Ten Days

Does anyone else feel like it has been ages since Christmas? Seriously, you could tell me right now, "It's going to be Christmas again in a few weeks," and I wouldn't doubt you. I have just done so much already this year that it feels like Christmas was months ago rather than just a couple of weeks ago.

I flew back to New Jersey on the 5th and then my sister joined me there on the 6th, and for the past week we've done so much that I couldn't even begin to tell you all about it. Name a major city in the mid-Atlantic region and odds are pretty good that my sister and I were there sometime in the past six days. We even fulfilled a childhood dream by spending a day at Colonial Williamsburg! [Yes, we were weird children. Everyone else wanted to go to Disney World or Six Flags, but not me and my sister. We wanted to go to the country's largest living history museum to learn about the founding fathers. Nerds!]
We went to museums (Philadelphia Museum of Art,the Museum of Natural History in New York, Ellis Island, Williamsburg), an aquarium (in Baltimore, surprisingly impressive), a Broadway show (Wicked, which I was happy to finally see and which I enjoyed for technical and musical reasons although I'm very glad I was warned in advance that it was going to be absolutely nothing like the book or I would have been disappointed), lots of restaurants, some interesting bars. We did a ton of walking and sightseeing. I could tell you all about it, but isn't that kind of boring, just listening to someone blab about how fun her vacation was?
All you really need to know is that I had a very fun week hanging out with my sister, and I'm really glad she came to visit. There's all this touristy stuff I always want to do around here, and while I can do it by myself and sometimes do, it's more fun to have company for most excursions. And my sister is great company, since we enjoy a lot of the same [ridiculous] things and she's constantly making me laugh and we like to explore at about the same pace. I did post a bunch of pictures of my entire break, including Christmas, the bowl game in California, New Year's Eve, and my travels with my sister at my photobucket site, which I'm guessing you know how to access by now. The link is in my AIM profile, as usual.

My sister left this morning, and now I'm really looking forward to two weeks of just bumming around my apartment by myself since classes don't start until the end of the month. I'm sure I'll go out a few times in the next couple of weeks. I've already been invited to a barbecue next weekend; weather permitting, of course. I don't really know what everyone is thinking trying to plan a barbecue in January. I mean, it has been unseasonably warm ever since I've been back, but how long can these temperatures actually last? Stacy and I also want to get our dogs together since they've never met, and once Nicole gets back we all want to go check out a nearby town known for bars and navy men. So there are plans. But most of my plans involve lying around on my sofa and occasionally working on some little projects if I feel inspired. I need to print and organize the pictures I've taken over the past six months, I need to hit the library and bookstore to start collecting the books I'll need for the upcoming semester, I need to cook a few healthy meals and work out more intensely and get my body feeling normal again after three weeks of excessive eating and drinking and less exercise than usual.
And I need to plan my spring travels. I have to go to the midwest for a conference at the end of February, I'm in my college roommate's wedding in my home state on March 15th, and the weekend after that I'm going to Las Vegas to celebrate my brother's 21st birthday. All of these are fun, good things, but it involves a lot of planning. I have to figure out where I'm going to fly from and when, who is going to take care of my animals, whether or not I can use public transportation or kind friends to get around in each location (Vegas I'm not worried about, the other two places will take some planning)...All of this planning needs to get done soon, ideally before school starts again, but even though I love traveling, the last thing I really want to do at this exact moment is think about getting on another airplane.

Oh well. Give me a few days and I'll be raring to go again, I'm sure. In the meantime, I'll be here on the couch.