Sunday, December 20, 2009

I'll Be Home for Christmas...

I'm pleased to tell you that my flight home was very smooth. No delays, cancellations, or bad weather. In fact, I was a little unsure when my mom told me I was flying out on Thursday because that gave me really only about 3 days to take 5 finals. I do not recommend that, but I got them done and got home. I beat the huge snow storm that is currently slamming the east coast (secretly...well not so secretly now...I love it!).
May I take just a moment to commend the plowing we have here. They are out BEFORE the snow even starts, salting the roads!!! I love them!!! The roads look beautiful now. In contrast, in Utah the plowers decide to come out a few days later when the snow has frozen over and it really ticks me off. Allow me to present my case. I live in a college town, thus there are thousands of idiotic college kids and muscle-heads with beefed-up cars who think they can drive carelessly through the streets when the roads are icy and dangerous. No, you cannot. Also, there are quite a few students from areas where it does not snow: southern CA, and AZ. Now, I'm not saying all of these students are incapable of driving in the snow, but from my experience, a vast amount can't and it's scary. So the moral of this tale: LEARN TO PLOW PROVO...and UT. For heaven sakes, they don't even plow I-15 or I-80 very well. Shame on you.
Ok....back to my flight.
I had one layover in Detroit, MI. Never been there (shockingly enough). The only down part of this experience was from the flight from SLC to Detroit. Why? The guy who sat next to me talked my head off!!!!! AHHHHH!!!!!! And you know what he spent most of the time doing? Trying to show off to me about his knowledge of beer selection. Do I care? No. Yikes. Not impressed. Then he went on and on and on about his job, which was actually pretty cool....for about 10 minutes. Then he went into the technological jargon and lost me completely so I caught myself saying, "Wow. That's really cool" about 15 times. And he kept swearing. Gentlemen, I don't care who you are. You don't sound cool swearing. You sound incompetent and unintelligent. Plus, I'm a lady. Don't swear in my presence. I'm not impressed. And he kept stroking his untrimmed and wild beard. Gross. And he kept going on about this wedding he had to go to in NY and on and on and on. TMI dude. T. M. I. The worst of it all was, I had five books with me. FIVE. I shoved two of them in my purse, and then shoved my purse in one of my carry-ons with the other books and not thinking, shoved that bag with my purse and my books in the overhead storage. Moron! Gah! So about 1/2 the way through the flight, I got up to go to the bathroom and dug in my bag for my book. Thank goodness for my book :)

Friday I spent the day in Boston doing internship tours. It was quite exciting. I began my day waiting for the Amtrak Downeaster to take me in to Boston. It was scheduled to leave at 9:17am. Unfortunately, I was about 10 minutes early and had to wait outside. The temperature was somewhere around 6, maybe 7 degrees and it was windy. Because I was dressed professionally, I wasn't in the warmest of clothes. All I could think about was how I am totally investing in thermal underwear. On top of being 10 minutes early, the train was about 30 minutes late because a freight train held them up. Can we say FREEZING??!?! My toes were numb and my knee joints were stiff. I swear my synovial fluid in my kneecaps were beginning to freeze because bending my knees was becoming very challenging. Anyway, the train came, I got on and the car was deliciously warm. However, the woman in front me complained to one of the ticketmen how hot the car was. I wanted to peer over her seat and scowl at her. Luckily the ticketman politely told her she could move to a different cart. Maybe he saw me glaring, or rubbing my poor toes furiously, maybe he just knew all of us getting on the train were probably freezing, either way, I wanted to hug that man. Made it to Boston, took the greenline to Longwood area, and then walked to Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center for tour #1. It went well, although there were about 14 people there, big group! We had to go around and introduce ourselves...yikes. I'm a master's student at BU; I do research; I just got my second bachelor's degree; I've been working as a chef in NYC for 7 years; I've been working at WIC for 2 years; then me: Hi, I'm an undergrad. Greeeeeat. The reality of the competition just slapped me across the face. I spent the next hour fretting over this. Then I figuratively slapped myself in the face and realized that I'm still qualified and capable. I kept nursing my confidence with this information for the rest of the afternoon, even more so once I got to Brigham and Women's tour. They are legit. I want to go there so badly. I think. Now I'm scared. Really, really, really, really scared. It was still fun though. I met this guy, Dan, who goes to school at Colorado State. Since we were the only 2 from the west, we became fast buddies. It was really fun. I finished my tours 4 hours later and took the T back to North Station. I still had an hour to burn so I decided to walk to my all-time favorite part of Boston: the North End. I was tempted to get a slice of Regina's pizza but decided instead to hit up Mike's Pastry to get some cannolis. (I didn't take this photo; I found it on google.com/images, but the funny part of it is, that's the woman who helped me!)Yummmm. So fun!!! I felt like a legitimate Bostonian. Then I took the train back to NH. It was great! Intimidating, scary, and nerve-wracking, but fun!

I love being home. I love being with my family, my ward family, and my friend family. Seriously. I love these people! I decorated our Christmas tree today while big, fat snowflakes swirled to the ground. Dane informed my mom that they could not decorate the tree without me. A cop out so he wouldn't have to decorate it? Perhaps...but I had a blast decorating it! I haven't done it in 4 years, since it's usually done by time I get home.

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

1 comment:

Ashley Jensen said...

My poor brother is in freezing cold Boston. I'm jealous you got to go there. But I do hopefully get to talk to him on Christmas!! Glad you made it home safe :)