Best Book of February: HHhH: This is a sort of strange book written about one of the leaders of Nazi Germany, but novelized and includes a narrator who explores things personally while "writing." I'm not entirely certain if the narrator is the author, but regardless, this slightly strange concept of writing was something I really loved. Five stars.
February 1: Winter weather on our bushes looks like winter blooms.
February 2: I remember this Saturday distinctly--it was one of the first totally free days I'd had in a long time (and stay tuned to find out when my next one would show up) and I was watching basketball. Indiana was playing someone in Game Day and I had the totally dorky plan to watch it and shred for a few hours.
February 3: Super Bowl fun times at Jade and Kevin's house with the yummiest Bar-B-Que Pizza I'd had in a long time :) And fun times with friends, even in the midst of a black out at the game was a good thing!
February 4: Tortilla soup yumminess. Sometimes I want to just be a chef. Okay, I guess a cook since I don't want to go to culinary school.
February 5: I got this in the mail and immediately thought of Jade, Janali, and our time together there during college. I so wanted to go back and Jade texted back that we could go :) But in the end, I would be in St. Maarten (I think) when the concert happened. But I still want to go back.
February 6: This is one of the weirdest and probably worst pictures I took this year. I was pumped to find these hair pins that Jessica got me years ago for my birthday. They'd been semi-lost for some time and I'd recently found them again, and in the dark GMU parking garage, I put them back in and then took this pic.
February 7: Today is Aimee's 28th birthday and she is most totally Instagraimee. So for her birthday today, I did 28 reasons why she is amazing. Every single one of them is true.
February 8: Time to head out to dinner for Aim's birthday. Tim made it super special by inviting several people without telling Aimee and we had a great time eating delicious Mexican food and chatting before going back to the house for dessert!
February 9: This was the mall that Aim and I didn't usually visit--why go anywhere but Tyson's? But they don't have a Charming Charlie at Tyson's like they do here so we made the trip. And lo and behold, we found out it was also the Chinese New Year and they were parading a dragon through as we happened to be walking through the mall.
February 10: The main reason I've started being interested in getting the Washington Post lately is to get back to doing crossword puzzles. When I lived in ShenCo I used to get the paper at the school and do them while I supervised ISS somedays. I wasn't doing too well though this first time back at it.
February 11: It looks like a frigid wintery day, but in fact it was pretty warm (near 60) but from my car in the Mason parking lot looking at the weak sunlight, it seemed like it should be more traditionally freezing outside.
February 12: I take the Beltway to work everyday and in almost two years of taking it for a few miles, I'd never run into a problem. Until today. The nice thing is that in this area, they're pretty used to having people call in that they're stuck in traffic and I didn't end up being too terribly late.
February 13: This was part of the letter writing campaign of the second graders. Even though the rest of the year I would end up there a lot with them, at this point I'd barely been in their classes at all. So I was a little surprised to get this lovely note.
February 14: It was a Valentine's Day full of loveliness and love. I was blown away by the present of flowers from Ash and Jake, plus I'd also gotten a card from Jade and two notes from former students about how much they'd loved my class. Feeling more loved than most :)
February 16: The trip to Richmond to see Katie and Lauren was so amazingly lovely. I was pumped that Ash came down too, but she was (understandably) a little tired. At this point McCully wasn't really visible from the outside but he was making his future momma pretty tired. Katie and Lauren and I stayed up later talking before we finally called it a night.
February 17: I hadn't expected to end up in this store, but we were right near it and Ash wanted to get some maternity clothes ahead of the game--and not by herself. So even though I wasn't sure how much help I would be, we went in and picked her out some things while she wore the baby bump that McCully wasn't producing quite yet.
February 18: I wasn't sure what was wrong with my car, but there were way too many lights coming on on the dash when I started it and then rumbled a few feet to take chances. I took advantage of the free towing service AAA gave me and the day off work to have it towed in the early afternoon.
February 19: A storm is rolling in as Aimee took me to pick up my car. The fortunate thing is that it wasn't too serious a problem-- a mouse had chewed through some things. I was just super grateful it hadn't cropped up as a problem in Richmond a few days earlier.
February 20: I'm enough of a nerd to really like the arty way this picture looks even though I know it's really just the bubbles in my carbonated water as it's just a little bit open. I'm addicted to the stuff now, even though it took quite awhile.
February 21: I love this city, especially at this time of day. It didn't matter that it was freezing outside, I was pumped because we were going to the Library of Congress as a class to become official researchers and learn exactly how to use the vast resources that the library offered. The biggest (and prettiest) library in the world? Yes, please.
February 23: I made a huge sacrifice and left my house, left watching a Carolina game, early to go to Gaithersburg and watch Eli for Chrissy and Andy for the evening. Jade came to help baby-sit so it was an evening with lots of people who I love. P.S. Eli ended up with crazy hair after his bath :)
February 28: Last of the month--this was an assembly that I was pleasantly surprised with. These acrobats were pretty amazing and I think Shannon and I were more impressed with the amount of core strength it required than the kids were :)
