Sorry for the radio silence, but there was an excuse — I redid my blog! I switched over to Squarespace because I love their templates, and also I am just not very good at blog design, and they make it easy. Easy for a normal person, I imagine. It took me months to just do what you see here. Which is fairly basic. I still have some things I might change, and please let me know if you have any suggestions. But I decided to just throw it up as is and tinker as necessary. I recently attended Online News Association meetup at the Washington Post, and one of their designers said if you change one thing about your blog you don't like every day, that's progress. Obviously the Washington Post is on a much higher plane than ol' Gosh Gee Golly, but the advice still stands.
Let me catch you up on what's been going on here this month. I wanted to tell you that it's been more than two months since I donated bone marrow, and I feel totally, 100% back to normal. Honestly, I felt fine within a week. The only thing is that I didn't exercise at all that month, so I had to get up in the gym working on my fitness (TM Fergie). But that's been it so far. And last week I got a call from NIH and heard that the person I donated to accepted the transplant and has left the hospital. Exhilarating is the best word I can think of to describe that news.
What else did I want to tell you? Over Christmas, I visited Joe's family in Indiana and our flight got delayed in that Midwest snowstorm. It ended up getting pushed back for an 11 p.m. takeoff, and we were the only people in the security area at that point. When we were getting ready to go through the checkpoint, the security guard stopped me and said, "How old are you, little miss?" (or something to that effect).
"I'm 28," I said. "Oh, I thought you were 17," he replied.
Remember last time at the airport when I was mistaken for an unaccompanied minor? It's all happening again! In fairness to the security guard, I was wearing no makeup, a hoodie, and ponytail, and wandering around with a confused, vacant "duh" look on my face. Shortly after that exchange, I dropped my plane ticket and it slowly fluttered out of the security area where I couldn't reach it and someone had to help me. How does that even happen?
One more story for this post: I did get sick with a cold in early January, like everyone else it seems. It was not fun. I lost my voice completely, and after several nights of coughing fits, I knew I needed stronger meds. Joe was so sweet to me during my brief illness. He brought me a Homemade Pizza Co. pizza after I had gone 24 hours without eating, and offered to drive me to the CVS Minute Clinic, even though it was 30 minutes out of his way to pick me up. There was a long line when we got to the Minute Clinic, so he sat with me in a little waiting room with a bunch of sick people. Unfortunately, you could hear everything that was going on in the exam room. This is a major design flaw for the Minute Clinic. Two Russian ladies got in a screaming fight with the doctor. We also heard someone say, and I quote, "Now, those may look like track marks, but it's actually where my cat scratched me."
We'd been there for awhile, and in between pathetic coughing fits, I started to think, "What an amazing boyfriend I have, to take care of me when I'm sick and wait with me at the Minute Clinic." Just as soon as that thought crossed my mind, Joe turned to me, looked into my eyes and said, "You can take a cab home, right? The football game is starting in half an hour, so I'm going to leave now."
Now I don't know exactly what my expression was upon hearing this statement, but I imagine it was like one of those memes where a saucy Persian cat stares into the camera with disdain while giant letters spelling "WUT" hover over its head.
Yeah, kind of like this. That's exactly how I felt.
Joe got the message and stuck around long enough to drive me home. Phew!
Thanks so much for reading, thanks for sticking with me, and let me know if there's any design features you want to see in the blog!
PS: The amaryllis flowers pictured above are a Christmas present from my mom. I can't believe how beautiful they are, especially after they barely survived being gift wrapped under the tree!
