In 2008, I will be voting for my Wii.

Kacie has the mighty power to make mountains move. Or at least to make me write on my blog.

I was loath to write while I was on vacation because somehow writing about it makes it feel a little too much like it's over. Well, sadly, now it really IS over. And my company vacation is over too. And I regret to say that I left my photo memory card in my Dad's computer so this is really the only the only photographic evidence I have that I've been alive for the past three weeks:
And it's not even a picture of me. It's a picture of a giant bird.

Really though, I have been alive. Wonderfully so. Going home was so rejuvenating and reaffirming--just smelling my cat after he's been playing in the snow (he smells like warm biscuits and healthy dirt) was enough to refuel my brain for at least a month.

At first being Home felt just awkward enough to make me worry. It seemed like I might have crossed some time threshold that made it impossible to ever go home again. It's a great cliché among philosophers and basement songwriters that you can never go home again--but it's not true. At least not entirely. It only took me day or so to remember the comfort of parents and pets and fresh air, of riding in a car and eating fast food and not being tired 24 hours a day.

Oddly, that "home" feeling became even more pronounced (though no more significant) when Tim and I crossed the Texas/Louisiana border--mostly because I hadn't realized just how much I missed it. I didn't pay much attention to this until I moved to DC, but when I was at Centenary, even though there were times when I was homesick, I don't think I ever once thought seriously "I have to leave--I quit." My friends and family can correct me if I'm remembering incorrectly. But there must be a part of me that loves Shreveport if I stayed and did so well for so long.

Maybe it sounds immodest, but I think I did pretty damn well there. I made the kind of friends that you can't remember ever NOT knowing and I felt comfortable in a way that weird, slightly manic, overly dramatic people like myself rarely feel.

I'm lucky though. I have always felt, and am guaranteed to always feel, the pain and frustration of not being able to be in two, three, or thirty places at once. I doubt that I'll ever get over it--I savor the tragedy of it a little too much. I read somewhere that as soon as you make a decision, all of the other, possible, unchosen futures are snuffed out like a candle. The thing is, all those little paths live on in my brain forever, which is probably as much of a curse as it is a blessing. Like a metaphysical bologna sandwich.

Mmmmmmmm.

So there is it. I haven't written anything about the company vacation or how I feel somewhat better about being back in DC. Tim starts his second semester of graduate school tomorrow and I'm sure that too will be out like a candle before we even know it. I know I've said it before but I have to say again that if I have to have a job where I'm not using my college education AT ALL, I couldn't have found a better company to work for. I got to watch my office-mate sing "Dancing Queen" at the top of his lungs because he bowled a 42 and was beaten by everyone else in the company and their spouses. That's both impressive and delightful, which is just about all you can ask from life.