We are attending two Thanksgiving dinners tomorrow, which are at about the same time. One of them will be an Indian feast and the other will be a regular Thanksgiving feast. How, you ask, are we going to attend two dinners at nearly the same time? Magic.

Every year at A&M the administration closes the campus at noon and lets the staff leave early on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It is not on the school calendar, though, and does not show up in our time cards before Wednesday. This is because we have to have the campus open a certain number of days to meet all of the state qualifications. So every year at this time, the air is abuzz with rumors and questions, "Will they really let us go this year? They didn't send us an email about it last year until 10:00am. We have a new interim president; perhaps he will be a curmudgeon." But the campus ALWAYS closes at noon on Wednesday.

It is 3:15pm on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and we have received no email yet. If we are not released early tomorrow then I am stuck here all day by myself or, even worse, all day as the only staff member with the head of the department and some confused professors.

This is a very strange tradition. They do this on Dec. 23, too.

I can't wait until I'm a grad student.

*KatieW*

It's very hard to get out of bed in the morning when your partner is warm and you are cold. Saturdays are the worst. We made it to the coffee shop in the morning, though.

David and I might participate in our first black Friday shopping together: Half-Price Books (2 miles from our house), 7am, first 50 customers get a book bag with a $5 gift certificate inside and one customer will receive a bag with a $100 gift certificate.

I finished Middlemarch this morning. It was very enjoyable, more realistic than Dickens--though not at all funny--and  nicely paced. I highly recommend it. If you want a less humorous, more realistic Dickens, I recommend Great Expectations, which I would place slightly above Middlemarch.

That is a very short review, but I'm not going to pretend to be a great reviewer.

*KatieW*

I am addicted to the "Missed Connections" and "Strictly Platonic" pages of Craislist. They made me sad. They remind me that there are a lot of lonely people.

I check these pages with great dedication and wish that I could help. This is probably not good for me.

Our local Craigslist has a lot of ads of all types that are very interestingly worded. The best ones are usually found in the "Farm+Garden" page. I highly recommend reading through some craigslist ads to brighten your day.

*KatieW*

One does not realize how far away one building is from another until one drags a computer cart full of food and dishes and sodas from the first building to the second and the pathway is so bumpy and uneven that the dishes threaten to fall off and one of the wheels does fall off. If not for my thoughtful husband coming to the rescue, I don't know if I would have made it back without hurling the stupid, fancy Southern Living dishes against the nearest building.

Why did I get stuck with this task last night? Because I felt sorry for our student worker who has to do all of the dirty work like this all of the time, plus stay after hours just to clean up after the professors. He set things up, I cleaned them up. It worked in his favor, though, because I vowed that as long as I am here, no one will have to take the food-laden cart to a colloquium in another building again.

Even though I was really mad yesterday, I am in a better mood today. We've had a stretch of very un-autumn-ish, but perfectly beautiful weather: sunny, 70s, breezy (but not windy). It's hard to stay mad when one has such nice weather, the promise of a sweet weekend with one's best friend, and Middlemarch. It's also hard to stay angry at dishes and computer carts.

*KatieW*

Last week I got a lot of things done at work, but it wasn't really a good week. There were some good things, though. David and I decided to go look at a few apartments that we like. Our first choice is a sweet studio apartment with high ceilings, brick walls, and concrete floors.

We've talked about living in a studio for a while, as we like the idea of not having many things and we would like to live in a nicer area of a large city someday (and this would be good practice). Plus, living in a newer, smaller space will cut down on our heating bill. We will be checking out at least one of these apartments tomorrow (it's right across the street from where we work).

I've been doing more and more time on the stairmaster lately. I broke all previous records on Saturday with a time of 43 minutes, and then I broke that record last night with 45 minutes. That's a good feeling I have lots more energy, too, and found myself wanting to clean the whole apartment at 10pm yesterday (which did not happen).

We were good this weekend and did not sleep in very late. It was nice.

*KatieW*