The Weather Outside is Weather

Best part of being on the school's schedule: snow days!! Ah yes, I was free to sleep this morning knowing I would not get a call before 8 am asking me to come in to work. And it felt wonderful!

Yes, I know I've been totally MIA for the past month or so. In my defense, I've been busy. I finally started getting called in to sub, which is keeping me all kinds of occupied. My first day was the Thursday before last, and with the exception of today and this past Thursday, I've been called in every day. Huzzah! And I also started up at Java on Main, the new coffeeshop in Princeton. I started on Thursday and am scheduled to work that day every week, although this week Tina asked me to work Tuesday instead. It's great being back behind an espresso machine, which is, after all, my natural habitat.

I've also spent a lot of time reading, which is one of the perks of substitute teaching. Yay getting paid to read! I just finished reading East, West by Salman Rushdie, which is a collection of short stories about Eastern and Western culture and the how they intersect. I also read The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, who I have completely fallen in love with. I officially want to go to Spain and take part in the bull fighting fiesta. I picked up a copy of Bobby Kennedy's book Thirteen Days, which is his memoir on the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's a quick, interesting read.

And my frequent stops at Family Video have started up again. I used to go there once a week when I was in high school, but I stopped going in for a while there. Since I have an unending list of movies I have been dying to see, I figured it was high time I started working on it. There is, naturally, another reason I started going into FV so much, but my creepiness is not what we are discussing here, people. Anyway, I've been able to see some good ones. I re-watched Whatever Works and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, both of which I had watched as inflight movies last year. I rented The Extra Man, with Kevin Kline and Paul Dano, but didn't actually make it all the way through. A Single Man is one I could watch and re-watch a million times. Visually stunning, starring Colin Firth, set in the 1960s. Yes, Tom Ford, yes on all counts.

Other than that, I've been hanging with friends a lot. Reconnecting with high school pals, spending evenings at Fitzgeralds with the Princeton gang, getting to see the crew in Peoria more often. On Friday I had what can only be described as a great cross section of my social life since being home. Despite there being no Andy and Katie at the bar (sadly), it was a lot of fun. I was there with friends from high school (starting at 4:30, although I didn't drink more than two all night), Garv and Whitlock showed up, and I randomly bumped into Devin (which is sort of the only way I ever see him). But it was funny being up at my fave bar with my old friends, the people I've hung with for the past few years, and then someone I've recently started kicking it with more.