Donnelly, Idaho

Thanks to our friends Andy and Keri (who initiated the journey), we spent MLK weekend in Donnelly, Idaho with them and our friend Carlie. Donnelly is just south of McCall, Idaho which is about 200 miles south of Moscow. It's in some mountains (name? I dunno) and some lakes and lots of trees and is quite pretty. We rented a house (this one) and did alot of snow playing. You can see photos on my flicker site here: slideshow version or here: backwards, that is, not in order, for some reason. It was a fun weekend. We snowshoed a lot, played games, ate good, drank good, and sadly watched the Packers lose--well, sad for me at least.

It's been a weird semester so far, just trying to get ahold of my schedule which is almost TOO open. I teach Tuesdays from 9-10:30 and 3-5:30, then Thursdays from 9-10:30. That's IT! I have meetings and other student appointments, but I'm trying to find ways to get some research done. I love the schedule, but am having to learn to work with it a bit more productively.

Ok, I'm off to watch some bad tv.

christmas

I've grown tired of posting photos here as it takes too much time, so....I've started a flickr account. You can see some xmas photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kristinarola/

Christmas was good, but strange. Well, more that not being in the UP for the first time in 31 years was strange. Adam and Anne showed up late in the day on the 22nd. We drove to Uniontown and ate yummy burgers at Eleanor's. Sunday I have no idea what we did, but I suspect it involved being lazy. Christmas Eve we ate chex mix and drank Old Fashioneds (courtesy of dad) and Jeff whipped up a yummy meal. It was good. Christmas day we all had to head to Spokane by day's end (as we were flying out of Spokane at 6am on the 26th). But, we woke up, opened a ton of presents, ate bubble bread and sausage and cookies, ate leftovers, and then finally drove to Spokane around 7pm. While we had a white Christmas, it hadn't snowed in days UNTIL we decided to drive to Spokane. It was awful! UP blizzard awful! We had to go 35-40mph the whole way. It took almost 3 hours to get there when it usually takes 1 hour. Then Christmas day our flight was delayed 2 hours, and Adam and Anne's--while on time--sat on the runway for an hour getting de-iced. They missed their connection in Salt Lake. Thankfully we had a super long layover in MSP so our lateness didn't really matter much. But then our flight from MSP to Chicago was also delayed.....suffice it to say it was a looooong day. We finally made it to Chicago around 7pm and went to get Indian food for dinner w/ Katie and Cheryl. Adam and Anne also finally made it after some weird diversion to Cincinnati.

Chicago was good, but busier than I thought. I had to do interviews at strange intervals everyday. Eg; Friday 11-12, 2-3, 3-4. So it pretty much shot my entire day. The good news was that Cheryl stayed w/ us and we got a free upgrade to a suite b/c they screwed up our room. We also ate amazingly well, eating on Bedford at Frontera and a fusion Indian/Mexican place, then eating w/ Karen and Eli at a great Italian place and at Avec. So, it was great to see people . We also caught up w/ Alex Ilyasova a bit. I just imagined I'd have more freetime during the day which didn't happen. So be it.

We all, shockingly, got back to Spokane on time and w/in 5 minutes of each. After a delicious Mexican lunch in Spokane, we came back to Pullman for New Years Eve. We were so so tired that it was hard to function, but we managed to barely celebrate by watching TV and drinking a few leftover Old Fashioneds. Adam and Anne didn't make it to midnight, but I saw 30 seconds of it. Good enough!! Those kids headed back to Eugene on Jan 2 after a day of lazy. Lazy was good.

Now we're back, resettling into our routine. Spring semester starts on Monday--I could really use a few more days but so be it. Our weekend has been super lazy so that makes up for it mostly.

Off to eat dinner. Happy New Year!