Thanksgiving & transmissions & marriage & cats

I'm being a bad blogger. I've been working full-time again and commuting to Winnetka. However, I've nearly got all my ducks in a row to apply to the PHD program at UIC and this last experience at New Trier makes me feel even more inclined to believe I will be doing the right thing.

Okay, I'm back again. It's January 3, 2010 and I have just consumed two bowls of my own bread pudding. We drove to Manhattan the day after having maybe 75 people over for dinner and jazz and loud conversation. It was a lovely, exhausting party partially to celebrate my 25 years of sobriety and then we got up and drove to New York. The weather was amazingly good. A blizzard that happened the night before was all cleared away and we were able to easily enter the Lincoln Tunnel and go to Chelsea, park the car and get into the apartment where we stayed for three days. We went to the Guggenheim and walked to Central Park and saw a movie and went to a party and then drove down to Princeton to visit my parents. On Christmas Eve we drove to Montclair to my sister's annual Christmas Eve dinner that my lovely nephew cooks and my sister was traditionally awful to me, blamed me for people opening presents too soon, told me to clean up, threw a variety of rejected outfits at me telling me this was my Christmas present and implying some would fit when I was thinner.

Ah, tradition. She started calling the next day presumably to apologize but usually that results in more abuse so I refused to talk to her. My sponsor said I should pray for her so I could feel better. Hmm.

I managed to get the application for the PHD program finished and mailed. I will possibly teach at New Trier next spring. No matter what the reason, NT is a vastly superior school to Evanston. It's downright terrible to see the contrast. The students feel a real obligation to do their work and you can't blame it all on privilege. There are plenty of rich kids at ETHS. Maybe it's that the teachers are actually supported by the administration. I don't know but it's impressive. Oh, Timo's stopped smoking and dipping. I'm really proud of him except he's taken to making these witless statements about terrorists that seem more connected to his withdrawal from nicotine then any thoughtful perspective on how to stop insane fundamentalists with explosive underwear. The cats are obsessed with eating and kneading my fat first thing in the morning until I have to feed them. Luke gave another unauthorized party and spent all of his break grounded. Thank god for whiny neighbors.