You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!

This is where Charlie, friendliest, kindest postal worker in the world works.

I hosted my first Dinner Club this week, making some admittedly badass coconut curry vegetables with rice in the crockpot. I think I deserve a grown up medal for thinking about dinner many hours in advance of "what's this feeling in my stomach?".

I think these school teachers got cabin fever from a week of snow days. Here, Arin demonstrates to Sjanneke how to use the treadmill sideways.

P.S. Using the treadmill sideways is in conflict with several laws of physics.

I really cannot remember a winter storm so otherworldly-surreal-glittery-white. I've seen ice storms and five feet of snow but nothing that ever looked so haunting. It's really beautiful, and like all knock-the-wind-out-of-you landscapes, individual snapshot vignettes betray the magnitude of every detail of light and space stitched together on your eyeballs. But here's an icy branch.

I guess I just don't have the energy this year to defeat the White Witch and bring back springtime to the land.

Four weeks whittled down my groceries past even the most undesirable of edibles to nothing but baking powder and maple syrup. After paying off Christmas-related bills, student fees, and after impulsively buying orchestra-level tickets to see Morrissey in April, funds are stretched so tight they're see-through. And so it came to pass, that I had to significantly decrease my grocery-related expenditures. The hippie-bullshit aisle, my very favorite aisle of the grocery store, has to be bypassed like a fat-clogged heart.

My dad likes to talk about how when he was in medical school, he ate kidneys and cow tongue in order to save money. This has always been a key part of any frugality-related sit-down with my parents. While I appreciate my dad's thrift (and suspect sometimes that this was an amusing game for him...figuring out the cheapest way to cook for himself, the guy whose eyes light up at the sight of the giblet gravy on Thanksgiving), I always dismissed having to scale back on food in order to survive. I can eliminate or reduce all kinds of unnecessary costs in my life, but groceries? Annie's macaroni and cheese is just so much better than Kraft. Say it isn't so, my checking account!

So I said goodbye to Kashi granola, and stocked up on Kroger-brand Nutri-grain bars. I sent carrot-cashew-ginger soup packing and welcomed Campbell's vegetarian vegetable. The landlord left a bunch of her canned vegetables in the basement (among many other strange things...which is a whole other blog post in itself). If she's not supposed to live here anymore, at what point can I bust these open? I'm in survival mode, here, guys! Pickled beets could mean life or death!

In all seriousness, I think it's worth pointing out that if you press my dad on how the kidneys tasted, he'll say, "Oh..kind of like urine. You know, I really only did that once."

Remember, when I said B could cook?

Pesto-crusted palmiers, baked fromage-de-chevre, baby arugula salad, apple tart with a whiskey-apricot glaze, and a fantastic cab that he brought back from his parents' house in Napa. And beef burgundy for the cute-ivores out there.

Cue Homer Simpson drooling noise.

Jackie O's (actually an Irish pub and not a gay bar as I had previously assumed)is a microbrewery as well as a bar. The Empower campaign, the same organization that the 5K in October benefitted, hosted a beer tasting there. They sold 100 tickets, packing the tiny bar to Xanax-necessitating proportions, but after a few "tastes", it went from cramped to cozy.

Usually, when I start drinking at 3 p.m., little good comes out of it at all. This time, I was helping to support orphans in Uganda. And I'll raise a glass or seven to that.

Sorry for so much of my stupid face on here lately, but this is how I felt about the weather today.

Today I woke up and could feel all 55 degrees Fahrenheit blooming open inside me before I even stepped outside. It was as though I'd been wearing a bulky mascot's costume for several months and finally had the chance to step out of it and breathe. Walking to the gym, the smell of thawed earth and melting snow was like laughing gas.

My efforts to get in shape over the last five years have been flighty at best. Noncommittal flirtations with running, no wait cycling, no wait elliptical training haven't exactly yielded results as my zaftig doughiness seems to inch closer each year towards regular garden-variety Fat. I finally got religion when the scale blinked back a scary highest-ever-recorded-number in late 2008 and have been sweating bullets at OU's rec center every day since I've been back on campus. I'm now at x minus 11 pounds. Seeing as how I have to wear a slinky strapless dress in front of half my high school graduating class in July, I could stand to keep up this habit.

Crafting impeccable treadmill playlists keeps it interesting for me. Not to pat myself on the back here, but Kraft, I have one I need to burn for you.

From the Columbus Alive's website.

You know, me and Ana, total paparazzi darlings. Man, this is hilarious to me, as someone whose finger is not on the pulse, someone who is not part of the scene.

Tonight, at Thursday Family Dinner, Christina explained the unique Winter Intersession at the high school where she teaches. Federal Hocking is the poorest district in Athens county, which is among the poorest counties in the state of Ohio. Appalachia can be a hopeless place to grow up, and Christina's school has taken several unconventional approaches to engage students who are cynical and often fatalistic. After Christmas break, the teachers get to showcase their non-teaching talents in a week of seminars. Leather-working, improv comedy, scrapbooking, macrame, you name it. I felt troubled upon realizing that I couldn't come up with a hobby or skill that I could teach. Do I not have hobbies? Sitting on my friends' laps at bars doesn't count.

My cohort meets Wednesday nights for drinks at this bar. I am still adjusting to the notion of compulsory drinking with my colleagues. I don't usually get buzzed with people with whom I should maintain a professional relationship.

I think a lot can be learned about a city from the bathroom graffiti in its dive bars.

Athens is a very follow-your-dreams kind of town. This is either annoying or totally refreshing depending on how much coffee you've had.

When I worked lunch at the restaurant and served people who ate their salads with just the company of their book or BlackBerry - I'll admit it - I felt sorry for them. Time spent alone didn't seem like time spent at all to me. It was always a social purgatory, waiting for Jenn to get done with class so we could lay on the couch and giggle like morons. Waiting for Nick to ride his bike over so we could get dinner. It sounds creepy spelled out like that, like the Orwellian "ownlife", where going for a walk by yourself is considered suspicious.

Something weird has happened in Athens. I've sort of fallen in love with being by myself.

When you're in a relationship for a long time, you get swept up in collective thinking. You haven't really done something until you've told your partner about it. Do we behave the way we are, or do we perform what people expect of us? Being in a new place, then, can be as freeing as it is frightening. Who am I without my context?

Am I someone who makes an elaborate pancake brunch for myself, drinks an entire pot of coffee, and lights sparklers while Barack Obama takes the oath of the presidency? Yes. Yes I am.

(Happy Obama Day!)

Today was my first time actually observing MLK Jr. Day as a National Day of Service. In the past I have always paid homage to the civil rights leader by...sleeping late. While the government's official MLK Jr. Day website listed lots of volunteer opportunities in the southeastern Ohio area, I wasn't quite sure I had the stones to show up to some church basement twenty minutes away in capital-R rural Ohio and meekly ask if there was anything I could do. Also, B. is parked behind me.

However, there were several blood drives on campus and I talked Sjan into accompanying me even though she has teeny tiny angelhair-pasta veins and the Red Cross workers basically had to make Swiss cheese of her antecubital before they struck oil. Since I bleed like a stuck pig, we were on our way to Bagel Street for celebratory bage-wiches in no time.

Also is it really "service" if you get free cookies afterwards? Because if there are snacks in it for me, here, have a lightly used kidney.

Not to get all meta, but sometimes my silly blog bothers me. I worry that I come off as unbalanced, miserable, bratty. I don't seem to document the moments that I'm walking to school and I stop dead in my tracks in awe of how good the sun feels on my face. When I zombie-shuffle downstairs in the morning, slept-on bangs sticking straight up, eyes puffed shut, and the sound of the coffee percolating is like a string quartet. When my roommate catches me fist-pumping the cold air in the kitchen when the coffee's finished brewing. There seems to be a fallacy that marries well-being inextricably to contentment and satisfaction. I think that notion can be simplistic and misleading - for me, it's about sunken, bottomless pain and intoxicating, frenetic pleasure. Beyond that, well-being is not binary. It's every boring little aspect of your life buzzing in different, wonderful frequencies, the wailing dissonance you hear when someone asks you what you're thinking about, the knowledge that you like that sound, that sound is home, but it's okay to be honest with yourself when your heart hurts and you don't know why.

Instead of taking gray awful winter quarter off emotionally, I'd like to take this quarter on. Toil my little grad student heart out, be eyeball-deep in research for my thesis, and so annoyingly productive that I won't have anything in common with myself anymore. And then I'll wake up one day and it'll be April 1st and Nick and I will be riding our bikes downtown to see Morrissey at the Palace Theatre.

Winter is a drag. It always is. February is worse than January. Today, though, with the sun rising over the snow-dusted tile rooftops, fat bluejays and cardinals bouncing along the oak bough outside my bedroom window, I had a thought anathema to my typical winter-hating, morning-cursing self: I can't wait to get outside.

Every year, Columbus Alive, the free weekly, picks a couple of local music stand-outs and labels them that year's Bands To Watch and there's a concert showcasing the bands the week the paper comes out. The title itself is sort of strange - "I wish we were a Band To Listen To", "We're all God's bands to watch" - but this year they picked Tin Armor and it's pretty goddamn cool to see my friends' faces in full color on all the newsracks around the city. The guys usually play in sweaty basements sans-sound guy, so seeing them on stage, lit up for all creation in front of a crowded-ass house - pretty excellent. The night ended as all good evenings out for me end - Ana cooks me food and I sleep so hard on her couch.

Brenda, your boyfriend is adorable. Even when his face is looming three feet tall on a banner hanging from the balcony at Skully's. And everyone misses you all the time.

I love the shit outta some old people games.

Caught a ride back to Columbus with Sjan tonight. She teaches during the day and takes classes at night, I go to school during the day and do research in the evenings. We see each other more than we ever have, but, still, we don't see each other all the time.

Another development in Sjan's awesome AfricaAthenscooperativegreeneverybodyholdhandsandstandinacircle wedding. She is having Passion Works
, a local nonprofit art studio where artists with and without severe developmental disabilities collaborate to make outstanding jewelry, paintings and sculptures, do the bouquets and table decorations out of recycled paper. It all just makes my bleeding heart sing.

Dude, tell me about it, Athena Cinema.

Ana was kind enough to forward my paychecks from working at the restaurant over break to my Athens address. The checks totaled roughly the cost of the bridesmaid dress for Sjanneke's wedding, which I went ahead and bought online.

This was the first day that I had to break out my snow boots this season. When I went to put them on, there was a wine cork inside the left shoe. I at once have no idea how that happened and know exactly how that happened.

-or-

Apparently, my friends are getting married and I'm just getting wine-drunk.

I went to my first ever yoga class today. I was suspicious.

In fact, when we were first instructed to close our eyes, my basal level of spaz had me so tightly coiled that I literally could not get my eyes to shut. I just sat there, looking through my eyelashes like a kid cheating at Heads Up Seven Up. In retrospect, I guess no one could use some yoga more than a girl who's all bent out of shape because she can't close her eyes.

An hour and a half later of stretching and pushing and "orienting my pelvic crests toward the earth" or whatever bullshit, I was basically a puddle of contentment on the floor. Surprise nonconsensual face massage aside, that class was the best thing that's happened so far in 2009.

Living 90 miles apart has been mostly good for Nick's and my relationship. There is much to be said for not being up in someone's face 24/7 and there's even more to be said for tragically and affectionately missing somebody.

That said, there is still squabbling. This particular argument was taking place through e-mails. It was about cheese. Really.

I always feel like gmail's smart ads are mocking me, though. Really? My whiny pleas to Discuss Things that are Important To Me seem like bad poetry? Touché, Google.

A Dube salad that doesn't look like shit! Quick, somebody buy a lottery ticket.

The Dube is a Columbus mainstay. The pre-smoking ban Dube was a different entity altogether, the place was a constant peasouper of bluish tobacco smoke and the service was deplorable. Charlie used to say, "Think of it as a theme restaurant, where the theme is everyone hates you." The new Dube is good, too, just different. The food is still terrible but the drinks are cheap and the servers are smiley and you don't have to immediately take a shower upon leaving. Sure, sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, but you can achieve Regular Status at the Dube without also being an alcoholic. So that's nice.

Nick could eat there for every meal, and towards the end of college, I was beginning to wonder if he and I should start paying them rent. It became a little tedious for me. Think Liz's feelings toward the Winchester in Shaun of the Dead.

Now, when I'm in town, going there is like going home. I'm always overjoyed to settle into a booth, pluck suspicious hairs out of my salad, and finish a crossword with Nick.

The great thing about a year-long grad program is that it's only a year long. The bad thing is that, well, I still haven't figured out what I want to be when I grow up and am suspicious that I won't be any more employable this summer with two degrees than I was last summer with one. Oh, the nails that will be bitten.

But here's what I'm trying to map out. How do people get jobs? Is it a top-down thing, you pick a city and apply to any places you can find that make sense? Is it bottom-down, pick a job title and throw your CV against the whole wall of the country and see what sticks?

If you do move, how long does it take to make real friends - not just convenience friends or polite work friends? Will they ever be as good as your friends back home? Where do you find them? I need an equation here.

When do you decide that you can forgive yourself for uprooting your boyfriend and taking him with you? When do you decide that it's not something that is going to get taken with you at all?

And if you decide to stay in the place you already know, at what point do you stop feeling as though you're somehow limiting yourself?

These questions are not rhetorical. Send algorithms for contentment my way, please. I have a graphing calculator and everything.

It looks like Thursday nights this quarter are going to be Family Dinner/The Office nights. I piggyback Sjanneke's cool (wholesome) teacher-friends and try to rein in my religious-themed swears, which, tragically, are my favorite family of swears.

I brought a bottle of wine, but forgot my wine key. The hostess, Christina, didn't have one, as single ladies in interim living situations often have conspicuous gaps in their housewares inventory. Back at my old apartment, I drank wine out of thrift store mugs until Ana bought me a set of wine glasses for my birthday one year. Determined to have a glass of cheap red wine to conclude my first week back at school, Katie and I knocked on a neighbor's door right as he was heading out into the cold, his face all Kenny-ed shut with hoods and scarves and armed with a case of Rolling Rock. He invited us in and returned from the kitchen, extending a silver wine key toward us. It was all I could do not to break out into "I've got a golden tiiiick-et!".

Then something weird happened. Despite having opened scores of wine bottles both professionally and in my personal life, I temporarily forgot how to. Ignoring the little leveraging widget, I was trying with all my shrimpy bicep power to uncork the thing, going red in the face and feeling defeated. Everyone else, taking my word that the bottle was unopenable without really paying attention to my, uh, technique, gathered to help. At one point, I was standing on a chair, trying to get the cork to budge, while no less than three people kneeled on the floor, gripping the stubborn bottle on the table.

Finally, Katie raised an eyebrow and cracked the case of the unopenable two buck chuck. "Aren't you supposed to use this thing?"

So that's where all this fancy book-learnin' has landed me.

I talked Sjanneke into breakfast at Casa with me this morning, and smelling the smells that were steaming off my breakfast plate was nothing short of a religious experience. I would also like to point out that Sjanneke is genuinely this excited about things 90% of the time. It is pretty wonderful. Yesterday, she held up a couple oversized bobby pins laying on my desk like they were moon rocks, and asked with awestruck reverence, "Where did you get these?"

Athens is really a sight in the fall, but I imagined that once the gray of winter hit, my visits from out-of-town friends would taper off. But as I hamster-wheeled at the gym today, in the glass-paneled atrium overlooking Appalachia, the snow was sticking to the hills and outlining the tree branches and I couldn't wait to hop off my elliptical machine and trudge home through Narnia.

Today I tried to find a secret building that no one has heard of, whichs seems to appear and disappear with the changing of the light and seasons, and in my goggling around like a tourist taking in skyscrapers, I walked very forcefully into a parking meter. Really pounded the metal coin-filled head of the thing into the meat of my chest. Somehow this managed to simultaneously knock the wind out of me, and cause me to involuntarily shout "Jesus Christ!". I imagine that if this had happened in Columbus, an onlooking panhandler would say something like "Even Jesus Christ can't help you!" and chuckle to himself. And I would throw my hands up in surrender and laugh and go on my way. But in Athens, a gaggle of girls in very deliberate sweatpants costumes just stare at me like they've become suddenly downwind of a bad smell.

I found the imaginary building. This quarter is not necessarily going to be much easier than last quarter, but I am taking fewer credit hours, which means less butt-in-seat time.

And we finally grit our teeth and fired up the furnace of this old ship. On the cold days last fall, B and I were depending on our fireplace and space heaters to perform miracles. I can be talked into paying an arm and a leg to heat this place if it means not stepping out of my bed in the morning onto a sheet of basically smoking dry ice.

I'm back in Athens. Mostly, it feels like I never left.

The best way to deal with this is to wash your sheets. One of my favorite things in the world is stepping from a hot shower, preferably my toweled-off skin is still pink and steaming at this point, and slipping into freshly laundered sheets. I'd like to think I'm not very prissy but I cannot do dirty sheets or towels. I would rather go weeks wearing the same clothes without showering than be made to use a musty towel. When a houseguest at my twentysomething friends' houses, I am often caught giving a proffered bath towel a surreptitious sniff-test. Sorry, guys. A dank towel isn't worth the risk. To borrow a phrase, it gags my maggots.

Household neuroses aside, I suppose it is nice to have my very own space and plenty of it. To not feel, however unfounded, like a big ol' mooch. To feel productive. To set my alarm for something, not just out of habit.

Still, with the leaves shed from all trees, I can see headlights on US 33 from my bedroom window. And I want to be on it, heading west.

"Dr. Pizza, PhD! Take two pizzas and call me in the morning!"

I'm not terribly bent out of shape about it, but I failed at spending time with a lot of Columbus people over break. I failed at reading all the books I'd been meaning to get to. I failed at exercising. I failed at eating well. I did not fail at drinking beer. I did not fail at ordering fried cheese, on more than one occasion. I did not fail at sleeping until 2 pm. You know that saying, "If you need something done, ask a busy person"? I totally embody the inverse of that statement - if you don't want to get anything done, ask someone who has nothing but free time. Unless I have obligations and appointments and deadlines, I'm basically a turd wearing clothes.

Maybe I'm not all regretful and self-flagellating about it because I have a warped concept of how much longer I'm in Athens. Or maybe it's because I know I'll be in the 614 area code a lot over these next few months.

New Year's Day is Friendsmas in my circle.

Ana makes a neverending spread for brunch and we all power through our hangovers, drink heroic amounts of coffee, and pack so many people into her kitchen that it'd be uncomfortable if it weren't so damn cozy.

My return to Athens draws nigh. The thought of waking up in my meat locker of a bedroom again is daunting, but with a workhorse space heater at my bedside and a plan for earlier bedtimes, I should be able to make that courageous leap out from under the covers every morning.

It's been excellent to see my boyfriend every day, to be unapologetically idle for a few weeks. People keep insisting that I have somehow "earned" the right to go two days without wearing pants-with-hardware just because I survived a quarter of classes, and I guess I don't care to disabuse them of the notion. Lenny Briscoe, we had some catching up to do. And the Idiot Box ain't gonna watch itself. That said, I've felt increasingly restless and parasitic, mooching off the guys' hospitality and taking scalding hot showers every day. I like to earn my showers and my sleep, and January has found my body in a state of atrophy and lethargy.

2009, I expect that you will give me a Master's degree, send me to Africa, and maybe even find me completing a triathlon. I'm timid to put these goals, among all the unspoken, mostly impossible goals that I have for myself, out there for the public to see. Maybe that will hold me to them. Pie-in-the-sky is the name of the game, right?