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I've been a little late on my thank you notes this year and am just now finishing them up. (Ideally they should be written on Christmas Day, of course, but as you get older, you have to take more responsibility for the evening entertainment and so don't have that hour or two in the afternoon of Christmas Day to whip them off.) Because I love the idea that someone got me a present and wrapped it, sometimes I don't open them right away. And in fact I did not open my last two presents from my Dad and stepmother until last night. What fun! They got me (among other stuff that I'd opened before) a beautiful little blank book that my stepmother found in Florence! I love it! It is really pretty, it looks like this old medieval tome but it's small, like not much bigger than my hand. But thick.
They also gave me a hardback edition of The Lost Symbol which literally made me scream out loud. I have been waiting for that book to come out in paperback--I know the reserve line at the library is very long. Yay! Can't wait to dive into it! I wrote them a thank you note today. I've been a little out of touch with my parents this year because of The Situation. The story is so long and depressing, I just didn't want to launch into the whole thing on the phone and have to relive it AGAIN, at least not until it's resolved. And yet it's been so much on my mind, I felt I would have to mention it, if that makes sense. So, sadly, I haven't really talked to them much except for emails here and there, and I don't think I'll be able to visit them until at least June or July--my spring is pretty full at this point. But after tonight perhaps I can at least talk to them. They did call me on my birthday and luckily I was able to talk of other things--mainly, the Columbia news. They are thrilled and told my youngest brother immediately. I thought Mom might've told Bart, my oldest brother, but when he called us on Xmas Day, it turned out she hadn't so I told him and he was thrilled. He kept saying "you deserve this, you've earned this." Then he said something funny--"don't go turning into a super-liberal now!" This is especially hilarious because my youngest brother in an email this weekend said exactly the same thing. Stuart knows me better than that, he knows there is no way I'm going to start to trend left on Israel. I'm to the right of Sharon on Israeli issues. (Stuart is an expert on Arab-Israeli affairs and we are probably the two most knowledgeable in our family about the Arab-Israeli situation--me through history and Stuart through current events. Although the Middle East is like the South--as Faulkner said "in the South, the past isn't dead. It isn't even past." My point being that current affairs in the Middle East IS history!)
So my registration finally went through and I start classes (well, my one class so far) on the 19th. Yay! Can't wait to immerse myself in empires past! I also got invoiced--OY. FAFSA, here I come!
They also gave me a hardback edition of The Lost Symbol which literally made me scream out loud. I have been waiting for that book to come out in paperback--I know the reserve line at the library is very long. Yay! Can't wait to dive into it! I wrote them a thank you note today. I've been a little out of touch with my parents this year because of The Situation. The story is so long and depressing, I just didn't want to launch into the whole thing on the phone and have to relive it AGAIN, at least not until it's resolved. And yet it's been so much on my mind, I felt I would have to mention it, if that makes sense. So, sadly, I haven't really talked to them much except for emails here and there, and I don't think I'll be able to visit them until at least June or July--my spring is pretty full at this point. But after tonight perhaps I can at least talk to them. They did call me on my birthday and luckily I was able to talk of other things--mainly, the Columbia news. They are thrilled and told my youngest brother immediately. I thought Mom might've told Bart, my oldest brother, but when he called us on Xmas Day, it turned out she hadn't so I told him and he was thrilled. He kept saying "you deserve this, you've earned this." Then he said something funny--"don't go turning into a super-liberal now!" This is especially hilarious because my youngest brother in an email this weekend said exactly the same thing. Stuart knows me better than that, he knows there is no way I'm going to start to trend left on Israel. I'm to the right of Sharon on Israeli issues. (Stuart is an expert on Arab-Israeli affairs and we are probably the two most knowledgeable in our family about the Arab-Israeli situation--me through history and Stuart through current events. Although the Middle East is like the South--as Faulkner said "in the South, the past isn't dead. It isn't even past." My point being that current affairs in the Middle East IS history!)
So my registration finally went through and I start classes (well, my one class so far) on the 19th. Yay! Can't wait to immerse myself in empires past! I also got invoiced--OY. FAFSA, here I come!
