anywhere but here

New year, new resolutions, new realization that I am never going to be an email list success story. So here’s part 2, a.k.a. my life in blog form for all of you not lucky enough to be hanging out with me in South America and sick of my sadly infrequent mass emails.

The original idea was to start posting here when I got down to Argentina. Not that it wouldn’t be completely thrilling for all of you to hear about my winter break in Iowa… oh never mind, you’re going to anyway, because my flight to Chicago last night was canceled (wow, bad weather in Chicago, who would’ve thought?) and I’ve already packed, run all my errands, and said all my goodbyes for my “practice” departure yesterday. So now I’m hugely bored and I guess I might as well just go ahead and start this thing.

So…. highlights of my time in Fairfield:

27–days spent at home (wow… that’s a lot… didn’t realize)

5 1/2–snow days that my brother and sister had in two weeks. Also, not coincidentally, the number of ice storms we had in that amount of time.

about 8–people I’ve known for 10 years or more that didn’t recognize me with brown hair

2 1/2–bars visited on the fairfield “pub crawl”

1–number of nice but talkative overalled farmers named Bob that we met during above pub crawl

18–pictures I took during this break

17–number of those pictures in which I look completely stoned

2 + cameo–number of patrick swayze movies I watched

25 minutes–time spent hanging out in the coffee shop parking lot (listen, that’s what we do in Iowa. Sometimes we hang out in other parking lots to switch it up.)

28–number of times I’ve said GOSH since seeing Napoleon Dynamite for the first time three days ago

3–people who owe me letters (you know who you are. Emails are fine if you’re lazy like that.)

0–days of snowboarding.

Right, so I realize now that I don’t have as much time as I thought I did, so I’ll just leave you all to guess all the other fabulousness of break and finish with one last thought, which is:

arbitrary large number–amount of angry I’ll be if I get stuck in Chicago today. Wish me luck.