3am Rambling

It's nearing 3am and I just can't find a pathway to sleep this evening. D and I spent most of the day watching season five of The Office and had some wonderful stop-in visitors earlier in the day, as well. Who knew Sunday would be so lively at our house? Mainly, we wanted to stay in and have a lazy Sunday to recuperate from the crazy high we've been on all week long! Let me recap...

Monday: First round of oral comps from 2-4pm straight: passed!!!!!
Tuesday: Last official day of class with my students, Christmas shopping, dissertation reading of our darling friend A. who is hopefully reading this and feeling incredibly wonderful about his fabulous manuscript! Great job, A! Followed by a celebratory drink with the chair of my committee.
Wednesday: Coldest day that ever existed, D's last day of class...I attended and helped out a bit/
Thursday: Non-mandatory meet-up/critique with one class, conferences with students, second round of comps (nope, this is not the norm. One of my committee members was sick on Monday so we--the chair of my committee and the sick committee member--sat down and did an hour long Q&A which I passed, thank God).
Friday: More conferences with students, Christmas party, one of my best friend's here came home from the hospital (woohooo!!!)....and we got the incredible news that my SISTER GOT ENGAGED at dinner that night to her sweet boyfriend of three years, Anthony. Congrats to them!
Saturday: Em's birthday celebration, thank you cards from our wedding (we waited for wallet sized pics and started writing them asap when we got them last week, finally!) and Christmas cards mostly finished up, then even MORE good news that D's cousin Rachel got into Mizzou Law School (early admission) and will be joining us up here in Columbia next school year!

Can you see why we needed a bit of a rest come Sunday? Not to mention, I've been sick all week (longer than a week now) and it sucks. After a full day today, we had one more wonderful surprise: a call from D's best friend Andy who is working in a military base somewhere abroad. He left two months ago and will be back for a brief visit in early 2010, but we miss him and were very happy to get word straight from him that all's well.

Usually I survey a year near the end and think, "Man, I hope next year's better than this shit." But, honestly, this is one year that is going to be nearly impossible to top. Two of my happiest moments ever have occurred this year: marrying D and passing my comps. How can any other year top that???

Except, I can't sleep at the moment, with all the thoughts of having free time again to write and read at my leisure and take more classes for fun (yeah, I said that..."for fun"). I'm just so excited I don't want to waste my time sleeping, I guess. So, instead, I'm wasting it writing a crappy blog that you will now be subject to reading. Sorry. I'm going to try this sleep thing again. I've heard if you lay there long enough it eventually comes...eventually.

xoxo
N