Horses, Hangovers, and a Sobering Morning

It’s been a busy week.  Lots of OT at work, lots of OT with my tutoring, so not much time for other things.  I have my notes from the honeymoon at home, which I am eager to wrap up.  But I am not at home right now, so it will have to wait.

Meanwhile – update – breaking news – we LOST it big at the horse race.  Five whole dollars in the pot for the Carolina Cup, per PERSON.  Augughg, there goes Christmas.  We did win one of the lesser races, though – I think 7 bucks all told – so our losses were mitigated somewhat.  It was great fun – a warm, breezy, overcast day, with lots of Beast and pigs-in-a-blanket to feast on while we chatted between races.  We briefly saw the Professor’s sister Erin and her husband Clif, who were looking very cute.  Erin and the Professor were even wearing matching stripes, though they had gotten dressed hundreds of miles apart – great (related) minds think alike!  We spent the evening with a good friend, drinking an unaccountable amount of wine on his back porch and staying up very late.  And eating pizza AND brats, for the purposes of soaking up some of the wine sloshing around in our stomachs.  Next morning when I awoke late with a mild but irritating hangover, upset stomach, and fuzzy tongue, I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief.  Oh thank God, I’m not lost.  I can still drink myself to discomfort.  There is hope for the party cells in my body.  Though we all spent most of the tailgating day talking about mortgages, home improvements, and gardening – still!  Still, we rocked it!

The drive home was long, but relaxed.  An accident ahead of us on the road made the highway a parking lot for a half hour, so we stepped out of the car, stretched our legs, and watched the Life Flight touch down and carry away an unlucky driver.  Seeing the state of his mangled car gave me vague feelings of guilt, despair, and made me a little jumpy the rest of the drive.  The Professor whispered that he wouldn’t want to die on such a beautiful day.  I held his hand.

We didn’t die.  I searched the web to find out if the unlucky driver had died, but couldn’t find anything.

Work has been fulfilling this week, but busy.  I hit the year mark a couple of months ago, and I feel a little change in my attitude towards the place.  Now I’m wrestling this job into something that I like.  There are still lots of things I don’t love about it.  But, instead of feeling like I’m a square peg in a round hole – well, I’m squaring out the hole a little bit.  It’s still not a perfect fit – me and my profession, we’re still wary of one another.  But we’ve reached an uneasy truce.

I’m off to help a foreign worker fill out his tax return (an Indian engineer – tell me if you meet a person from India who is not a doctor or an engineer and I’ll give you a buck).  I am stymied by taxes, I can’t imagine what it’s like for a foreign person.  Wish us luck!