Dear friends, and Two Followers,
I apologize for my absence. I honestly did not realize I had not posted since September. I wholeheartedly resolve this year to post more frequently.
Since September my life hasn't changed a great deal. Still working in news (thankfully!) We just got word that we should all have jobs through March. These are perilous times for the media, so I still never know when I might be out of this job. This hasn't stopped me from forming Plan Bs in the back of my mind, including graduate school, teaching English abroad, the Peace Corps, or simply hibernating until the recession is over.
And I had a huge, family-filled winter holidays. Back in my home state of Nebraska, we were hit with a very white Christmas indeed, a three-day blizzard. Thankfully, everyone decided to arrive a day early to beat the weather. I was inside with 12 people, two dogs, and two guinea pigs for four days. So with a grand total of two feet of snow on the ground we were then treated to a week of below-freezing temperatures. What's the best thing to do when it's 10 degrees below zero? Have a wedding!
No, I did not get married. In that unlikely event, beware of flying pigs shortly before the apocalypse starts. My little sister got hitched this January. The holiday season was filled with wedding planning and preparations. We sewed trim on both of her veils by hand; each woman in the family taking a painstaking few stitches at a time. If you saw the veil you could tell which stitches were mine, as they were the knotty, bunchy ones. As with all weddings, there were a few mishaps; three days before the wedding, 40 flowers were missing out of the floral order. (After my mother raised a little hell, they managed to pull flowers from other orders to make hers complete.) My family almost forgot me on the morning of the wedding for our hair appointments. The church was heated, but not so well heated that we all weren't shivering. It started snowing in time for the reception to start. I didn't care about it snowing during the reception as much as I cared about driving home afterward in it. Driving through it the first time wasn't nearly as fun as driving back in it to pick up my drunk brother and his friends who had wandered away from the hotel while it was snowing and about 3 degrees Fahrenheit. (Did I mention Omaha has a lot of hills and I don't have a four-wheel drive vehicle?)
The wedding was lovely, even if the weather was not. To prove how much the newlyweds love winter, they honeymooned in Canada. My relatives are insane.
If another member of my family decides to get married in winter in Nebraska, I'm not going to say a word. I'm just not going. Winter weddings are for places like Australia. But in the end I get a new brother-in-law.
Now that I'm back there will be many news updates and thoughtful posts to come.
