Oh yeah, go see Shop Girl, too.

I've frequently heard people who "work out" and "exercise" say things like "that worked muscles I didn't know I had!"

As a testiment to what appears to be the fact that I'm utterly lazy and completely spoiled: Swedish massages are the most wonderful thing on earth and I plan to get one every day for the rest of my life as soon as I sell a few of my unneeded organ on Ebay.

Typically the (non-company) perks of living with your Grandmother for a week include (not necessarily in this order): dishes of candy sitting around the house, enough cookies to cause blood sugar poisoning, new socks (always new socks), vanished responsibilities (ie: when you try to do something responsible you find it's already been done) and now: Swedish massages in your own house, first thing in the morning.

I was going to rake the lawn today but my messeuse told me to "take it easy." I'm currently laughing with self-indulgent glee-- even if it only lasts for one day.

Tomorrow it's back to Shreveport and all that responsibility crap. Oh. My. God. I'm so exctited about buying people Christmas presents. Tell me what you want.

I'm in the High-Fidelity, First Class Traveling Section...

I love flying. I love airplanes. I love the simultanious order and chaos of airports.

This is my 12th flight this year and for some reason this time I was N.E.R.V.O.U.S. I thought perhaps that I was nervous because, oh, say, the plane was going to go down in flames-- turns out I was mostly just nervous about having to wear the same underwear for a week and a half.

My luggage has never gotten lost before so I didn't know what when your luggage doesn't show up the best explaination they will be able to give you for the following 13 hours is: "we're sure it's on one of the planes," and "we really have no idea where it is; it never showed up."

neat.

My underwear (and everything else) did arrive finally but I think between that and my five hour layover in Minnapolis I'm not going to mess with Northwestern again.

Being home is nice. I wasn't sure what I would do. Every trip has a purpose. We say: "I'm going home for the Holiday," or, "I'm going home for a funeral." It was both this time and it's sort of hard to reconcile the two.

You couldn't have picked a clearer, brighter, more beautiful day to say goodbye to my grandfather. It's true, I see, that he knew most everyone in this town and was loved by all of them. The hardest part is just the space that is no longer filled. This enormous gap where a lot of laughter used to be. Grandma is still funny and brite, but this house is a half-house. Just not whole. Just too quiet: not enough country western.

Anyway I'm tired of saying goodbyes so if you're planning on passing away, forget it. It's time for showing up and not for leaving.

What you missed

So, what I meant to tell you about the week before is that Sunday night my advisor called me and asked if I wanted to give a speech and present the award-winning author Bobbie Anne Mason with Centenary's award for literary excellence, the Corrington award. After about fifteen minutes of freaking out and thinking "why did they ask me of all people? I can't give an introduction in front of the entire freshman class!" Then I remembered that the freshman class is entirely too lazy to come to manditory award ceremonies for famous authors and that it would make me feel totally rightous in my egotism if I said yes. Oh yeah, and the speech only had to be 4-minutes long. So I said yes. Go here for cute pictures.

So last Wednesday I got to hang out with Bobbie Anne Mason (who was a finalist for the pulitzer prize- cha CHING!) and eat free care of the English department all day, then dress up and give a speech and do that "pose holding the medal" thing. It was neat, basically.

Last weekend was also Rhapsody in View, the Choir's big concert. I've been four years in a row and this was the best yet. The choir is MASSIVE and well, they're singin' fools. Banquet afterwards was good too except that Tim's parents are so nice and sociable and almost everyone elses are so... not.

After that "Hell Week" started for the TKEs which means the pledges sang to me and Blaine recited the poem he composed for me:

When we, the pledges, think of beauty,
We think of you.
You,
The one who walks this campus
With a heart so full of the right kind of passion,
TKE passion.
The one who is devoted to best brotherhood around.
Tau Kappa Epislon
This fine model of feminine appeal
Pumps TKE blood.
She is a TKE girl, tried and true.

We love you, you see, because
As us pledges walked upon this campus,
For the past few Wednesdays,
You never hesitated to say,
“My look at those pretty pledges on pretty pledge day.”
Your soul lies in the memorable mud pit,
Which became our memorable horse race.
Your memory will be framed with our brothers and us,
So as to never forget who are first sweetheart was.

You see,
We are the fortunate ones,
O yea we pledges are,
Because come Valentine’s Day,
You will be ours.
Tim will have to deal with it,
You are not just for him,
Because honestly,
Would rather have just 1 senior
Or two sophomores plus fourteen freshmen?

So in professing our love,
To our one and only,
We wish you the best TKE year of your life,
And soon,
You will no longer have sixteen loyal pledge followers,
But you’ll have 46 brothers,
All hailing,
The sweetheart so foxy,
That she can only be called one thing…Roxie.

Normally I wouldn't brag and post the whole thing but really, who wouldn't be thrilled to have a poem composed for them that wasn't written by a stalker or, well, no, I think stalkers are the only people who write creepy poems about other people. Anyway, Blaine isn't a stalker, he's just totally hot fot TKE, as we all should be.

I'd write more if this headache I've had since Sunday would go away, but that doesn't look probable so I'll go to bed. Vive la weekend. Just one more week before I get to go home.

The sun will come out

This is stupid. I'm supposed to journal here and write some sort of dissertation about what's going on. Here's the deal: if you have grandparents still, call them today. I'm not kidding.

I naively thought that my Grandpa Smitty would be able to hold out two weeks for Thanksgiving. But he was tired. He passed away this morning at home.

I'm so lost and confused and, well, almost panicky that anything I say here doesn't matter and doesn't serve much more of a purpose than to let you know what's happened.

I can't tell you how I feel right now and I can't tell you what kind of a person he was except to say that there wasn't a single thing I disliked about my Gramps. I liked the way he buttered his bread. I liked his stupid jokes and the way he laughed at them. I like that he remembered how may inches of snow fell on January 7th, 1975 or any other day, for that matter. We should all be so lucky to have these things in our lives.

He always said as we were walking out the door: "come back when you can't stay so long!" Which was his way of saying you never stay long enough.