Thanksgiving Week

Obviously, last week was Thanksgiving week. It was odd to only work one day, but it's nice to have a change of pace.

Since I worked the weekend, I enjoyed Monday off. I worked on Tuesday, but even then I didn't really work a full day. I took a lunch break of almost two hours! This was because a church in Cedar Bluffs was doing a blood drive, so I decided to give blood. (Shh! This is a secret: I gave blood at Chelsea's school when I was in Tennessee, but since her school uses another organization instead of the Red Cross, they didn't know and I gave blood ONE WHOLE DAY before I was supposed to!)

I normally don't work for camp on Wednesdays, and instead use that day to do some freelance writing. But this past week, I had an even better opportunity. I was invited to the Solmens to make Challah bread. (It's something I've been making a lot of lately, and it's most likely the tastiest "healthy" bread out there.) While the dough was rising, we went to the YMCA's Sidner Arena. Apparently, whenever Fremont has no school days or reduced school hours, ice skating is free. After a couple hours of that, we went back, finished the bread, and caught up on all the Phineas and Ferb episodes I've missed. (Yes, I'll admit that a highlight of their home is the fact that they have Netflix!) Eventually, Emily picked me up and took me to her parents' house in West Point.

That's where we spent Thanksgiving, plus the weekend after. There was a lot of food and football, and we even watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! (One of the CITs from this summer was a dancer in it, but unfortunately, I don't think the camera ever zoomed in on her. Still, it was pretty cool to actually know someone in the parade!) That evening, we went Black Friday shopping in Norfolk. I'm wondering when they'll change the name "Black Friday", since it seems like most deals start on Thursday. Then again, since you wait a few hours in line, it's technically Friday by the time you actually check out. Other than Emily buying some curtains to replace taped-together maps I put up over our kitchen window, she and I were just helping find things. But then, since the line wrapped around the entire store, we each found several things to buy by the time we got to the front. After shopping at two different stores and heading back, we went to bed around 3am.

The rest of the weekend was spent sleeping, watching football, eating leftovers, and trying out the Xbox Kinect. That was both fun and tiring! You can really get a workout by playing those games. A couple of the games we played showed your "highlights", a short video of you looking ridiculous! We eventually left Sunday afternoon.

On the way back, I remembered that my car was still parked by the Solmens' house, so I asked Emily to drop me off there. Since it looked like everyone was home, we decided to stop in just to say hi. Several hours later, we finally left. (They sucked us in by having us watch episode after episode of Psych on Netflix!)

In other news, I've been writing a bit more lately. I'll be sure to keep you posted of any of my work that is accessible online. I'm also trying to figure out if it's possible to take some online classes and get a Bachelor's Degree in Early Childhood Development. I contacted someone at SOU a few weeks ago, and they finally got back to me the other day. There will be a few pre-reqs I need to take, and they're looking over my transcripts to see exactly what it is I need. If I'm able to take the pre-reqs online or at Metro, I'll probably take advantage of it. Otherwise, I'll be content working this job for a few more years!