Celebrating the Good

It only took us 3 weeks, but we did end up celebrating our anniversary for an entire day! On a good week, too, my double-Fall break for both of my universities. No class on Tuesday, no work on Friday.
Pure loveliness.

I began to see a light at the end of this semester as I hit midterms: I'm feeling in a good place with my Scottish lit class, finally in the groove with assignments and I have the one presentation/extra research bit out of the way. On Wednesday, I turned in my working bibliography for my thesis project; 17 pages of double-spaced, citations and small blurbs about each one's usefulness to my project. Some were useful, many weren't. But it was an accomplishment. I've just now received my "next steps" for that massive project, but decided this weekend was definitely not the time to look into that.

I slept in two days in a row, getting an unprecedented 9 hours of sleep each night. Our anniversary celebration day was Friday and set to include a movie, shopping, and dinner out in Ft. Wayne. When we tried to make reservations in advance for Cork 'N Cleaver, we found our options to be either 5p or 9p. Quite a span of time, typically during which I get hungry and eat. But neither option sounded great. Since it's quite a drive, we opted to forgo the film (nothing that we really wanted to see anyway) and take the early dinner.

It was such a relaxing day. Our shopping experience was quite slow and easy, each of us getting somethings we needed and some that were simply fun. We got some ideas for Christmas, had some coffee, and tried to stall our hunger (we didn't eat lunch so we could eat dinner so early).

By 4:30p, our feet were dead (we are not good shoppers) and our blood sugar was so low we were both pretty much incapable of making any more decisions. Except about food, of course.

I've never been out to eat for a special event of my own, and so when our server asked why we were dining out, I answered "to celebrate our anniversary." Because of this declaration, we discovered, to our delight, that our dinner was finished with a complimentary mud pie -- a towering piece of coffee ice cream with fudge icing, a thin chocolate cookie base, and whipped cream everywhere. Though we were stuffed from our appetizer of mushroom caps and cheese and the entrees of a 16 oz. rib eye (you guess whose that was) and a Parmesan-encrusted tilapia filet, we ate our dessert heartily. We'd even just decided not to buy dessert, when she brought the dessert plate out, but how could you say no when it's free?

The whole day was fantastic; I never once thought about school work. And we arrived home early enough for me to get another 9 hours of blissful sleep.

After another fairly relaxed day today, we ended with dinner at a friends' and one round of Ticket to Ride.

I'm so grateful for the break. I needed it desperately, and think taking a week to sit back and breathe may have just bought me another 7 of intense work and studying.

To top it off, Quincy has been the most loving and cuddly little (or giant) cat for the past few days. It's enough to melt your heart (probably only if you like cats to begin with).

Bring it on, November. I see you hiding around the corner, and I'll take you on. I'm ready!