty well, I'd say. Riding standing up in the back was definitely a fun time.

11 September: I went to work, then went over to my grandma's house to spend time with her and my mom. We stopped by my friend Jordanne's house to say goodbye to her; she left for the Provo MTC and eventually a mission in Chile the next day.

12 September: I met up with a friend for Aggie Ice Cream after work to officially kick off my birthday celebration. Nothing in the world is as delicious as Aggie Blue Mint.

13 September: Happy 26th birthday to me! I woke up super early (630!) for some reason, but lay in bed until about 830 when my mom came over to make me a birthday breakfast of French breakfast muffins and orange juice. (Well, she bought the orange juice.) After that we spent a few hours shopping, and we made sure to stop by the Distribution Center so I could purchase my parents a present with my very first paycheck (a Korean tradition). She dropped me off at work, where this was waiting for me on my desk:

My boss had stopped by to pick up a brownie for me, and our director found a tea light, lit it, and sung happy birthday to me. The whole department signed a birthday card for me, too. My mom picked me up from work and took me over to my grandma's house were we made dinner and I put my candles on my brownies (I don't like cake so I have brownies instead). Most of my family that lives in the area stopped by for some birthday brownies and ice cream and some catching up. 26 candles makes for a lot of light!

14 September: I met with a couple looking for someone to watch their 8-week-old baby girl in the mornings. Since my office job is only 1-5, I was looking for a better way to spend my mornings than sleeping late. The couple seemed nice and I adored their baby girl at first glance, so I was hoping to get the job. After meeting with them, I met my mom and grandma at the temple and went to lunch downtown at Great Harvest, where we had fantastic sandwiches and a delicious cinnamon roll for dessert. We ate outside, and the weather was gorgeous!

That evening, I went for Korean food with a friend and saw The Amazing Spider-Man for the second time (the first time I went to go see it on the Fourth of July with my little brother). It was just as good the second time around.

15 September: I worked in the temple cafeteria for the lunch shift and had a great time with the two other girls who also volunteered. I also had my first emergency preparedness committee meeting, to prepare for the stake training meeting the next day.

18 September: I got a call from the couple I interviewed with the last Friday, and they offered me the job! I'm so excited to start in October. I think I'm really going to enjoy it, and I'll finally be working full-time, albeit at two different jobs.

21 September: The week was pretty slow and not very eventful. I met up with a friend for dinner and to explore our local (tiny) zoo. That's where I discovered this little gem I blogged about before. It was also the last day of summer, since the autumnal equinox was the next day.

23 September: Regular church was cancelled in order for us to be able to attend one of the dedicatory sessions of the Brigham City temple, which was broadcast to all the meetinghouses in the area. It was a special event, especially hearing President Boyd K. Packer talk about growing up in Brigham City and his memories of the city and how the temple came to be built.

26 September: I get a text from my mom in the afternoon that my little brother (the one who lives and goes to school here in the very same town that I live in) was being admitted to the hospital. They didn't know what it was yet, but it didn't seem too serious. That evening, I went to help my dad's mom put up some decorations for fall. While stepping off the top of a step ladder, I managed to rip my favorite pair of jeans. ~sad face~ But my grandma and I still had a good time, and the decorations look pretty good, if I do say so myself.

27 September: I went to visit the little brother in the hospital, and it appeared that he was anything but wasting away in sad loneliness, since he had an almost constant stream of vistors. We had a nice chat, and then I met up with a friend for gelata at Zeppe's (only the yummiest place ever).

28 September: Our director at work took the office staff (me and our secretary/adviser) out to lunch at a local (and delicious) Italian restaurant. After work, me and some girlfriends drove down to SLC to wander around the new City Creek Mall, have dinner at The Cheesecake Factory (so. much. food), and spend the night at the Marriott downtown. It was a fun getaway, and our stay was free, thanks to my friend's aunt's Marriott reward points.

The view from our room on the very top floor of the Marriott in downtown SLC

My ginormous dessert, the delicious warm apple crisp. It was good cold the next day, too.

29 September: And now to today! Whew! My girlfriends and I slept in, laid around chatting about life until checkout time, ate brunch at Denny's, and drove home. This evening was the General Relief Society Meeting, the very first one with Sister Burton (my mission president's wife) as General Relief Society president. She gave a great talk! I was only sad that I wasn't able to go with my friends to the meeting in the Conference Center in SLC. Sometimes not having a car is very inconvenient.

And there you go. Not exactly a short recap of my September, but hopefully it wasn't boring.

Versions of Me

One of my senior pictures, summer 2004

Have you ever gone back and looked at old pictures of yourself? I do, sometimes. We spend so much time looking out from behind our eyes that looking into them can feel like you're looking at someone else. 

Hanging out in a friend's kitchen, summer 2007

Sometimes, I look into the eyes of these old mes and remember how innocent and hopeful I was. Innocent of all the hard and challenging things that lay ahead of me, innocent of the disappointment of not facing those challenges head-on and overcoming them the way I would like to think I can. Hopeful that things would unfold the way I thought they would, hopeful that all those things I'd dreamed of were coming to me just the way I'd dreamed they would.

In the Young Adult fiction nook of our town library (my favorite place), fall 2007

The old me could have never have imagined the current me. In some ways we're very different people, and in others we're very much the same. I wonder if parts of her still linger, or if somehow the current version of ourselves gets "saved" over the older ones, like drafts of a Word document, and the only hints of those old versions of ourselves are the moments captured in photographs.

In the MTC, winter 2007

Happy Autumnal Equinox!

Fall leaves at the traditional Korean village just outside of Seoul, 2008.

Autumn has always been my favorite season, and this year is no exception. The weather has been cooling off lately, which gets me all excited. I've been trying to wear my sweaters for the last week or so. It's still too warm to really pull that off, but I know I shouldn't wish the warm temperatures away; come January I'll be begging for them to make a comeback. Until then, however, I'm reveling in the crisp evening air and the occasional smell of woodsmoke that drifts through my window.

A Short Laugh Break

I'm terribly behind on all the things that have been happening lately (I turned 26! my mom came to visit! I got another job!), but I thought I'd share this. I saw this at our local zoo tonight and got a laugh out of it. Sorry about the crappy picture, I still must rely on my dumbphone's 1 megapixel camera for all my picture-taking needs.

All Moved In

After procrastinating it for a few hours this morning, I finally dragged myself off my bed (where I had returned after getting up to make breakfast) to go do something about the huge mess in my room you saw in the pictures yesterday. I always require a sit-on-the-floor-and-look-around-in-an-overwhelmed-fashion period of adjustment before I tackle anything, and this was no different, but I finally managed to decide where I want my bookshelves (yes, I have two! ^_^) and get my books unpacked and put away. After that I took a break to watch a drama (hey, it's a holiday). But after a big push and some "just do it" mental chivvying, this is what my room looks like now. Here's the view looking straight in from the door (which opens, inconveniently, to the left).

That little nook is darned inconvenient, I must say. The dresser was originally in the closet, but the closet isn't very wide and I couldn't open the drawers because the closet doors didn't slide open wide enough. So it got relocated to The Nook. (I think I will use the capitals from now on.) I'd have it facing forward, but it's missing a bottom drawer, and that looks kinda weird from the door, so it's sideways.

This is the view from the wall to the right of the door, the one the dresser is on. It looks a little cramped with my second bookshelf on the right, between the foot of my bed and the closet...but there really isn't a good place to put it. So it's here. Which is good, because I like having my books within eyeshot / arm reach. This way I don't have to get out of bed to get a book I want to read. (And I just want you to know, I made my bed just to take this picture. I hope you appreciate my sacrifice.)

Here's the view of the head of my bed (whew, those satin pillowcases are shiny!), my desk, and my other bookshelf (all of which came with my room - the other, taller bookshelf is mine, though). The door swings in front of the bookshelf when it's open, but thankfully the bookshelf isn't very deep so I can open my door almost all the way.

...and here's my view while I'm lying in bed, looking toward my bookshelf and closet (see how narrow it is?). I apologize for the lighting and the bad quality of the pictures, but the only camera I have is the one on my phone, and it's not even a hi-tech smartphone. It's just a 1 megapixel-camera dumb phone with no zoom. Still, you get the idea, right?

 I still haven't hung any of my posters, and the pictures / artwork might move around based on how cool the landlords are with nail holes. I think I'd like to hang my mirror lengthwise on the wall opposite the window. I'm hoping if I do, it'll throw around some light and hopefully make things a little brighter. I'm lucky, though, that my window faces south, so it's not a dank, dark, gloomy place and stays pretty light all day long. Still, I'm a big natural light fan, and the more the better, right?

I'm not sure how well you can see them, but those are some of my glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. My siblings gave them to me for Christmas years ago, and they've been on all my ceilings since. They're the last little touch that always makes every new place feel a little bit more like 'home'.

My New Place

Yesterday was a big day for me. It was my very first "grown-up job" payday, and it was also the day I moved into my new place (made possible by my first grown-up job payday). So come on in, and I'll give you a little tour of my place, all from the door of my room (please excuse the mess, and be careful on the stairs).

My room is in the basement, at the bottom of the stairs. Those stairs, to be precise. ~gestures to the picture below~ Those stairs lead from the side door. If you come straight down you enter my room; if you turn left on the landing and take two steps up, you're in the upstairs kitchen.

I say upstairs kitchen because there's also a downstairs one. The picture below on the left is the view from my door, facing out and left. There's also a table to the right, but it's blocked by the wall in this shot. To the left of the kitchen is the downstairs bathroom. Further to the left down a very short hall is the downstairs living room, and just off of that is a large bedroom shared by two of my roommates, Taylor and Megan (who are cousins). If you stand at my door and look out and right, you see the laundry / storage room.

This view below on the left is standing at my door looking to the left. The one on the right is standing at my door and looking straight ahead. The wall color doesn't look quite right, but it's a kind of dusky dark pink, with more purple than red in it. The other three walls are white painted paneling.

Here's the view from just inside my door toward the far left wall. That the wall my window and my bed are on. I've rearranged the furniture a little, and now the desk is against the same wall as the headboard, right up next to my bed. I'm typing this sitting at the head of my bed with my computer sitting on the desk. I'm going to pause just to complain a little bit about sleeping on a twin bed again. I sure do miss my lovely queen from my other house. ~heaves a heavy sigh~

And here's the view from the foot of my bed, looking back toward the door.

 So, really nothing too spectacular (and not nearly as nice as my last place - but cheaper!), but I'm hoping when I get everything unpacked and put away and organized and hopefully get all my art hung it will feel more like home. I have to admit that I felt a little lonely and sad last night. Jordanne and her family were very good to me and I'm going to miss them. Still, one has to be independent eventually, right?

When I get more settled in, I'll take some more pictures and show you how things look in that configuration. In the meantime, I'm excited that my mom will be coming into town this week and will be staying for my birthday!