[finally for this one night // I'm about to have a fun night]

I finally saw Wicked and it was wonderful, if a bit of an adventure. The tickets were a Christmas present, bought long before we realized this was to be Our Winter of the Snows and that buying tickets in advance for a show an hour and a half away was a dicey proposition. The show was on Friday. It started to snow Thursday afternoon. My mom, sister and I spent the evening glaring out the window and frantically checking the weather report. Many of the websites we checked told us there was a 30% chance of snow that very day, to which we looked out at the snow sleeting down outside and shouted, "OH REALLY! YOU THINK? PULL THE OTHER ONE, IT HAS BELLS!" Needless to say, we were all a bit high strung that evening. However, we awoke Friday morning to rain instead of snow and we decided to risk the drive.

The show was in Greenville, SC, nearly two hours down the mountain. There was weather predicted for that evening, so we packed a change of clothes, just in case we were stranded for the night. My mother, in a vote of confidence, insisted that her winter coat be in the back of the car instead of the trunk, just in case of an accident. I contended myself with the prayer my dad taught me the first time we ventured out on icy roads, back in December: Holy Mother, full of grace/Don't let Dad smash my faces. Turns out, the worse road of the trip was the one we live on. We drove through a spectacularly beautiful forest of ice covered trees, but the interstate was clear.

We ate at a Lowcountry restaurant for dinner (verdict: YUM and also, I would like to be having more Hoppin' John & she-crab anything forever), then crossed the street to the Peace Center. The show was amazing! I've been a huge fan of the soundtrack since college, but never had the chance (or the funds) to actually see the play until now. There was a bit of a disconnect at first; I was so use to the Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel version I had trouble accepting different voices, no matter how good the performers were. I got over it after the first few songs though, and throughly enjoyed the rest of the show!

We hightailed it out of town after the show, calling my brother at home to check on the conditions of the road. (Long-Suffering Little Brother: The internet says nothing until after midnight. Can I go now? Dad: Have you actually looked outside? Me: The internet is like the ditzy blonde in Mean Girls. There's a 30% chance that it's already raining!) We made it home, safe and sound, around one in the morning, only to learn that the winter storm advisory had turned into a flood warning. WTF, weather.

Winter Storm vSo Not Amused

It's snowing. Again. Yesterday (incidentally, the first day I wasn't snowed in from last week's snow storm) I told the second graders I tutor that it was suppose to snow this weekend. They groaned and said they were tired of snow. My brother and sister were hissing at the snow this evening since each snow day means a day of Saturday school to make it up. As for me, all I have to say is that if I miss seeing Wicked tomorrow night because I'm snowed in, I will *not* be amused.

Sledding!

Winter Storm v2.0 blew through town Friday afternoon and I awoke on Saturday morning to eight and a half inches of snow. Then it sleeted for a while, giving the snow a crunchy layer of ice on top and creating the perfect sledding conditions. My parents' house is on a hill, and at the bottom of the hill runs a creek, which makes this a tad bit more chancy that your average sledding hill.

The sledding was excellent yesterday and I spent the afternoon chanting, "Creek, creek, creek!" whenever someone else was sledding and frantically bailing out of the sled when it was my turn to go. We had several near misses (I spent a lot of time yelling at the sledders "Look, all I want in this world is to see a loved one sled into a creek. WHY MUST YOU DENY ME!"), but at the end of a long afternoon, my younger brother finally got an impromptu bath. I'll be honest; I was too busy laughing and shouting, "YES!" while pumping my fist in the air to really help him out, although I did almost fall in myself trying to rescue our sled.


Later that afternoon, we lit the burn pile (covered with a tarp before the snow started for just this purpose) and made s'mores, and then went back inside to drink hot chocolate and watch the Ocean movies. I walked the road today and we're still snowed in, but we never lost power and our neighbor plowed the driveway with his tractor, so we can skip the hour of shoveling snow once we can get out. Not a bad way to spend the weekend. The pictures are here.

25!

I am a quarter of a century old today! Wait, that sound super old. Twenty-five sounds much younger. Today I am 25!

A bunch of college friends came into town this weekend, and I started celebrating early with copious amounts of Bones marathons, Mario Kart and midnight trips to the grocery store. For my actual birthday, I'm going out to dinner and a movie with Sarah and tomorrow I get the birthday meal of my choice from my mom. (Thai squash soup! Suck on that, brother who won't eat vegetables.)

From my friends I got lots and lots of yarn, from my family I got money for a pre-Korea shopping trip next month, from myself I got a Kindle (not quite as extravagant as what I gave myself last year) and from the god of bad birthday presents, I got an nasty upper repository infection and have spent the day coughing like I've had a pack a day habit for longer than I've been alive.

[see I was born and raised in Texas // and it means so much to me]

It's been eleven years since I lived in Texas, but for some things time doesn't matter. Even though I know nothing about football* I am deeply invested in the 'Bama Longhorns game currently playing, as are my staunchly pro-Texas siblings. The only holdout is our father, who is supporting 'Bama just to be contrary. We kept interrupting dinner to point at him and shout, "Hook 'em! HOOK 'EM!" He would respond with something about slaughtering cattle. I finally told him, "That's right (you're not from Texas)."

No one got the reference, so I guess I'm the only Lyle Lovett fan in the family.

*True conversation I just had with my sister.
Baby sister: We have three sacks!
Me: I would be more impressed if I knew what a sack was.
Baby sister: I'm pretty sure it's a good thing.
Me: I'm pretty sure it's a type of bag. I think maybe you carry groceries in it?