Conversations Between the Rivers and the Freeways: Week 17 Just the Two of Us

According to Dominic's Home Depot work schedule calendar, the week does not start until Monday, so I am still counting this as Week 17. Plus I have never been able to subscribe to the idea that the week starts on Sunday anyway- that has never felt right. Sundays have always felt like endings, not beginnings.

So now it is back to just the two of us (we can make it if we trryyyy...just the two of us....you and I...How can you not think of that song when you think of the phrase?) for a while again. We are so lucky to have such amazing friends and family- we have been able to spend the past few weeks with family (Dad, Yvonne, Sissy, John), old friends (Mikal and Anna), and new friends (Joe and Jeremy). It was great having house guests and I will say, of course, that I was sorry to see each one of them go.

But now it is high time to get my head back in the academic game, and I'm starting to feel like these long winter breaks make us soft! I start classes again on the 22nd, so it is time to start thinking of somehow paying for books, working out schedules (one of my classes STILL isn't scheduled...this happened last semester too...the department allows some professors to schedule the class themselves, but they tend to wait until the very. last. minute. I am definitely not used to that), and outstanding, ongoing projects.

Of course I have not done as much work as I should have over break, but I have a week to make up for it! Which is good because I need to have a warm-up period before getting back in gear. I really needed some inspiration and I got it yesterday; I had two emails, one from Dr. Shenk asking for bio info for her website (reminding me that, yes, I am in school and yes, there are things I should be doing) and the other was from the CLS program (click here to check out the website!) I applied for. I was super surprised and extremely happy to find out that I am a semi-finalist!!!- that means I am moving forward in the selection process and I stand a higher chance of spending this summer in Bangladesh learning Bangla. As a first year graduate student I did not expect to make it this far (I am thinking the fact that I applied four years ago as an undergrad might have helped, as they can see I've been working towards this for a long time!). Of course the chance of my not going is still really high, but I figure even if I don't make it this summer, the fact that I have made it this far already makes it that much more likely that I will get to go next summer. Fingers still crossed for this year though ;)

I have been making decent progress on my resolutions, but it hasn't been long enough to do anything substantial. It is easy to still be reading fiction because the semester hasn't started, and here I am, blogging! I joined a few online book clubs to play around with (on my new favorite website, Goodreads), and am going to start Orlando by Virginia Woolf for one of them this week. I've written two real letters so far (and had a blast doing it, so I'm confident I can keep that up!).

Last night and this morning Columbia was graced with some very lame snow and some very unpleasant ice- coating everything, including the sidewalk and roads. Walking Ripley this morning I saw people with cups of salt, spreading it in the apartment parking lots, and Ripley and I both did some slippin-and-slidin'. All the more reason to stay in, read, and get some solid project work done!

And Dominic is gradually feeling better. Luckily he has had this weekend and Monday off of work to really lay around and recover. Hopefully by the time he heads back to work on Tuesday he will be right as rain.

I have plenty of pictures to share this week! Dominic and I started the week visiting the Mizzou library...