dinner

yesterday after the so-tragic-let's-not-even-talk-about-it loss by my blue devils, i went over to abby and aaron's house to play dorky games (so fun) and eat dinner.  it was such a perfect sunday afternoon, and i'm really really happy that these friends have moved to atlanta*.  while aaron and i played one last game, abby made dinner.  i love cooking, but BEING cooked for is a pretty awesome thing.  and abby is an amazing cook - this is the delicious dinner that she made us:

homemade black bean-sweet potato veggie burgers with HOMEMADE BUNS.  and the buns had cheese in them.  i almost died.

homemade salsa.

HOMEMADE GUACAMOLE.

i mean, honestly - how did i get so lucky?

and then, as i was leaving, abby gave me some leftovers - salsa and two burgers and buns.  i am salivating just thinking about having one for lunch today.  literally salivating.  whatever the cafeteria has to offer can obviously not compare.


*well, conyers.  but close enough.

jolene

um, the town was a REALLY good movie.  were you guys aware of that?  interesting story line, not TOO scary for weenie little me, good acting.  ben affleck: you done good.  as the film ended and the credits started to roll, this song plays:



i said, out loud to my empty living room, "ben affleck: i love you."  anyone who likes this song can be a friend of mine.


interesting side note: i know three songs called "jolene" - same title, different music and lyrics.  for a song about a woman who a pretty obscure name, i'm impressed she's the title of three songs.  anyone know something i don't about these songs being connected somehow?  here are the other two, by the weepies and dolly parton:






which song is my favorite?  impossible for me to say.

aired out

so, right now it is 69 degrees and sunny-ish in atlanta.  becky called to tell me how pissed she was about this.  we do this, my family - check on the weather in each others' locations.  i also check the weather in places i've lived - durham if i'm feeling nostalgic, exeter if i want to be happy about how warm it is here in comparison.  my dad has a feature on his tv where he can check the weather in five cities (that he programmed in) by pressing a button on his remote control.  there's something about knowing the weather in a loved one's city that brings you closer to them, even though they may be far away.

when i got home from school today (we had an open house for prospective families), i opened a window in my room and turned the fan on to circulate some fresh air.  i also opened the door to the patio, so the whole house feels aired out.  it feels so good after having been shut up for months.  i know this is a momentary break in the winter weather and it'll be nice and rainy and cold all week (boo), so i'm appreciating this while i can.

the battle hymn of the republic

my friend nora has a blog about music, and i am in love with this post.  i love patriotic songs - when they are sung well (as these are).  my favorites: the joan baez version - she has SUCH an amazing voice, and i forget that.  and the mormon tabernacle choir version: um, how awesome are the 80s-ish dresses the women are wearing in this version??  answer: extremely awesome.  and, more importantly, how amazing is this choir.  when i was in salt lake city for a conference in the summer of 2008, i went to the public rehearsal of the choir (during the week - wednesdays, maybe?) before they perform on sundays.  the week i went was right before the 4th of july and they sang all patriotic songs AND I WAS SPEECHLESS.  i was excited just to hear them sing - but to hear them sing nonreligious songs that are also america-y?  so so happy.  they were incredible live and it's one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences that i know i'll remember forever.

for lunch today:

(yes, at some point i promised you that if you read this blog you wouldn't have to hear boring things like what i ate for breakfast.  and then i realized that talking about food is fun.  so there.)

salad - lettuce and tomatoes from my CSA box (i love my farmers in alabama!), carrots, really pretty asparagus, and stirfried tofu (locally made).  when you say "stirfried" it sounds healthier than "fried," though i'm not sure what the difference is.  and the best part: you know that ginger dressing that you get at japanese restaurants?  i bought some and i'm trying it out today.  hooray!

SO EXCITED for some greens in my life.  (i've been eating lots of pasta recently and i need a change.)

and some orange: i bought a box of clementines this weekend and i'm tearing through a couple a day.  no scurvy for me!

i adore the new york times because...

...they have amazing graphics, like these two on the state of the union address:

"who sat where"

and

"patterns of speech"

it's a t-swift kind of morning

yes, i can't believe i just wrote that either.



remember how i said on monday that i like the first hour of work to go by incident-free?  if you want to talk to me and it is for any reason other than to give me a delicious breakfast, do it after 9am.

apparently not everyone obeys this rule.

fatties

best email of 2011 (yes, i only have 24 other days to compare this to):

my friends and i go to a weekly trivia night at a pizza place on tuesdays, and in replying to tell me she was coming tonight, my friend dani told me that our mutual friend emily* was also joining (yay!) and that emily's boyfriend might be coming.  i replied "great!" and then dani sent me this email:

wooo cool! ok i think [emily's boyfriend] is not coming because he said to emily "um do you really need to be eating pizza anyway?!"  umm yes we are fatties and DO need to be eating pizza. the end, you are uninvited.
dani


MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY.  haha...


*name changed to protect the innocent

"Nate Silver will be providing awards-season insight for Carpetbagger leading up to the 83rd Academy Awards on Feb. 27. Mr. Silver is the author of the Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog, which is devoted to the analysis of statistics and data in politics and other areas." (from here.)

the new york times knows how to make a girl happy.  my favorite political analyst will participate in a discussion about my love of movies?  i'm kind of losing my mind with excitement.

while we're on the subject of awards shows, my analysis of the golden globes winners from a couple weeks ago:
yay natalie portman and colin firth!
seriously, golden globes: the social network?!?
yay chris colfer and jane lynch!
i heart jim parsons.
the end.

monday morning

monday mornings are hard for me.  snoozing the alarm for as long as possible (my new alarm will only allow you to snooze in 5 minute increments for 25 minutes before it turns off - this incites great panic in me, as you might imagine), getting ready as quickly as i can in that slow motion way that i operate in the morning, arriving at work hoping no crises will occur in the first hour.  so far so good.

in the midst of this dark and cold winter, i'm wearing my brightest shirt (a yellow v-neck t-shirt i got from martin + osa before they closed) with a greenish-blue sweater, a blue skirt, and my new leather boots.  does this go together?  in an anthropologie ad, yes.  and i think your environment helps determine your mood, so here we go.

here's some waking up music for you:

people who have been bad at updating their blog recently include: me.

sorry, friends!

work is busy, life is busy (as compared to being snowed in with basically nothing to do - but blog!)...and now i'm in nashville for the weekend visiting my friend erica.  yay for a girls' weekend!

back to regularly scheduled programming soon!

"The best memorial [to those killed in Tucson] would be to regulate firearms every bit as seriously as we regulate automobiles or toys."

right on, nicholas kristof.

nerd alert

this weekend i out-dorkified my dorkiest friend.

(aaron: don't be sad that you are my dorkiest friend.  i, too, am a dork.  to be my dorkiest friend is a compliment.)

aaron has introduced me to two dorky games that have turned out to be two of my favorite board games ever - settlers of catan and (this weekend) dominion.  my TIP friends and i may or may not have played dominion for like 6 hours this weekend.  i may or may not be buying this game pronto.  these are both german games, and take note: the germans know how to make a good board game.  dominion involves curses and potions - it is good and dorky - but SO FUN.

okay, but here's my dorky moment.  (haha - that wasn't it!  it gets better from here!)  at one point aaron and eric were talking about fantasy and scifi books, and i was sort of tuning out and then all of a sudden they're talking about george r.r. martin's books and I HAVE READ AND ENJOYED THESE BOOKS (thanks, rachie!), and it is revealed that i have read three of the books in the series, more than both aaron and eric.  O.M.G.  i participated in a conversation about fantasy books!  talking about them made me want to read the newest book in the series, but that would require re-reading the previous books, since i have no real memory of what happened.  but i think i might just do it.

spending time with my TIP friends from boston, DC, south carolina, and atlanta made me really happy, but sad that distance separates us for 362 days a year.  sigh.  these friends are so easy to be around, so full of funny memories of when we worked together, so important to me.  i was reminded of how lucky i am, to have these people in my life.

woah, where have i been?

sorry to disappear with no warning...my TIP friends came into town this weekend and there was no time for blogging because there was too much fun to be having.  much more to come on that fun...

before flights departed today we had brunch today at ria's bluebird cafe on memorial drive and it was AWESOME - i had a breakfast burrito: scrambled eggs, cheese, black beans, potatoes, sour cream, salsa verde, and curried sweet potatoes.  such a perfect meal.  our placemats were homemade and in honor of MLK day which made me love the place even more.

"There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. When we look beneath the surface, beneath the impulsive evil deed, we see within our enemy-neighbor a measure of goodness and know that the viciousness and evilness of his acts are not quite representative of all that he is. We see him in a new light. We recognize that his hate grows out of fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding, but in spite of this, we know God's image is ineffably etched in being. Then we love our enemies by realizing that they are not totally bad."
--Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957

snowed in part 7 / it's getting ridiculous

so...it's snow day #4 and tomorrow i'll have snow day #5.  I CAN'T BELIEVE IT EITHER.  except, i can.  today i made a break for it and drove to world peace cafe to volunteer for a couple hours, then to the gym to get some needed exercise.  and the roads were perfect in places - and HORRIBLE in others.  on I-285, a six lane highway, i was driving in the left lane, going like 20 miles an hour because that's how fast traffic was going, and all of a sudden the entire lane was ice.  after giving a big "i'm coming over - please let me in!" wave to the woman in the lane next to me, i moved over into a lane where i could actually, you know, grip the pavement.  she gave a wave back that said "i know that your lane is completely tragic and you are welcome here any time."  the iced over lane continued FOR MILES.  um, atlanta?  IT STOPPED SNOWING ON MONDAY AFTERNOON.  could you please do something about the ice on a major highway three days later??  no?  your plan is still "let it melt on its own"?  great.  so appreciative that my tax dollars are at work on something important.

it was great to spend time at the cafe, and even better to go to the gym.  i spent a full hour on the elliptical machine, even when my atrophied-from-four-days-in-a-row-of-doing-nothing legs were really tired, and it felt so good to be moving.  oh, and there was sun today!  glorious sun!  now, the low tonight is supposed to be 16 degrees, so all that snow/ice that the sun melted will probably make the roads even worse than they already are, but no matter.  i saw the sun today and worked out.  life is pretty good.

snowed in part 6 / extreme boredom edition

so, it's wednesday - day 3 of being out of school for snow/hazardous road conditions.  today i: watched a lot of tv, read my book, walked to the grocery store, took a shower, made and ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  and that is pretty much it.  at 4:30 this afternoon, the call came: school is cancelled tomorrow, as well.  atlanta's plan of "wait until the snow melts itself" isn't going very well so far.  i'm bored and tired of being home from work.  and we've got another day ahead of us.  sheesh.  last night new york city got 9 inches of snow and becky still had to go to work this morning.  i learned on the new york times that the city of new york has 1,700 snow plows.  your math for the day: 1,700 > 8

there are no pictures of what i did today because i did only boring things.  boo.

my plan tomorrow is to venture out in my car for the first time (joey drove to and from mike and kelly's house) - yoga and volunteering at world peace cafe.  i hope the roads will be okay if i do all of that during daylight hours.

while deep in the heart of boredom, i got an email letting me know i've been selected as an AP reader again this year.  for about half an hour, i considered it - it pays well - but then remembered how little fun i had doing it last year.  i actually made myself re-read my blog entries from that week in june, and BOY WAS I DISLIKING IT THEN.  so i'm turning down the money and picking happiness instead.  what will i do for the first week of june?  i don't know...but it won't be this.

snowed in part 5 / making a break for it

since i updated you last, this is what has happened:

monday night:
the girls did some yoga (which i'm sore from today) to prevent ourselves from going totally stir crazy, while the boys played on their computers/iphones.  we started an epic game of family guy-themed monopoly.  we made and ate dinner.

we spent monday evening watching football and playing board games - andy, joey, and i upstairs playing games while the others watched the football game.  andy kicked some ass in trivial pursuit and will have that as part of his bragging rights for a long time.  we joined the others to watch the last quarter of the game, which even i thought was exciting.  we went to bed monday night ready for another day of being snowed in together.

tuesday morning:
i wake up last (again), and french toast with strawberries is waiting for me.  LIFE IS SO GOOD.  we lie around for a bit, play some more monopoly (yes, those are mimosas, and yes, joey is talking with his hands),

and then decide to walk the half mile to the grocery store to (a) see what the roads are like, and (b) get stuff for dinner, since mike and kelly didn't go grocery shopping thinking they'd be feeding 7 people for 2+ days.  at the grocery store we realized that the roads were totally drivable, though not perfect, and made a decision: that we'd leave mike and kelly's at 5pm so we could get home before the roads freeze over - the low tonight is supposed to be 17 degrees.  at that point we didn't know if school would be cancelled, but we figured - either way - this afternoon would be a good time to make a break for it.  we return to mike and kelly's house with no groceries.  we look a little silly.

(this is powers ferry road - it's three lanes wide here and runs past my school about a mile down the road.)

tuesday afternoon:
kelly wins monopoly in a commanding fashion.  we pack up our things, get a little sad that we won't be spending 24/7 with each other any more, and drive home.  (that is something to emphasize - while i'm glad to be back in my own house, i really didn't get tired of my friends after spending 45 consecutive hours with them in a house built for...less than 7 people.  we had a wonderful time together.  perhaps another 24 hours would have been too much...but 45 didn't put us over the edge.)

i get the call that school is cancelled on wednesday as we arrive home!  the roads are okay - not great.

i've been home for 45 minutes...and i might already be bored.  oops.  i know i can entertain myself tonight, but i've got another whole day tomorrow without school.  don't get me wrong - the roads are bad and 16 year olds who drive to school are bad drivers, so i think we need another day off based on what the roads look like.  but the excitement of snow days has kind of worn off.

becky tells me that NPR was making fun of atlanta's 8 snow plows.  to be honest, they should.  we need to be shamed into buying some more...

snowed in part 4 / willis's purchases

at 4:30pm, the call came - school is cancelled tomorrow, too!  the sleepover continues!

willis and andy ventured out this afternoon - they said it was to get snacks at publix, but we have a lot of snacks here, so i think it was really to see what the roads were like.  they reported that the roads were bad - there's a slushy-icy-snowy mix everywhere - but drivable.  however, as no one in this city knows how to drive in this weather, accidents are happening everywhere, clogging up the roads.  parts of I-285 and I-20 have been shut down.  atlanta is really seriously unprepared for this storm.  where are our 8 plows??

for your amusement, this is a portion of what andy and willis returned from the grocery store with:

yes, willis can't make it two days without some bacon and a loofah.

miss claire's movie reviews

i'll take a break in live blogging my snow day to give you this post.  (five of the seven snowed in friends are outside playing in the snow, kelly is working on her computer, and i'm enjoying a little quiet time.  but let's be honest - there aren't enough exciting things going on to give you hour by hour updates any more.  we're eating, watching tv, reading our books, playing games, predicting if we'll have school tomorrow, planning to sleep over again tonight.  these things do not interest the entire world.)

this weekend i saw two movies in the theater - a lot for me in one month, let alone one weekend.  on friday night lily and her cousin and i went to see black swan, which was amazing - natalie portman should win lots of awards for that part, and the visual effects took the film to another level.  but it was also SCARY AS SHIT, which i should have known from seeing pi and requiem for a dream, two other films by the same director.  i watched about 25% of the movie through my scarf, so i could follow the plot line without seeing all the scary details.  at one point, lily screamed.  i was really glad i was covering my face with my scarf - i have no idea why she screamed, and i don't think i want to know.  all in all, awesome movie, but i won't be seeing it again any time soon.  steel yourself before you go.  darren aronofsky is a genius.

as we left the movie theater, i realized i could not go home to an empty house, because natalie portman might be hiding somewhere or i might see something in the mirror that isn't really there.  (yes, this sounds ridiculous, but you haven't seen the movie - these are legitimate fears.)  lily and i walked around barnes and noble for half an hour to calm ourselves down.  whew.

on sunday, joey and hannah (an oxford friend who came to visit for the weekend) and i went to see the king's speech, which was also amazing.  colin firth and the dude who plays lionel logue were amazing, the story line was so compelling, and it made me appreciate the power of one person to change another's life.  i had to hold back tears for a lot of the movie - parts that weren't even necessarily sad - and a couple tears leaked out near the end.  loved it - i didn't want it to end.  a perfect little movie.  which one will i cheer for when awards season comes around?  i really couldn't tell you at this point.

snowed in, part 3

1:00am - "apples to apples" is in full force, which mike wins (curses!)...

...and by 1:30 we're watching the local news again, and then getting ready for bed.  before bed, mike goes out on the patio to prove how much snow we've gotten.  if you can't tell, it's 4 inches.

fast forward to this morning...


by 10:00am, i'm awake...and i'm the last person down to the living room.  this awaits me.  it is glorious, and the number one reason to be the last person awake - cinnamon rolls come to you instead of you having to make cinnamon rolls.

we're sitting around the living room, eating cinnamon rolls while having an argument about full fat vs. reduced fat icing.  willis reports from the patio that it is sleeting.  the local news tells us that no one who is sane is on the roads and they DO look tragic.  that's the thing about atlanta: we own 8 (according to official reports) plow trucks, so we'll be snowed in until the snow melts itself.  there's no way we'll ever get out if we have to wait to be plowed out...

snow day, part 2

11:00pm - andy arrives, having braved the treacherous roadways, heart beating rapidly.  he needs a beer to calm himself down.

we know that hannah has boarded her plane (yay!).  mike measures the snowfall - 4 inches on the patio.  the 11 o'clock local news shows that I-75/85 through atlanta is blocked - all lanes, both directions.  we are really happy that our friends are safely here.

12:00am - the snow has turned to sleet, say andy and mike who have ventured outside to frolic about.  we continue to follow hannah's flight on flight tracker, and after taxiing (read: sitting in the plane on the tarmac) for two hours, her flight departs - HOORAY!  i'm going to guess, honestly, that she's on one of the last planes to leave atlanta tonight, as conditions outside are not good.

energy level is low, so i order a pyramid.  and it's a pretty damn good one.

we start a game of "apples to apples," and begin day 2 of being snowed in.

live blogging my snow day!

snow day, snow day, we have a snow day!

i'll be giving you an hour by hour photo update until i get bored of this.  who knows when that will happen.

7:30pm - school is cancelled!  no precipitation is falling.  so typical.

8:00pm - joey and i leave our house - a decision is made that if we are going to get snowed in, all our friends should get snowed in together.  five of us will be joining mike and kelly at their house.  snow flurries begin.

9:00pm - watching the duke game at mike and kelly's house!  snow continues to flurry and starts to stick.

10:00pm - duke wins their game...and an inch and a half of snow is on the ground and falling quickly!  the atlanta news shows that the roads are tragic - probably because atlanta drivers don't know how to drive in this weather.  hell - atlanta drivers freak out if it RAINS...

...and willis arrives for the sleepover!  andy is en route and we're anxiously awaiting his arrival.  my friend hannah, who visited this weekend, is scheduled to depart out of the atlanta airport at 10:30 (delayed from 9:00).  we're anxiously awaiting news on that front, too...

quote of the hour - an atlanta local newsman: "if you don't have four wheel drive, you ain't gonna be makin' it anywhere anytime soon."

stay tuned...

whitecoat

i was at whole foods yesterday and i made an impulse purchase of a charley harper calendar for my office.  ohmygoditissocute.  this guy is looking at me for the month of january:

(from here)

i hadn't paid much attention to charley harper's artwork until now, and i'm in love with it.  i may have just bought some more stuff from his website, because when i get started on something, i obsess (see also: friday night lights).

wow - a lot of interesting stuff in this article.  the most interesting part to me?  that these two women spent 16 years in prison for stealing $11.  ELEVEN DOLLARS.  now, i know that there may be other issues i'm not aware of here - you can go to jail for stealing $0 if you murder someone, for example, and i find that legitimate, but as far as i can tell from this article they just ambushed some kids and stole 11 bucks.  is this our legal system in action - 16 years in prison for $11?

favorite new podcast of 2011

stop everything.

open itunes.

go to the itunes store and search for this podcast: "a history of the world in 100 objects" - it's from BBC radio and i am 100% addicted to it.  this article will tell you why in a much more eloquent fashion than i can.  but here is what i can tell you: in 100 objects held by the british museum, the curator of the museum tells us a history of the world.  he goes chronologically and thematically; for example: i'm on the third week of the series and the episodes are all on the growth of cities and objects related to that that tell us a lot about early cities.  the podcast is 15 minutes long, and i have started to listen to two a day: one on the way to work and one on the way home.  on a great traffic day, i get to work with about 3 minutes left in the episode, on a normal day i finish just before i pull into school.  they are SO interesting and i am learning a lot.  for example: episode 3 is about a neanderthal hand axe, and the narrator explains to us that this is so important in world history because it's the first tool that could skin an animal well.  neanderthals needed skins to make clothing before they could move out of hot hot africa and into colder climates...so this tool was a crucial step in world history.  um, duh.  but i had never thought of this.

the other really cool thing about the series is that it seems truly global.  i've listened to the first 13 episodes and we've been to tanzania, pakistan, iraq, egypt, arizona, japan, australia, israel, mexico, and france.  it appears they've truly made an effort to tell us a history of the WORLD, not europe.

dick cheney is skinny now.  woah.  he also, apparently, can't take a shower ever again in his life with the heart pump he's connected to now.  i read that part of the article and had this moment where i decided that not ever being able to take a shower again would be REALLY SAD and would make life a lot less happy.  i love hot showers...if my hair would emerge already blow-dried without me having to do anything, i'd take two showers a day.  dick cheney, i don't like you.  and i'm sad for any human being who can't take a shower.  but is it bad to be a little less sad because it's you?

another great recipe

for lunch this week i made a batch of cumin-roasted eggplant with sweet peppers and chickpeas from vegetarian times magazine - i don't subscribe to the magazine, but it was an impulse purchase in an organic grocery store checkout line last year.  i have a folder where i save up recipes i want to try, and i pulled this one on sunday night.  i'm trying to eat healthily again, since the last month wasn't exactly the healthiest one for me in terms of eating veggies and getting exercise.  um, THIS MEAL IS DELICIOUS.  so easy - you roast veggies in the oven and eat them with a yogurt sauce.  the recipe suggests eating the mix in pita bread or over couscous...i had no couscous (oops) and at lunch yesterday the dining hall at school had no pita bread (curses!), so i just ate it plain and it was awesome.  have you ever roasted chickpeas before?  they become crunchy - almost like popcorn - and i could eat handfuls of them.

things i did not have that the recipe required: ground coriander, fresh mint, cayenne pepper (i used chili powder instead).  i just omit spices at will.  it was still delicious.

i am now counting down the hours until i can eat another serving for lunch today...

celebration

i am basically my mom's PR person, since she won't do it herself.

my mom won teacher of the year at her school!

she is totally deserving every year, but this year above all: my mom teaches exceptional children (low IQ), and normally she has 3rd-5th graders in her classroom, but because of lower enrollment this year she has 1st-5th graders all in the same room.  ALL IN THE SAME ROOM.  AND SHE IS SUPPOSED TO TEACH THEM THINGS.  i think i'd have a hard time just keeping them alive all day and myself sane, to be perfectly honest.

while i was home for christmas i wanted to make a cake and i decided that it was to celebrate her teacher of the year status.  i made this recipe for spiced applesauce cake with cream cheese frosting from one of my favorite cooking blogs.  the cake is really dense and really moist at the same time, and the frosting is incredible.  i ate a big piece for dessert that night...and then i ate two pieces for breakfast the next morning.  oh, the shame.  haha...  i'm not a big sweets person, so my favorite desserts aren't too sweet and have some substance to them - i'm a big fan of cake, but not candy, if that makes sense.  this cake is awesome and very fall/winter-like, and you should make it.

one year ago...

...i was pretty hungover.  today?  feeling great.  hooray!  huge props to mike and kelly for throwing such a fun new years party!

it was a rainy day today, so joey and i did spend the majority of the day watching tv.  i watched trashy tv at mike and kelly's and then caught up on glee and the office at our house...and i'm about to start in on a friday night lights marathon.  it was a perfect day to start 2011.

i'm particularly excited about this:

i bought new sheets and a new comforter and a new duvet cover!  the sheets are from target, and they are super soft white cotton.  the comforter and duvet cover are from ikea - the best place ever to buy a duvet cover.  take note!  i wanted a duvet that wasn't plain white but wasn't too crazy...and could go with my light blue walls.  i think this works really well.  this is the duvet pattern up close:

i'd had the same sheets and comforter cover since i moved to atlanta five and a half years ago and i wanted a change.  SO excited to curl up and watch tv in bed tonight.  one more day of christmas vacation before school starts again on monday.  it'll be nice, i guess, to get back to a routine...but i've had a great - and relaxing - break.  sigh.