Look, a real blog post.

I complain a lot about the coldness and the crappy weather of winter...but part of me kinda loves it. (My inner child--that part.) The small amount of snow we've had this week has me feeling all chipper. As a kid, snow was exciting because it meant a potential snow day and sledding and getting my parents to make me hot chocolate. Now that I'm "grown up," it means I have to leave for work early in case the roads are bad--that's about it. And yet that feeling of excitement has stuck with me. I'm a little disappointed that, after today, there's nothing but cold, sunny days in the forecast. Jordan doesn't share my enthusiasm for snow. He truly hates winter weather. And I'm sure that when February rolls around, I'll be hating it too, but this is the first snow of the season. I'm allowed to be a little enchanted, right?

It feels strange to be relaxing at home on a Saturday. Target must have felt bad for scheduling so much in the past month...because not only do I have today off, but I have Monday and Tuesday off as well. Then I have Friday-Tuesday off...yes, a five day weekend. Craziness! I'm pretty excited, though--lots of time to catch up on reading and writing. I really could have used a five day weekend in November, when I was trying to spew out a 50,000 word novel. (For the record, I failed miserably and only got to 10,500 words. Better luck next year?)

Speaking of reading, I bought a new book. Tinkers, by Paul Harding. I picked it because of the blurb on the back and the amazing reviews (and the sticker on the front proclaiming that it had won a Pulitzer prize). I've been rereading a lot of books lately, and before that, I was working my way through all of Jane Austen's novels...so I was due for a good contemporary book. It wasn't until after I bought the book that I read Harding's bio, which told me he's a graduate of the U of I Writer's Workshop and he recently taught there as a visiting faculty member (I vaguely recall some of my writing TAs talking about him during the spring semester, but I think I was a bit too focused on the whole passing my classes and graduating deal). He's taught at Harvard, too...no big deal. I'm only forty pages into the book, but it's really fantastic. While reading about Harding, I saw that more than 25 Pulitzer prizes have been awarded to writers associated with the Writer's Workshop. Yep. That's not at all daunting.

Well, I think it's time to break out the Christmas tree. :)