The weather outside is...

Um, pretty nice, actually. The whole east coast is under a foot of snow. Seattle is snowed in. Hell, Northern Indiana is under two solid inches of ice.
Here? Well, it's just kind of cold. I'm oddly jealous, which is silly, because I certainly don't get snow days.
But if I did, here's what I'd do:
1. Keep the pajamas on, but add house slippers.
2. Fix bacon, then pancakes in the bacon pan. Mmm, bacon.
3. Clean out my purse while I watched sitcoms off the DVR.
4. Put on the robot vacuum, continue to watch TV, and call this action "cleaning the house."
5. Get dressed around 4 p.m.
6. Break out the wine at 5 p.m.
7. Play Uno Attack, or Scrabble, with my mum.

What do you all do on snow days?

Summing it up

A few weeks ago, Neil Cohen of "Talk of the Nation" mentioned that the show was soliciting "100-word essays on each state." Why was each state special?
My little brain kicked into overdrive, but ultimately, I never sent anything in. And I'm torn between thinking that Indiana was too vast, too diverse in its weirdness, and thinking that Indiana was too bland to ever sum up in 100 words.
Because I grew up, and currently live, on a working farm. But I used to live on the Eastside of Indianapolis, among grinding poverty and stunningly casual violence. But I went to school in Bloomington, where the North Face fleece just flew. But I have, at all three of my post-collegiate jobs, qualified for food stamps, although I've never quite needed them.
So in a larger sense, the vast oceans of difference between many Hoosiers is something I don't think I could - or should - sum up so casually. It's almost like a coherent identity isn't even really possible, and an attempt to do so would inevitably leave out a whole portion of the population.
But then I was driving to Fort Wayne to visit a friend from college who was in town for a few days. I passed the sign for Fairmount, Indiana. This one little town - which I've visited an amazing three times - was the childhood home of James Dean as well as Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield. So on one hand - the maven of mid-century cool, the ultimate rebellious teenager. On the other hand - bless its heart, but one of the corniest comics ever created. From the same small town, in the middle of Indiana.
And then I thought a bit more. Many of the people I know from Indiana are unexpectedly fascinating. Like, you'd never, ever, ever suspect these things about them. So maybe what struck me was that Indiana's lack of some kind of coherent identity is more of a gift than anything. I mean, hell, why can't all these things be possible? We're the people that birthed the story from the film "Hoosiers." Anything can happen, if you work hard and believe. You can leave, but you can come back. The lack of a stereotype, perhaps, creates this wonderful open space where anything is possible.
Our state-wide love of liquid cheese? That's something even I can't account for.

Hard work for this little blogger

Today was the first in a four-day stretch with no work for me - so naturally, I spent it assisting my parents rip out kitchen cabinets in one of their rental homes. My family has called me "Destructo" for a long time, but that's mainly because I tend to trip a lot. Today, it was because I spent hours with a crowbar in my hand. The '60s music station was on the radio, the Diet Coke was flowing, the cheap particleboard was cracking. I accidentally stabbed myself in the hand with a screwdriver, but that was the only real downside of the day. In all, it was badass. Deconstruction is so satisfying.

On the flip side, I've figured out how to download songs from Amazon. (I know, it's not hard.) I sat down to buy oh, one or two songs, and came up for air about 18 tracks later. A reward for a hard day of work, perhaps!

Unrelated nibbles

• I turned 25. Last year on my birthday I found my first gray hair, and I about hit meltdown. This year, I was lucky enough to spend the evening in a pub with three of my favorite girls. In short? It was lovely, and perfectly low-key.
• I may move to South Korea. On a wild hair, I applied for a technical writing job with Samsung. An HR person contacted me, asking me to come to New York to interview for the position. The job itself is in Suwon, South Korea. You know what that means? I'd be an expatriate writer. Just call me Henry Miller. Or Gertrude Stein. Or whoever. So if the money's there, it'll be adios, Americanos.
• Our house smells like hog shit. One of the local farming families has purchased several of the 50-acres-or-so farms surrounding our little family compound, and this is the time of year when farmers spread fertilizer. Most farmers use cow poo, but since this family raises pigs, hog shit it is. It's a lot easier to contemplate leaving a place when it smells this bad.
• I have such election fatigue. I spent the other morning at a UAW hall in Nearby Metropolis making phone calls on behalf of my campaign-manager friend, and all the other volunteers backed me up on this one. We want all the right people to win, but we'd like it to be over, too.

LSAT II: Electric standardized crap

Remember how I said the test felt easier this time?
Hahahahahaha. Cue the laugh track, because I actually managed to do worse this time around. No so badly, though, that I could chalk the first score up as a fluke. Which means that now I have to apply to law school, just not the really good ones.
But no fear - I have a plan. I'm going to make a spreadsheet, and it shall be epic.

Well then, I'd better hit the road

Did you all know that GoogleMaps now has the option of showing directions via public transport or by foot?
Did you all know that I'm going to visit my friend Martha in Washington, D.C. in mid-November?


Look how passively it point out to me that "directions are also available by car." Look how nicely it reminds me that walking 566 miles may take me along a route with no sidewalks. And look how long it's going to take me to get there.

Scenes from a Midwestern home

K: Mom, your Roomba is bouncing around the kitchen. You forgot to turn on the little sensor-thing. Come get it, it's getting tangled up in the rug.
Mom: Don't tell me how to raise my robot.

Fin