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.

Well, here I am. It's been over a year since I was last on here and on my myspace, so I apologize to anyone/everyone who sent me messages and got nil in return. I can't say that I will keep on top of this again in the next year, but I'll do my best....

Since it's been over a year, here are some updates on my life. Mike and I are engaged, and it's wonderful. I don't have words that would allow me to adequately expand on that, so I'll just leave it at that.

I took 4 courses and worked full time last semester, and have proven that I work best when under pressure (hence the semester's 4.0 GPA). I am taking one class this summer, and spend much of my time trying to read the 18 books I'm going to have to read for the Fall semester, writing the first 60+ pages of my novel, running/biking/hiking, napping, checking email, and eating. Yum.

I have a nagging concern that I am going to forget what day it is (happens a lot) and unintentionally miss class. It's a film class, by the way, so we spend most of our time watching movies. It's amazing. I should have been a film studies major. It's like English, but easier.

I recently visted Santa Cruz (AMAZING), San Francisco (still a bit smuggy for my taste, but a good dose of culture as usual), and took a long drive up a windy road on the coast (beautiful, if not a tad carsick-inducing). I'd say Sublime said it best when they sang, "Summertime, and the livin's easy."

Here it is, the day preceding Chinese New Year, and I am in San Francisco -- that most stereotypical and festive of spots for the CNY. Fun times! I am waiting for my host friends to wake their lazy asses up so we can get going to eat some dim sum! But alas, it is only just nearing 11 so they may not be awake for quite some time. :) It is foggy outside, but not raining as they promised it would on the news this week. Bummer; I always love the so-called "bad weather" that they broadcast as such on the news, and wish we had more of that then the blasee sunny weather they like so much down in Southern California. But alas, that's just me talking. So I shall write more soon -- Mike is supposed to be using his computer to learn something for work, so I had best stop "Bogarting" it now. :) More later!

Well, here I am right in the middle of my lovely winter break. It's fantastic. I am really excited to be able to do ... well, a whole lotta nothing! I have been reading a lot of books -- all for thingsI am going to teach next semester so I am not stressed out for not having read them until right before/during when I teach them.... But so far I have read, oh, 4.5 books for school and 1.5 books for personal pleasure. It's nice. I am really on a roll! Anyhow, I finally got Gayle to sign up for a myspace account, which is fun, and I may sign up for a friendster one within a week or so. We'll see -- they are becoming too much to keep track of at this rate. Anyhow, I suppose I had best go and make a list of yarns I need to knit myself a kind of poncho thingy. More later! Hope the holidays are being kind to you!

Well, it's true -- I will (most likely) be teaching drama next semester. But the sure thing is that I will be teaching IN THE BIGGER ROOM! That's a nice little perk. They interviewed three people for the job yesterday, and I guess two were...somewhat less than qualified and the other is very new to teaching. Like, this will essentially serve as her student teaching experience, but she is supposed to have really good energy and be really enthusiastic, and as one respected colleague told me, "She could be VERY good at this." So I am excited to get to meet her soon (assuming she accepts) and to get to work with her. It'll be different from working with Crystal, but it will be nice to have someone who is also young (I was minorly concerned that they would hire some strange and grumpy old man for some reason). I think she'll be really happy at the school, and hopefully we can have fun with our connected rooms. That would be something, wouldn't it? And who knows, maybe I'll gain another friend up here in NorCal before the year is out. Unfortunately for her, they are going to ask her to come in and observe me a couple of times next week. I don't know what I am supposed to be able to offer to her, especially when we are supposed to be reviewing for finals and I'm not really doing much teaching, but oh well. I am just excited that I may get to meet her before the break. Anyhow, I suppose I should stop going on about this lest she not accept the position and it's all for naught or something.... :) More later, I imagine.

Love,
Annabel

Well, it looks like I might soon be teaching drama, but we'll see how that goes. You never can tell with these things. All I know is I love minimum days, and I have one tomorrow. Now, I don't get to go home like the kids do, but I get to sit in a meeting with the rest of the faculty, which is always highly entertaining and a lot of fun. And it's so much easier to be the student than the teacher (except for the homework). Anyhow, enough about work. Mike and I are going to play our favorite video game, Champions of Norrath, in a few minutes, so I don't have long to write. I have my first staff Christmas party ever that I'm actually going to attend. All those years working at a year-round Christmas store in Solvang and I dodged every last Christmas party. I always had ballet or something, but this year it looks like I am finally going to be able to go. I'm quite looking forward to it, and it's an "adult" Christmas party, meaning I'm sure everyone will be more entertaining than ever. :) Well, on that note, I suppose I am going to get going. More later, I am sure. Hope you are all doing well, anyone who's reading this!

So life in The Midwest is interesting. Lots of nice Christmas decorations though. Just had an interesting week at school, as the other half of the department resigned last week. Lots of whisperings in the staff lounge and conversations that stop as soon as I walk in the door. Think it's just me being paranoid? Gotta wonder. I love Fridays with the whole weekend spanned out in front of me; makes me not want to go to sleep so it might last longer. What to write, what to write. What am I supposed to write knowing anyone could look this up and easily know the things I only want certain people to know? Suppose I can't trust it then, and will have to reserve those thoughts for emails. Mike and I are debating going up to Tahoe tomorrow, for the umpteenth weekend in a row.... Wish I had that 4x4 pickup truck right about now. Ah well, perhaps next winter. :) Anyhow, to all of you who read this but who may not talk to me that soon, happy holidays! More in a day or two....

Well, can't believe I signed up for one of these things, but I suppose that's just how the world works right? As my grandpa told me Tuesday, "Constant change: it's here to stay." Just thought I would post this so I can see how this blog thingy works!