A DISTURBANCE. That's what they call the 3+ inches of snow we're supposed to get tonight. How funny! This place has the most curious things. A post office with a nuclear fallout shelter sign on it, indicating that in case of nuclear holocaust, 52 people from the good village of Worthington can hang out in its basement until the radiation clears. A shopping mall with tornado shelter signs in the restroom area, making one wonder about the possibility of post-tornado sales. A citywide weather warning system that gets tested every Wednesday at noon, which translates to a hell of a lot of sirens go off all at once all over the city at noon each Wednesday (very eerie sometimes, depending of where you are and what you're doing). It's interesting, getting to know a new city, a new place of residence. It's one thing to move around in California -- you definitely get some differences between the places, especially when you move from a generally urban area to a predominantly suburban area -- but moving three time zones away to the heart of the actual Midwest is crazy different. It's like dating a city: every day you spend together, you find out new and interesting things about it (some good, some not so good). Ahh, romance.

I'm trying to relearn what it means to relax. It's strange not having anything I'm required to read, or papers looming over my head. Today I crawled back into bed when the weather got cold outside, and I read for a couple of hours. It was absolutely wonderful! Right now it's snowing outside and it's warm inside with my cup of tea and the promise of hot chocolate later tonight. I'm going to go and drive around to look at Christmas lights one of these nights soon; they love their holiday decorations out here in Ohio. I thought they liked Halloween (so many amazing decorations), but they really go all out for Christmas. The storefronts look adorable, the houses are twinkling, and the trees lining the streets and all the shrubs and bushes are shrouded in little lights. It's pretty amazing, but I'm still looking forward to the sunshine and above-freezing temperatures of California's Central Coast.

D O N E ! ! That's right, I'm finally finished with my first quarter at OSU. After 5 days of intense paper-writing (three 16-page beasts with bibliographies and notes), I'm breathing the free air! Alright, so I'm being a little melodramatic. But still. I feel so much more relaxed. No more of that pressure for me, thank you very much. :) At least, not until March anyway. So now it's wander-around-Columbus time for me, and top on my list is finishing my holiday shopping. :) For now, I think the first thing on the agenda is ... A NAP. Peace.

Well, there's snow on the ground, a nip in the air, and clouds in the sky. It's winter, and it's freakin' awesome! I am looking forward to two glorious weeks of running outside in California this month, but am also really stoked on the snow out here. It's amazing, even if I'm the only one in the entire state who thinks so. So I am almost done with my fall quarter work at OSU. I wrote a 15-page paper on Friday, another one yesterday, and am planning to finish my last today. Anyway, can't wait for the holidays -- it's all wreaths and twinkle lights out here (they really do a bang-up job of decorating for the season) already.

Well, it looks like it might finally be fall here in Ohio. It's really pretty right now, and I am excited that it's going to be getting colder now. And hopefully having a lot of rain.

I keep thinking of places I want to go that are in California. I'll be sitting on the bus or in class or something, and I will think of how nice it would be to go to Tahoe or San Francisco this weekend, and then I'll realize that I can't do that. It's not just an hour and a half away anymore. I get this kind of strange displaced mindset every time I move somewhere new again. It's strange and disorienting. Especially because sometimes I won't realize right away that things are so far, and so I'll start making plans -- we can eat at this restaurant, and go hike on this trail, and maybe stop by this bookstore and that sporting goods store -- before I realize that it's all for naught. Oh well, someday my brain will adjust (and by that time, I'll be packing up the moving truck and heading back out for California, right?).

On another note, I found out that one of the girls in my postcolonial literature course is from California too! It was an exciting moment. Most of the people here seem to be from the midwest in general (Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and of course Ohio itself), so it's kind of neat to run into people who are from other places. Like New Orleans, or Florida. And of course, California. :)

Well, I'd better get reading. I have a novel to read today, and some Freud to read tomorrow. Until next time....

Libraries are awesome. AWESOME! I've discovered the Upper Arlington library system, where you can check out new release DVDs and CDs in addition to newly published books. It's fantastic! :) And their books are incredible. I wish I knew who came up with the concept of the library system, because they're the coolest person ever.

MOSQUITOS. I'm allergic to them. I didn't know it for a long time -- I just thought it was normal to get a big lump, about an inch in diameter, from every bite. So last night I was talking to another one of the tenants at the place I'm staying, and I knew my calves were being bitten, but I figured it was minimal. I was wrong. The final count: 27 bites on the left leg, 19 on the right. Lesson: don't go outside in Columbus at dusk. Unless you like mosquito bites.

COLUMBUS, OHIO. Columbus. O-hi-o. Wow. So that's my home now, although I don't have a home yet, technically speaking. I have been in several homes today and yesterday. Houses, apartments, duplexes, flats -- you name it, I've been there. Some were good, some were great, some were already rented, some were not worth renting, and some were bad enough that I don't even want to imagine my furniture in there for fear of contaminating it. Contaminated imaginary furniture. Yikes. Anyway, the search continues, with 2 reasonable prospects and lots of uncertainty. I start off each day with optimism about the places I am about to visit. New spaces. In my mind, they're clean and pristine, well-kept, updated...you know, generally NICE. Then I go there. Reality rears its ugly head. Stained carpets, hidden fees, darker-than-night lighting. The horror, the horror! And so I keep calling and emailing and driving by, and hoping that someday in the very, very near future the perfect place will fall into my lap. Until then, wish me happy hunting!

There are only 19 days until I get married! Craziness! It's weird to think about it like that. I know we've been together for 9 years, but it still sounds foreign to me that I'm going to have a husband! I'm going to be a wife! Strange, but hey, at least I get to stop saying "fiance" -- I hate that word! It sounds so pretentious and snooty. Don't get me wrong, I like the meaning; it's just the way the word rolls off the tongue. Won't miss it. :)

I'm really excited too because we're going to Jamaica after we get married, and it's going to be so much fun! I just can't wait. The idea of being able to relax on a white sand beach somewhere in the middle of paradise is just fantastic. After a year's worth of planning, we're finally going to get to have the wedding, and then it's off to paradise for us!

I finally found my dress for the rehearsal dinner too. It's really cute: white with black flowers and lace and beading, strapless, goes to below the knee, "party dress" style.... I love it. Now that the planning is mostly over, I'm getting really excited about the wedding and the reception, and the DANCING!!! Too bad I'm not a very good dancer, but hopefully the big poofy dress will conceal that fact. :) Besides, who tells the bride she sucks at dancing when she's dancing at her own wedding reception? So I guess I can dance like a crazy person for the night without having to worry about anything. :)

Anyway, I guess that's just about all of what I have to say today. Lately my days have been mostly a lot of sitting around and doing wedding planning, not a whole lot of excitement or anything. It's really exciting to think of everything that's coming up. This weekend I'm going down to Buellton to scan in a bunch of baby pictures of Mike and I for our wedding day slideshow. I've never seen his baby pictures, so it should really be exciting. :) For now, peace out.

I'm done with school -- both of them (EHS and CSUS). It's strange to think that all those amazing students who have touched my life in the past three years are no longer going to be a daily fixture in my life. I know they're all going off to achieve great things, but it make me sad to think that I am most likely never going to see them again. Perhaps at their ten year high school reunion.... We'll see. It's very bittersweet. I mean, I'm really excited about marrying Mike this summer (obviously!), and going to Jamaica for our honeymoon. I'm also really looking forward to moving to Ohio and starting in the PhD program. It's scary though, and it sort of all hit me at once when I was at the EHS graduation that this is the end -- the definitive end -- of a very special chapter in my life. How strange that I may never teach in a high school again (or maybe I will -- you can never really know where life will take you), or set foot on the CSUS campus again, or see some of the people from EHS and CSUS again in my life. Endings are hard, even when the beginnings you're embarking on are exciting and desirable. This has definitely been a difficult ending for me. And very emotional. I will miss the Capay Valley and all of the beautiful people who live there. I may actually miss Woodland in the end, and especially the people I have forged friendships with. For now, I will busy myself with plans for the future and enjoy the remaining time I have in this community.

So Saturday morning, April 5, Mike and I arrived at the Oakland airport all prepared to take our Skybus flight to Columbus, Ohio, only to discover that as of 12am that very day Skybus ceased to exist. They were #3 on the bankruptcy train, and we were almost SOL. We asked the lady behind the United ticket counter if they happened to have any tickets to Columbus for that day. Of course they did! And they were only $862 per person, each way.... So I was about to have some sort of breakdown/temper tantrum, when I was instructed to head to the Southwest ticket counter. They were honoring the tickets, and it took them a long time to book our flight, but when they were finished we had all of 15 minutes to get onto that plane! One woman walked our checked bag to the plane to make sure it got on, and the other walked us to security where they (incredibly) let us cut in line so we could make our flight. But then...because we were flying standby, they had to do the full search. Dump out the bags, pat us down, the whole nine yards. By the time security was done with us, we had less than 5 minutes to get on that plane. I was wearing heels that day (of course), having thought to myself, "They're slip on -- this should make life easier for us when we go through security." So here we are, running through the terminal (me in my bare feet, heels in hand) to our gate, which is, of course, the very last gate in the terminal. Halfway there, I tell Mike to leave me behind, and just make them hold the gates for me. He takes off, and I guess he arrived at the gate just as they were announcing the final boarding call for our flight. I came up panting, massive sideache, shoes still in hand about a half a minute later. We got on the flight, clicked our seatbelts on, and the plane was in the air within minutes. Craziness!

So, why were we going to Ohio you ask? Well, I'll tell you. We were going there to check out the Ohio State University, and I'm glad we did. The people were great, the city was interesting, and the campus was incredible. Of course, now you'll be wondering why we were checking out OSU. I applied to some PhD programs this fall, and I got into two of them: University of Oregon (Eugene) and Ohio State University (Columbus). Both offered me full tuition waivers, a fellowship for my first year, and teaching assistantships for my remaining years of study. Basically, they wanted to pay me to get my PhD! I'm not foolish enough to say no to that, especially when OSU's program was so perfectly suited toward my goals.

So it looks like Mike and I are moving to Columbus this summer! Finishing our degrees this May, getting married this June, going to Jamaica on our honeymoon this July, and moving in August!! :) Wish us luck!

Classes at Sac State started two Mondays ago. I am thrilled to say that I got into that memoir writing class I was hoping to get into. I couldn't be happier about it, and I'm really excited to see what kinds of things bleed onto the paper this time. I finished the first draft of my (so far unnamed) novel, weighing in at 132 pages for now. I am sure there will be many deletions and many additions, but I'll keep you posted on that. Mike and I went to San Francisco last weekend and we picked out the paper we're going to use to do our wedding invitations (and everything else papery associated with that). I'm excited, and really looking forward to doing some at-home embossing.

For now, everything is going well enough. Tomorrow is the Chinese New Year, and I'm supposed to have a phenomenal year. Here's to high hopes for the Year of the Rat, 2008! Gung Hay Fat Choy (a day early)!

Well, another year and still I hardly write on this thing. I think I posted that Mike and I got engaged; well, we're well underway with the wedding planning. It's going well -- we've got most of our vendors and are working on putting together the invitations. Should be nice. I'm looking forward to the weekend, and the two three-day weekends I have coming up in February. Glad we're most of the way through with the school year. My novel is almost finished -- only about 30-50 pages left, I think -- and I got into the memoir class that I wanted to get into. It should be really exciting, and I think I am going to like it a lot. Chinese New Year is coming up on Thursday, and that should be fun. For now I guess that's all I've got. More later, and until then, adieu.