Journaling: Busy, busy end of February!

Current Music: Regina Spektor - That Time
Current Mood: Pleased/tired/reflective

As the title suggests, there were some noteworthy happenings this weekend - wild, huh?

So this weekend was the official celebratory weekend for Bill's and my second anniversary. That blows my mind a little in itself; the two of us have been dating for over two years now. It's both incredibly satisfying, because we still love each other dearly and balance each other fairly well, and also kind of scary. It's not scary because I'm not glad we're together and happy at this point, but more because I never expected to be in such a serious, long-term relationship at this point. I'm awed by the idea that I have something anchoring me somewhere. I've long been preoccupied with community, a sense of home, attachment to one place over another, and now I realize that I have someone who does that for me. I'm still a bit intimidated by the idea of staying put; it might be the Jenkins gypsy syndrome, but I think it may well just be that I'm so used to the transience of college life that it's strange to have a constant. It's still different to me, but I like it, so it's nothing to complain of, just something I've thought about as we passed the two-year mark.

In addition to our anniversary, this weekend also saw the celebrations of Jake's 22nd birthday. He had his dad and brothers up to visit (making our house quite full and likely non-compliant with fire codes with at least 10 people in our half of the house on Friday night) and we threw a little bit of a party. There was video-gaming beforehand and in the earlier hours of the party, and then we settled in to some drinks and conversation/carousing. It was really good to see a lot of the people who I haven't seen much of lately. Rob and his brother Josh stopped by for a few hours, which was great, since I'd not seen Rob since December and Josh since maybe sometime in spring of '08. Tony came around, too, and we met his girlfriend Samantha for the first time. Nate and Tiffany also showed for a bit. I haven't heard a lot from Tiffany lately, so it was nice that she showed up; apparently, she's headed to Yale for a Bio PhD next year.

The anniversary gifting took place as soon as Bill arrived on Friday. He gave me a set of All Clad kitchen items, including nice oven mitts, dish towels, and an apron that matches his own (which I think is pretty adorable :-D ), as well as the Samba de Amigo game for Wii (which, I don't have, but Marcelius has one that we use in the house and it's a great game, so it's still fun!) complete with the maraccas that attach. I got to give him the Burberry watch he had drooled over when we went shopping before New Year's, which I have been struggling to keep secret for the past two months. He was a tad overwhelmed by the prettiness, I think, but I was pleased with the reaction. We then gave over the first night to the party, and picked up by going to the Strip District on Saturday morning to get things for dinner. We wandered around a bit, gathering spices and veggies and the meat to make some Moroccan tagine. We ended up picking up some really tasty pierogies from St. Stanislaus Church there in the Strip, which made for an excellent lunch. We prepped everything for the dinner and let it slowly cook until we went out the door to see the National Acrobats of China downtown. Bill had managed to get great seats, quite literally front and center, for the show and we proceeded to be astounded by some really awesome acrobatics. We came back to enjoy a late, but still delicious, dinner (marvelously displayed, thanks to Bill). Afterward, we had some tasty dessert from a grocery store in the Strip and coasted toward bedtime. Sunday we slept in, then made a fun breakfast of pancafflets (tiny waffles made of pancake batter) and bacon. The afternoon was unfortunately, but necessarily, spent cleaning up the mess from the weekend. Altogether a very low key weekend, but really pleasant. Next week is spring break, so we'll be running around a bit more then.

In other news, I'm really hoping Jake and Jessie manage to sort things out soon, because it just seems like the constant back and forth between loving and not being able to stand each other is far from healthy for either one of them. More cheerfully, I was informed by my advisor that I shouldn't take the GRE Subject Exam, at all. I can't say how much of a relief that is, since it's supposed to be a huge pain and I definitely wasn't looking forward to an exam in a subject that I haven't actually been studying for the past 4 years.

This is starting to get really long and my random surge of energy to put toward journaling has faltered, so I think that'll be all for tonight. Time to sleep and hope I can wake up early enough to make something of tomorrow before class.