Slightly cheerier....

Going home tomorrow afternoon. I've never in my life been so excited about going to Reno. I cannot WAIT to get on that plane tomorrow. Flying west! Into the setting sun! Toward the correct ocean, the correct coast, home. (At this point "home" is anything east of Utah, so I use the term lightly.) (Speaking of Utah, another one of my cousins is having a baby, and she's naming her after my grandma, the one who died two years ago. Everyone together now: "Awww!")

I'm gonna make a trip over to SF after Christmas and stay with a friend for two nights, then go down to Santa Cruz for less than 12 hours and get a ride back up to Reno with Ann to go SKIING OVER NEW YEAR'S!!! Yay!!! I could not possibly be more excited about this series of events. Unless it involves continuous chocolate and a marriage proposal and the promise that I don't have to come back to New Haven afterward.

Again, in true Christmas spirit, I give you... the meme!
( Sing about me! )

Flashbacks

The other night I was reading through some of my old journals, the paper ones from high school. In particular I was flipping through November of 2000, which was my sophomore year and the month that I got braces. I was not a happy 15-year-old by any account. Until I went back and read through these entries with the experience of the last six years behind me, I had no clue how really nerdy and uncool I really was.

( A snippet from the day after I got my braces )

As you can see, I was a particularly mal-adjusted 15-year-old. I clearly had a very tentative grasp on reality and my place in it, and a very low opinion of myself in my fake reality. This is interesting to me, as at the time I was convinced that I was fully aware of my place in society and the way I appeared to the rest of the world. Now, reading descriptions of events that happened to me, seeing them through my own 15-year-old writing, I can't even see what I remember seeing when the event happened.
I wonder if I'm the 21-year-old version of that stereotype now, or if I've managed to learn a bit of grace and self-confidence. I'd like to hope so.

Oh, and according to an entry I made on December 13, 2000, a senior in my Algebra class lost a copy of the Constitution, which contains approximately 7,000 words, so our History teacher was making the kid do 7,000 pushups by graduation. High school was insane.