the triumphant return

Here I am, back in Los Angeles and ready to blog! Well let's see, I went home for three weeks for winter break. I'm going to be very sorry when I enter the non-academic world and no longer receive nice things such as three week long winter breaks. I was rather looking forward to a nice relaxing vacation, but it didn't quite work out that way. The first Monday that I was home we found out that my 90-year-old grandmother had pneumonia and wasn't going to be around for very long. I went and visited her that Monday and she passed away on Thursday night. Needless to say, it was neither a nice nor relaxing week. While she was 90, she was not in ill health at all--she had survived three hip surgeries, two of them back to back, in the last year. She had no heart problems, no other illnesses of any sort (good genes, thank you Grandma!). It was, therefore, a rather sudden turn of events.

Despite this, we did manage to do all of our normal Christmas activities--presents, food, etc. It wasn't even that depressing of a Christmas, although not quite as cheery as usual. We then went to the beach for New Year's and did have a nice relaxing time, sitting in front of a cozy fire and reading our books (or hiding in our room and watching DVDs if you're my sweet sister). After that was a whirlwind of a few days of catching up on some things at home, getting in a brief visit with the newly-engaged Lori (yay!), and having a pseudo-anniversary for my parents on Friday night (their anniversary was this Monday).

My parents had a very simple wedding. They took a Friday afternoon off work, my mom wore her best black suit, and they got married in the Multnomah County Courthouse with two friends as witnesses. They had a nice dinner out with those friends afterwards. I used to be shocked over this wedding, but am beginning to realize its advantages as I get older and wiser. One disadvantage, however, is that they have almost no pictures of it. In fact, they have exactly one photo, taken afterwards in front of their fireplace. My dad looks supremely pleased and my mom is looking down at their dog, petting his ear. Typical--the dog is the most important thing! This is a little 3 1/2 x 5 photo, so I got it blown up and put it in a frame for their 25th anniversary. This went over quite well, as you may imagine.

I got back here at 2:00am on Monday morning and had work that afternoon. Today was my first day of classes--I have one on Information Technology, which is more about the big picture rather than the nitty gritty of how to make a website (should be useful and not too bad), and one on Library Services to Children, which will be fun of course. I actually look forward to all my assignments in that class, so I know it's the right career for me. My professor for the IT class did inform us that we should be very concerned about actually having jobs in 5 years due to the changing nature of the field due to IT. Thanks a lot! I'm not too concerned, though, because something tells me that in 5 years 3-year-olds will still be coming into the library for storytime as opposed to conducting internet searches.