Welcome to the new age.

Hello from 2014! It's been a very chilly start to this year here in Missouri. We've only been officially in Winter for barely a month, but we've had snow, ice, and bitterly cold temperatures so far. Winter is definitely making itself known around here. I saw my heating bill for this month and nearly had a conniption when I saw the amount. Polar vortexes certainly make the furnace work overtime.

2014 isn't terrible, so far. It's begun interestingly enough with a buyer for my house. My house came off the market in early December, but there was a family who really liked it and had seen it in the Fall. They came back after Christmas with an offer and I decided to accept it and so, this month, have unexpectedly been going through the home-selling process. It is slightly less frustrating than the home-buying process, but not too much less, I think. I've definitely had some sleepless nights and frustrating days. But, the house is good and passed its inspection with flying colors, needing only some flashing and a couple of minor repairs to shingles on the roof. For a nearly 110 year old house, I was beaming with pride through its inspection when the 2 inspectors (Yes! Two!) kept showering the house with compliments. Aw, shucks. I know my house is awesome and amazing, but it's always nice to hear strangers compliment it, too. It's not at all what people expect when they hear how old the home is, or even when they walk up to it from the outside. It's a gem. I hope the new owners will take care of it. I can tell that they love the house. It has to go through its appraisal  now, and we're supposed to be closing in February if all goes as planned. It's bittersweet to let my house to go to a new family, but I am coming to terms with it. When it didn't sell in the Fall, I had gotten myself psyched up for spending more time in the house again and enjoying it as my own, with no strangers coming and going through it for a while. So, after doing that for Christmas and then finding myself in the situation of needing to detach from the house again, clean it out, and come to grips with letting it go to a new owner, I'm hoping the sale doesn't fall through. My emotions are exhausted. To try to get over the irrational fears of letting my beloved home go to new ownership, I drove over to the neighborhood outside of Jeff City that I grew up in. The house my dad sold a couple of years ago. I hadn't driven over there since he sold that house. I'm so glad I did. The house looked so happy. The family has put up a big playground in the back yard, the house had Christmas lights strung up on its roof (which my family didn't do at all in at least the last decade, if not two decades). And it still had its cheery yellow mailbox that I painted out front. It looked so good. Everything was so happy and cheery. They also fenced in the back yard. Perhaps they have a dog or something that would make the fence necessary. The fence was the only thing I was sort of sad about because our yard was the neighborhood sledding hill starting spot. You started at the top of our backyard and went down the next door neighbor's yard (dodging trees), and hopefully were able to stop your sled before hitting a tree or sliding into the street. It was great...Maybe the kids have found an alternate hill in the old neighborhood. I hope they have. Still, driving by the house was a really good thing for me to do because I realized that new owners can take care of the houses you loved and spent a good part of your lifetime in. It's not really throwing away those years when you sell a house, it's just moving forward and trusting that the house will go through a rebirth of sorts and the owners will change it to suit their needs and hopefully, the house will bring joy to them, as it did to you and your family.

In light of the developments of possibly having no connection to the town I grew up in after next month, I've started looking around my new town for new things to do/places to visit/restaurants to try. I realized that I haven't really focused much on the neighborhood around the apartment or this town in general, because I focus everything on my "actual" neighborhood of my house in a different city and costs to maintain the house and I still do my laundry at the house, etc. I'm amazed at the options I'm seeing around me that I hadn't ever really seen before. We're getting something called a Pita Pit a few blocks from my apartment, which sounds neat. I love the Greek restaurant right next door to me, although I don't go as often as I could. I've only been once this year so far. There's a well-known restaurant with jazz music in my neighborhood that I've never been to, plus a chinese buffet that people seem to enjoy (I'm usually snobby about my chinese food, though. Chinese food is one thing I have explored in town, with very poor results. There is only one place in town that I go for my Chinese fix... although, I suppose I could try this other place since it's so close to the apartment.) There is plenty of exploring to do.

Assuming that the house sale goes through, and my ties to Jefferson City are cut for good, I thought I'd put up a few pictures:

Willow Creek Drive, the street of the house I grew up in.

Watson resting while lovingly keeping watch over the neighborhood of the house I grew up in.

Pretty snow-covered intersection.

Jefferson City's annual pet parade for National Pet Week.

Fourth of July food trucks in Downtown.

Chez Monet bakery, which is no longer in business, was a staple of downtown Jefferson City for decades. So many good cookies were eaten here.

Iris spent her whole life in Jefferson City and lived in three different living situations with me, always adapting to each one better than any other cat I've had.

Goslings being taken for their first swim at Binder Lake.

Downtown Jefferson City as seen from the top of the dome of the Capitol.

Floods take over the downtown parking lots periodically.

The old St. Joseph Cemetery on West Main Street.

The little front yard of still-mine-until-next-month house and its historical renovation award signage. Woot!

20) Have a kick-ass Halloween costume for this year's Halloween event at work

My work does a really fun halloween event each year for kids. It's free, it's fun, it's the one family-friendly event we do and I've loved it each time I've worked it. So, last year, I couldn't think of a costume so I ended up just wearing lots of clothing and being a gypsy. This year I wanted to put a bit more effort into it and gave a lot of thought to a costume. I really enjoy working a certain part of the event that is a kid's cave, which means my costume has to allow me to crawl through a cave and also not be too terrifying for kids. This year, I decided to be a little scary. I creeped myself out with it a bit, actually. I decided to be a mime (although, a talking one...which took some explaining. I made up the mime rule that mimes can speak on special occasions to really special people, which is why I could speak at the event to each child...because they were really special people.)

I only terrified one child into not wanting to crawl through the cave. But, I still think it was a good costume. I painted my whole face in the whole mime thing, had the black and white striped shirt, the black pants, the red beret...the whole deal. I was proud of myself. Of course, I didn't get a picture of me because I was really busy with setting up the cave and dealing with everything of the event, but I consider it a successful kick-ass costume.

I sort of looked like this, except without the blond hair. My face was very similar to this one.

12) Apply for a job I think I'd enjoy, whether I feel that I'm qualified for it or not.

I don't have a photograph to prove this, but you just have to trust me that I've completed this one!

9) Go 'glamping'

Despite being really un-communicative of late, I've not forgotten about my 27x30 challenge! I've been slowly knocking them out. I'm closing in on the end of a three week vacay in the Southwestern US and have officially gone glamping! (That's 'glamorous camping' for those unaccustomed to outdoorsy hipster jargon.)

I glamped at El Cosmico, in Marfa, Texas and spent one night in a safari tent and the next night in a teepee. Both were great, I really enjoyed my time there. I love these sorts of unique places to stay. I haven't had the chance to stay in too many really unique hotels, but I think I'll try to incorporate them more into my travels because it was really cool.

Safari Tent

Safari tents, bath house, and full moon. Beautiful.

Teepee! The floor was covered in deer skins, which made it nicer to walk around the teepee than if it had just been cement or wood planks. All the beds in the tents and teepees had electric mattress pads, so you were warm and cozy in the desert night.

So long, September.

Last weekend I traveled a few hours south and took part in my good friend Anna's wedding! It was a beautiful ceremony in a really pretty church. Congrats to the newlyweds! Anna is a high school teacher and taking a honeymoon during the school session is sort of rough so the happy couple is going to Tahiti around Christmas. Lovely choice, yes?

Tahiti!

When I returned home from the wedding on Sunday, I was greeted by Beatrix, whose face had swelled up enormously on her left side. There were also small blood spots around some areas of the apartment and I couldn't figure out what in the world she had gotten into or how she could have hurt herself. After cleaning up and trying to get a good look at her, I called the ER veterinary hospital to ask about hours, costs of visits, etc. It was mind-boggling how expensive they were and since Bea wasn't actively bleeding any longer and she seemed to be acting pretty normal at that point, I decided to let us give it a night and I would take her to a vet in the morning. She had a pretty rough evening, though and spent much of it hiding and feeling kind of rough. Her poor face was so swollen and I had decided it was probably an abscessed tooth. But, it turns out she had played and played and played with Watson when he was staying with us, and at some point she caught a claw to her face and neck and the wounds were infected. So, on Monday night when I picked her up from the vet's office, she looked much more like Two-Face, the character from Batman comics? Her left side of her face was completely shaved, her left whiskers were all cut off, and there were open bloody wounds on her cheek and a big one on the left side of her neck. She was feeling much better though, despite how terrible she looked. We've been dealing with that all week, but she's healing pretty nicely and just about back to her full ornery self. I took a picture of her wounds, but it's sort of gross, so I won't share it. She'll go back for her progress check-up later next week and hopefully then she can get her annual vaccines, which she also needs.  Caching, caching. Sometimes, a little lotto win would come in handy, you know? I don't mean a giant powerball, just a nice hundred or two hundred Scratchers win to cover those unexpected (and expected) pet bills?

The Art & Archaeology Museum on campus that I worked for during my grad school days is officially leaving campus on Monday. They are moving to a facility on the north side of town so that decisions can be made about the radiation levels of their current campus building. I think everyone is hoping this will be a very temporary move, but moving an entire museum is hardly something that you take on lightly and my feeling is (sadly) that this might be more permanent than not. I can't really see Mizzou making the clean-up of the building their number one priority, but it is really inconvenient to have them secluded on a far side of town where there is no easy way for students to get there. On the other hand, perhaps this could be a chance for the museum to make themselves better known outside the campus bubble? I'm not sure how it will all play out, but I am hoping to go say goodbye on Monday and see it in its "real" home (however radioactive it may be) one last time. There's a reception planned for it and everything. Aw.

Pickard Hall - Museum of Art & Archaeology @ Mizzou

I can hardly believe October is almost here. I'm struggling with costume ideas for Halloween. I had really wanted to do something fun and different this year. I am working a Halloween event at work and it's a lot more fun to dress up for it than to just stay in my work clothing. We also have a big annual meeting for work in October, which is always somewhat of a stressful time in the office. I've only been to one annual meeting for the society before and it was interesting. I think it will be fine in the end but the organization and prep-work that the staff are doing is starting to take its toll. That's why the universe has Hot Box Cookies, I think. Six of us went to this place on Thursday evening after work, and two of the six are some of the most over-worked and over-stressed for this annual meeting deal. It's amazing how much your stress can dissipate with a warm chocolate chip cookie, followed by a warm snickerdoodle, all accompanied by chocolate milk and laughing with co-workers over non-work related topics. It was nice. We decided it should be something we "do" from now on. I had never been to Hot Box before, but I tell ya: I'm a convert, big time. Every single cookie they have on the menu, I want to gobble up. Red velvet? Yes. Peanut butter w/ reese's pieces? Yes. White chocolate chocolate chip? Yes. Monster cookies? Yes yes yes. Plus, they do those giant cookie cakes that used to be all the rage in the early 1990s. I love those. Nom nom nom!

6.) See The Blue Man Group in concert

I saw the Blue Man Group on Tuesday night and it was definitely an experience! It was strange, funny, and unexpected all at the same time. They came to Mizzou and sold out the auditorium. It's a fun experience, if you get the chance to go! They are very interactive with the audience, despite the Blue Men never speaking a word. It was cool.

By all means, move at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills me.

I'm in the midst of learning a universal lesson: the art of patience. I am not a patient person. I struggle with the waiting game. The waiting game just wipes me out. I'm feeling continuously exhausted from trying to learn to be okay with things moving at their own pace. I like to get things done and I like to be done with things, not let things linger for months on end. Lingering is lame, but I need to remember:

15.) Get a virtual pen pal.

#15 on my 27 by 30 list is completed!

I am a part of a new program that has just come out of its pilot round: International Librarians Network. It's a free organization that partners librarians from one area of the world with a fellow librarian and you  correspond each week on professional matters for 6 months. After 6 months, the ILN allows you to sign up for a new partner librarian for another six months. You don't have to stop speaking to your new librarian friends from previous rounds, but it just gives you an end point (because sometimes you need one, you know?), plus a great way to meet other librarians, as well as get global perspectives on the field. It's pretty awesome.

My virtual pen pal is a public librarian and library student in Geelong, Australia. We've only been talking for a few days but this whole 'librarian pen pal' network is enlightening already.