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Yesterday my office phone rang and it was the secretary calling to inform me that there was someone in the office from the local bookstore who wanted to speak to me about an event they were having. I suppressed a sigh, since I had a class in the library and I was in the middle of cataloging and trying to get out a bunch of letters for missing books. I know, you’re jealous, my job is really just too amazing sometimes. Anyway, I told the secretary to send her in and when I spied a random woman in sweats wandering around among the midgets children I cornered her and plastered on my professional “hurry up before I bite your head off” smile.

Then she introduced herself and holy shit, she was the author of a book that I thought was great, a book that the kids fight over to read, and here she was in my library and all I could think to say to her was something along the lines of “You wrote another book? And you’re giving me a copy? And you’re speaking at the local bookstore? And why, exactly, do I feel the need to repeat everything you are saying to me back to you?” Because it is apparent that I turn into a fool any time someone remotely exciting talks to me. Then she kind of ran out of things to say since we weren’t having a conversation so much as I was parroting her every word, so I moved to shake her hand, which turned into the dreaded awkward arm pat. She hastily shoved her new book into my hand that was not currently petting her and turned to leave.

“Bye! Thank you! See you soon!” I called after her. Because, you know, I couldn’t think of anything even more stalkerish to yell at her back.

Anyway, today I am off on a field trip to the Freedom Trail with my Quiz Bowl kidlets. For some reason there are quite a few haters of the Freedom Trail out there so I will refrain from recapping my adventures tomorrow, but please keep your fingers crossed I don’t lose any children to the wilds of downtown Boston.

WANTED:

One school secretary. Must be easily enraged and unusually terse with a large and unmoveable chip on his or her shoulder. Must be able to type 70+ wpm but should not, under any circumstances, send email replies longer than three words. Ability to make simple organizational tasks difficult a plus. Ability to make others feel like shit preferable.

To apply, please send resumes in triplicate with color-coded paper clips and a brief summary on why you believe you are the bitchiest qualified candidate.

WANTED:

Next door neighbors. This strenuous position will require numerous hours drinking Miller Genuine Draft on the sidewalk while bellowing into my bedroom windows. Must be able to lift 10+ lbs of ice-packed beer in styrofoam coolers from car to directly in front of my house. Preferred: owning children who cry, whine, fight, and launch projectiles such as lawn darts and baseballs at my car. Teenagers also accepted as long as they are sullen and enjoy skulking next to my front steps. Bonus for owning dogs whom you lock in your driveway while they bark continuously throughout the day and crap on the aforementioned front steps when let loose.

To apply, please have numerous college frat friends send references attesting to your stories of “that one time you puked on your dog and watched him lick it off”.

WANTED:

One laptop computer. Will be used as a typewriter, technology at a level higher than that completely unnecessary. If internet-accessible, this function should be effectively limited through use of Internet Explorer (version 4 or lower). Machine should not load anything containing Flash, PDFs, YouTube clips, any site containing the word “alcohol”, or my blog. Although I am looking for a laptop, it should weigh upwards of 75 lbs so that I can use it in lieu of my gym membership if desired. Also, while I am aware that the purpose of laptops is generally to have more mobility I would appreciate if you remove the battery altogether so that I am tethered to my desk every moment.

Also preferable: should not include the ability to be upgraded in any way so as to render the user completely fucking helpless when something pressing needs to be done.

Even though I am still feeling weak and generally nauseous, I hate to leave you in suspense about my thrilling times in the Colorado area. So, in weighing the options, I figured I could either not blog at all, which goes against every fiber in my Monday-through-Friday loving body, or I could utilize the tried and true format of bullet points which you all love so much. Or you could skip my rambly post altogether and just look at some pretty photos of the mountains.  There are also some pictures of beer in there, for those nature-haters among you.

• Tuesday morning we arrived at the Denver International Airport, where the terminal looks like a circus tent and there is a giant statue of a mustang (the horse, not the car) with glowing red eyes. If there was ever a better welcome than that, it would only be seeing my friend Megan and her new(ish) baby Oliver waiting there to pick us up.
• After a quick trip to drop off our luggage and grab a bite for lunch we headed out to Fort Collins, where we passed no fewer than four breweries on our way to the New Belgium Brewery, maker of the infamous Fat Tire beer. The lady at the bar laughed at me when I tried to give her money for the tour, then laughed at me again when I tried to (gasp!) pay for my beer. Apparently in Colorado the beer flows like water and they need no payment to partake. My kind of state. The New Belgium tour was great and the employees there have all kind of fun perks- like a giant twisty slide! The company also gives every employee a bicycle after working there for a year and encourages everyone to ride to work rather than drive. In their employee parking lot, the spots are assigned by your car’s miles per gallon ratio, so all the gas-guzzling SUV owners have to do the walk of shame from the far end  of the lot every morning. We were amused to note an old VW bus that had been converted to bio-diesel in the number one spot.
• After Chris and I had consumed our numerous free beers, Megan was kind enough to drive our drunk selves back to Denver, where we saw the Mile High Stadium and a random Six Flags sitting directly in the middle of the downtown highrise buildings. We then met Marshall for dinner at an authentic Mexican joint where we drank two pitchers of strawberry margaritas and stumbled back to their house to fall asleep in front of the TV. Ahh, just like home.
• On Wednesday we headed out to Red Rocks State Park in the morning. It was sunny and beautiful and dry. And guess what, fellow bug-haters? There are NO BUGS IN DENVER. I kid you not. I think the high altitude makes them malfunction. Anyway, we first headed up to the amphitheater where the altitude made me malfunction, but only briefly, because I had to save face in front of the group of bootcampers running the steps at 10,000 feet and barely breaking a sweat.
• The rest of the hike was gorgeous and we headed home in high spirits. We also took the afternoon to walk around downtown, checking out the amazing Tattered Cover Bookstore where I felt like I might want to move in for a few weeks, and another store that specialized in handmade cowboy shirts and boots. Those crazy Old Westers! It seems that rodeos are like their State Fair in Colorado. That night we grilled outside because the weather was still perfect and we even threw in a round of Scrabble, because we are Wild and Crazy like that. I managed to beat Megan by a hair but it was a very close match. I suppose if she had beaten me I would not have felt too badly- after all, her Master’s in Classical Studies makes her almost as big a nerd as I.
• Thursday we drove towards the mountains to Boulder, where we went on a tour of the Celestial Seasonings tea factory. I probably sampled 15 different teas by the time the tour started and there were no bathroom breaks; luckily the tour itself was really interesting. They opened up the door to the room where they store all the peppermint and it was heavenly, until you walked into the room and all your sinuses came dripping out of your nose and eyes. Still, it smelled great. The one quibble I had with the tour was that they make everyone wear a hairnet, and I am far too vain to enjoy the idea of walking around for an hour with a white net on my head. I sucked it up and did it, though not before I took photographic evidence of Chris wearing one.
• We also had lunch in downtown Boulder at the Dushanbe Tea House. It was quite beautiful inside and we enjoyed our meals. The only downside is that it was the most likely culprit of our bout with food poisoning. Alas.
• We spent our last evening with pizza and television and hanging out, but hit the hay early so we could be up for our 6 a.m. flight.
• Friday morning we woke up at 4:30 a.m. and caught a ride to the airport to head home, which led to all kinds of weekend unpleasantness.

Some brief notes: first of all, Denver was not at all what I was expecting. It’s more desert-like than forest, the mountains are more in the background than I’d thought, and it’s a strange kind of eco-friendly- for example, my friend Megan uses a cloth diaper service, and yet the city has no car inspections. They had the largest REI I’ve ever seen, complete with a walk-in freezer to test out their jackets, and yet they also have more drive-thru fast food than can possibly be healthy. It is also an odd mix of western and midwestern and of hippie and yuppy, especially in Boulder, where they are close to the mountains. Still, I think I kind of loved it there.

In fact, my only complaint about the trip? Not enough time there. Next trip out will have to be at least a week- there’s so much we didn’t get to see, including Chris’s beloved ghost towns, since they were all still covered in snow. Next time!

Hi, internet! I’m back! Did you miss me? I sure missed you. Sending texts to Twitter is kind of fun, but really, there is no replacement for a good old fashioned laptop and some quality time with the world wide web. I think this was the first time I’ve had over 200 posts sitting in my Google reader and not just hit the “mark all as read” button. I actually sat down and read every single post in there! Because I could! Well, and also because I am currently too weak to get out of bed and so have nothing else to do. But I enjoyed every post, I swear.

Since our vacation to Denver was lovely and amazing, I think I am going to get the terrible part out of the way here and start towards the end of the trip. Tomorrow I will work my way back to the beginning of the trip where everything was sunshine and light (quite literally, as Colorado is the sunshiniest state I’ve ever been to- take that, Florida!) and I will give due props to our Denver hosts/tour guides. For now though, my tale begins on Friday afternoon, at an altitude of 15,000 feet, roughly twenty minutes from arriving at the Manchester airport.

“Uh oh,” I remarked to Chris, “I am really not feeling well.” No worries, he assured me, it was probably the combination of turbulence, lack of sleep, and McDonalds french fries we had consumed in the Chicago-Midway airport. We were almost home. Except we weren’t really almost home, as we still had to disembark the plane, get our luggage, walk to our car, and drive an hour back to Boston, by which time I was feeling decidedly woozy. Time for a nap!

An hour later I awoke to the feeling that I needed to immediately get rid of everything currently residing in my stomach, and did so. And then continued to do so for the next 14 hours, pausing only to let Chris do the same every now and then. I will spare you the gory details, but I will say this: our next apartment will definitely have two bathrooms. And will possibly have a bed located in the bathroom so that I will never again have to sleep huddled on the cold tile floor, shaking and exhausted, with a hand towel laid over my arms so I didn’t freeze to death.

Saturday we were too weak to get out of bed and stayed there for most of the day, getting up only to try nibbling on dry toast and Gatorade in a vain attempt to not end up wizened husks of our former robust selves. We managed to drag our sorry selves to the couch to watch last week’s episodes of Lost and Battlestar, and then crawled back to bed by 9:30 pm, where we remained for the night. This morning I managed to eat a piece of toast and some tea without feeling like someone had stabbed an ice pick into my chest and I feel like I won the lottery.

Was it food poisoning? A stomach bug? We may never know, although I will say it is probably too coincidental that Chris, Megan, and I all got sick at almost exactly the same time after consuming the same foods over the course of the week. And if it was food poisoning, we can probably pinpoint where it came from, since there were only two places we went that Marshall did not also go to, and he remained sickness-free while we were all miserable.

Either way, I now have a ton of cleaning and unpacking and grocery shopping to do and tomorrow I am back to work. Maybe I should take a quick nap first, though, just to make sure I have all my strength back for tomorrow.

No, I have not left yet for my trip. The last of the laundry is being dried, my camera is charging, my boarding passes are printed out, and the plans for getting picked up tomorrow morning at the Denver airport are all set. I am so, so ready for vacation. In fact, I am already enjoying my days of freedom. I rolled out of bed at the leisurely hour of 8 a.m. (that IS leisurely compared to 5:30 a.m., shut up!), the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the children on my street have yet to start their insane shrieking for the day. All that stands between me and Colorado is a quick jaunt across the country. Oh, and packing. Yes, I should probably get on that.

When I arranged the flights back in December I was in kind of a rush, since I knew I wanted to give the tickets to Chris as part of his Christmas present. Also, flying anywhere during April break you are guaranteed to pay twice as much as normal, since everyone from the tri-state area and their darling children are also using that time to flit around the world. So I felt lucky to find tickets at a pretty good price, even if they were on Southwest. And on a flight leaving at 6:20 a.m. From a city an hour north of Boston. Wait, why was I feeling lucky again?

The last experience I had on Southwest was many moons ago, back even before I worked for an airline. Those were the days when Southwest still had the backwards-facing seats in the front row, so that if you were very, very unlucky you got to sit with someone’s knees jammed into your crotch for the duration of your flight. Guess who that happened to? Twice? Anyway, I swore off Southwest forever after staring face-to-face at a man who clearly had the plague and having him sneeze directly into my eyes, and an eight-foot tall pimply teenager who couldn’t keep his gargantuan legs from crushing my spleen. Then wonder of wonders, I heard that Southwest had done away with the backwards seating and I thought, well, how bad could it be?

Answer: bad. While they took away the offending seats they added in a special bonus feature whereby you confirm your flight 24 hours in advance, which guarantees you a seat inside the plane. I don’t know what happens if you forget to confirm, maybe they make you sit on the wing? Usher you into the cargo bin? All I know is, my flight is at 6:20 a.m. tomorrow, which meant I had to wake up this morning at 6:20 a.m. just to print out our boarding passes and then blearily stumble back to bed. And I was STILL number 53 to confirm! WTF, Southwest? How hard is it to assign seating on the plane?

All bitching about Southwest aside, I’m really looking forward to my trip. I’m personally thrilled to hike in Red Rocks, and Chris is psyched to see a real Old West Ghost Town. So if I get a chance to post or throw up some pictures while I’m away, cool. If not, keep the internet safe for me, okay? I’m off to spend the day NOT driving, as the Boston Marathon has effectively closed down all traffic routes in and out of the city. I mean, GO RUNNERS!

I may have tricked my tongue into eschewing the New England accent but that doesn’t mean I can’t pull it out in full force when it’s convenient. Hence my exclamations of “I’m a winnah!” when I saw that I had won two awards in the past few weeks. Unfortunately I’ve been in a bit of a self-centered funk since adolescence lately, what with Chris being gone, mourning the loss of ice cream in my life, and the precarious career situation, and neglected to mention those awards. Until now.

3Carnations deemed me ”above average”! Woot. And while I am very pleased to receive this nomination for higher-than-average writing, I am also a woman of concrete numbers. Above average is, what, a B? An A minus? You know I will not rest until someone gives me the A++ award. Graphic artists, get on that!

I also received a nod from the Blog of Distinction Academy. It’s wonderful to be recognized as “distinctive”, even when the graphic seems a tad bit bizarre. Is that a college diploma? Held by someone wearing an ascot? Don’t get me wrong, I love a nice ascot as much as the next girl, it just seems a little out of place. Regardless! Thank you very much to The Modern Gal for the recognition. Huzzah.

As for passing on these awards, I will make an attempt at being non-elitist and say that everyone reading this post can pick whichever of the two awards they like best and make it their own; you’re all winners in my eyes. Which do you prefer?

I also won a few maple-bacon flavored lollipops from Lara, but that was a random drawing and had nothing to do with my being awesome. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether maple-bacon flavored candy is revolting or intriguing; you will get my full review once I have received them in the mail.

With that, I’m off to cruise through my very last day of work before April vacation. A word of warning: my posting next week will be sporadic to non-existent, depending on my access to a computer in Colorado and my level of busy. I will more likely be twittering, so if you’d like to follow my Denver adventures, you may. I hope you all have fantastic weekends and enjoy the Spring-time weather.

Thank you all for the lovely words of support yesterday. While I don’t think it will be necessary for you to chain yourselves to the doors of my library in protest, the sentiment was very much appreciated. I felt much better after I had written about it, your feedback was icing on the proverbial cake.

This morning I played Guitar Hero with my kiddos, because there is no surer way to keep your job than to spend your days playing video games. I tried not to worry about it too much, even though everything I do now feels a little like it is being weighed and measured for inherent value. But I had been promising the kids they would get to play, it was their last class with me before vacation, and I couldn’t break their adolescent little hearts. So we rocked out for 55 minutes. Screw it, if I’m going to go out, I may as well go out in style, right? FREEBIRD!

So anyway, yesterday I went for a long walk on the nearby bike path and as we were walking we noticed a police officer barreling down the path on foot. A few hundred yards later he abruptly ran down into the woods, pretty much in someone’s back yard. Intrigued, we stopped to see if there was something interesting like a dead body to stare at, only to find the cop gingerly scooping up a fire extinguisher that someone had obviously stolen and unceremoniously discarded when it stopped being fun. I have no idea why the popo felt they needed to sprint to the scene of a littering, unless maybe they thought it was a bomb or something, in which case why would be running TOWARD it? Alone? On foot?! Oh, the mysteries of police work.

In other news, my Christopher comes home tonight. Hooray! Even though I’ve already grown accustomed to doing everything on my own it will be lovely to have his face around again. We will spend a few days in non-marital-yet-still-cohabitational bliss, then Tuesday we head west for Denver. I have two things to say about that: one, vacation has never seemed so welcome, and two, DENVER! We’re only spending a few days out there but we already have many, many things planned. Hiking in Red Rocks! Snowshoeing in Leadville! Brewery tours! Hot tub! And my lovely friends Megan and Marshall are even putting us up in their home, where I will get to play with their new baby Oliver and then hand him back when his diaper is full. Anyway, this will be the first time Chris and I have visited Denver and I’m pretty sure we’re going to absolutely love it. Also, we are now accepting recommendations for anything we should put on our must-see list while getting our Rocky Mountain high on.

Yesterday morning I was skimming articles in the local newspaper and ran across one about the school budget, in which my Principal was quoted as saying that budget cuts at the middle school level would effect “support staff”, including guidance counselors, instructional aides, and librarians. Errr, librarians? Do you mean librarian? As in, ME?

He did indeed mean me, folks. Apparently my tenure does not start until September 1, 2008, at the beginning of my fourth year. When I pressed him a bit about the likelihood of being let go he estimated that if the school doesn’t get the money they are looking for, and if the other schools are forced to make big cuts, the possibility could be somewhere in the 50% range. Granted, that is a lot of “ifs”, but I sure don’t like the thought of a 50/50 chance of having no job.

So with that great start to my day, I set about my library tasks, only to be approached by an administrator looking to pass the buck on Vocation Day. Would I be willing to help put together the end-of-year Vocation Day for the 8th grade students? Sure, if you LET ME KEEP MY JOB. People, I know I am a sucker, but I agreed to do it anyway, with the tiny spark of hope that someone high up would be making those hard budget choices and think, well, we certainly can’t cut NPW; who would run Vocation Day?!

Pathetic, I know. Especially considering I have bent over backwards for this school for the last three years, taking on every responsibility they have asked of me, even the ones I didn’t particularly want. If they can’t already see that I’m important I really don’t think Vocation Day is going to push me over the edge. Still, a girl’s got to maintain some shred of hope, right?

This week I decided to kick off my new healthy eating lifestyle. With Chris absent it is much easier to justify eating the exact same salad four nights in a row and I don’t feel the need to have beer and/or dessert with every meal. On Monday afternoon I emailed my mother, “I’ve been eating healthy for five hours now! Why are my pants still tight?”

Over the weekend I was talking to my cousin, who mentioned that at his company they were having a Biggest Loser competition. It started out with a bunch of the employees betting each other they could lose the most weight, so each of them put $100 down. Then the company’s boss discovered what they were doing, and he matched their bets with an extra $1000 of his own. Okay, first of all, why can’t my school ever do anything like that? I would gladly eat baby carrots for a determined amount of time if it meant I would win $2,000. But having pants that fit me is simply not enough to get me excited about fat free yogurt.

The thing is, I know I can eat healthy. It’s just, obviously I don’t really want to, what with all the delicious pizza and burritos available in the world. But back in ‘05 I followed this program called the Schwarzbein Principle. You can look it up if you like, but I will give you the breakdown on it: it sucks. I mean, it’s very healthy, but also: sucks. I did it for six months until one day I went to the Cheesecake Factory with some friends and I couldn’t find one single thing to eat that wouldn’t make Diana Schwarzbein say ten thousand Hail Marys over a head of organic lettuce. Basically, it said to avoid the following:

• Caffeine, including decaf products, because there is still trace amounts of caffeine in them.
• Artifical sweeteners
• Sugar
• Flour
• Nitrates, which are found in most packaged meats
• Carbohydrates, including pasta and bread, unless it was 100% whole grain bread made with no preservatives
• Anything with chemical ingredients, which, in case you didn’t know, is almost everything at the grocery store

As far as I could tell, it was like a cross between the South Beach diet and the seventh circle of Hell, but damn, did I feel healthy. So much energy! And now… well, how much energy do I really need to sit on the couch and watch two full seasons of Dexter in three days?

The problem is, I love food. Love. It. So as for the eating healthy, I’m going to do it. But it will be a cross between what I know to be healthy and what my brain can handle. What? I never said I was going to enjoy eating healthy. Please leave all recipes for healthy living in the comments; the thought of spending the rest of my days with nothing but radishes and Splenda for company is currently making me want to cry a little bit.

I have never lived alone. Is that weird? I feel like almost everybody has lived by themselves at some point in their lives, you know, had that year where they got a one-bedroom apartment that they couldn’t really afford on their own but they were just so sick of having roommates? Yeah, I never had that. I’ve lived with my parents, my boyfriend, and had anywhere from one to five roommates, but never on my own. So when I dropped Chris off at the airport early Saturday morning and went back to an empty apartment I was all out of sorts. What does one do when every choice you make is solely one’s own? I mean, I could go to Target and not have to worry about how much time I spent in the shoe aisle! I could make dinner and have some left over! I could watch romantic movies and cry with a box of tissues and a glass of wine and there would be no one there to tease me about it!

Except something weird was going on. I didn’t really want to do any of those things, and especially not by myself. I actually became worried that maybe I was too dependent on other people for my amusement. Then a friend came over and we had a bottle of wine and watched some movies and when she left I realized, phew, I am going to be okay. I have plenty of things to do and I am very good company for myself. Hell, I could entertain myself for days just on old episodes of Arrested Development. This being alone thing was no sweat!

Still, I missed Chris. I mean, I do miss Chris. This post really isn’t meant to be a pity party for NPW (well, okay, maybe a little, but only for like two seconds before you slap me to my senses), it’s just that all weekend I felt kind of… incomplete. I know, I know, boo hoo for me. I guess what I’m saying is, I’m sure I would be fine on my own, but I also know that when Chris gets back I won’t be so quick to complain the next time he hustles me out of the shoe store or takes the last slice of pizza.

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