Winter Break 2007

Well, I'm back in Ann Arbor. I enjoyed the break, and I enjoyed spending time with my parents and siblings and grandmother, as well as New Year's with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. But it's also nice to get back to real life, and back to the place that is my home right now. While it was nice to have California sunshine and the company of family, after awhile I also found myself missing things, like:

• My own room and bed, and even bathroom, without luggage obscuring 9/10 of the floor space.
  
• My own car, an iPod hookup with controls I understand, and a knowledge of which radio station I can tune to in order to listen to NPR.
  
• A thermostat that I can set as high or low (mostly high) as I wish.
  
• Wireless internet (though it was probably good for me to spend a week almost entirely offline).

I also missed my health, which unfortunately hasn't returned to me upon my own return to Ann Arbor. I haven't felt normal since Christmas Eve, and am still producing more mucus in my nose and lungs than I thought the human body was capable of, and my clogged ears and hoarse voice are making it hard for me to enjoy even normal human conversation. I have faith, though. Every night I go to bed thinking that tomorrow I will wake up feeling bright and healthy. And maybe tomorrow I will.

With the freezing cold weather in Utah (that is, well-below-freezing cold weather), I had also sort of hoped to return to the balmy 30s in Michigan. No such luck. Yesterday was the balmy 30s apparently, but right now weather.com is telling me that it is 5 degrees outside (yikes).

But at least I got a few days of sunshine in California. And although I finally realized this year that I've probably grown out of the 2-week vacation at home, I still had a lot of good experiences. I saw my friends Beth and Eli and their 17-month-old son Alex, took our dog to the dog park with my mom (I wish I could get as excited about anything as Logan does about the dog park), made yet another pie (as well as rolls and mashed potatoes), ran at the Rose Bowl and did a 10-miler in short sleeves. I watched Atonement with Eric, Enchanted with my grandma, and National Treasure with the entire family, and enjoyed many, many episodes of Arrested Development and The Office. I played Settlers of Cataan and Quiddler, Scrabble and Cranium, Scattergories and Yahtze, and I even won a game or two. I spent a few too many hours in Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine tournaments with my siblings (we're easily amused), and bowled a pretty decent score with the Wii. I ate lots of chocolate, which I balanced out with lots more mandarin oranges from the tree in our backyard in California. I slept at least 8 hours most nights, did a lot of reading (and almost no schoolwork), saw my brother's new apartment in Salt Lake, had quality time with my sister (girl-talk and massages), went shopping with my mom, went on a snowy walk with my dad in my new down winter coat.

So even though I felt quite ready to come back to Michigan when the time came, the two weeks were probably time well-spent, at the very least for the memories, and at best for the break from reality in preparation for my return to real life.

Happy 2008 everybody!