Happiness is a Warm Fire

This weekend was the perfect mix of excitement and relaxation. On Friday night, a bunch of us had dinner and then went out downtown to celebrate Meggie's birthday. It was really fun--even worth the slight hangover the next day and the fear that I'd be ill as I sat next to Alex at the BMV for what seemed like hours (but was probably only 30 minutes) as he waited for his broken license to be replaced (he sat on it).

We had a great tailgate on Saturday for the last OSU football home game of the season, and the game itself was awesome despite the loss. Isn't it mind-baffling that the Horseshoe can hold 110,000 people?? That is SO many! They never announced how many people were at the game, but I'd imagine that almost every seat was taken. It was wild. When everybody does the O-H-I-O cheer around the stadium, it is ridiculously loud. I can't imagine what it must be like for all the players in the middle of the field, surrounded by that mayhem!I also can't imagine what it must be like to go to school at OSU. It's totally on the other side of the spectrum from Denison, where football games maaaaybe drew a couple hundred people.

Alex and I went out for a nice dinner at Marcella's on Saturday night. It's the (fairly) new Cameron Mitchell restaurant on High Street in the Short North area, only a few blocks away from my apartment. Everything there is absolutely delicious! We had some Big Important Discussions about Life and the Future and Where Should We Live In This Great Big Country over many glasses of wine (and ultimately came to the conclusion that St. Louis is in our not-too-distant future...so if anyone has any job connections down there, let me know!). The food was superb and we probably engorged a bit too much, because as soon as we got home we fell into food comas for the rest of the night. Not even the thrilling game of Clue that my roommates were playing could rouse us out of our vegetated states.

After all of the excitement on Friday and Saturday, though, Sunday was nice and relaxing. It was dark and rainy (it even sleeted at one point!) so we spent a few hours at Panera sitting in the large, leather chairs pulled up to the fireplace, sipping on pumpkin spice lattes and nerding around on our laptops. It was so nice. One of the things I always look forward to most about winter and the cold weather is being able to have fires in the fireplace. I was SO excited when we decided to rent our particular apartment, since it has a wood-burning fireplace. Sure, I've never actually lit a wood-burning fireplace in all my life, but I think I've seen my dad do it about a thousand times. It can't be that hard, right? Anyway, sitting by the fire yesterday was wonderful as the rain poured outside. It sort of marked the beginning of the holiday season more for me than the absurdly-early Christmas commercials, decorations, and songs on the radio. (Why does everyone forget about Thanksgiving? Why do stores jump right from Halloween to Christmas? DID THE PILGRIMS NOT MATTER??)

And so now it is Monday again. But I think tonight, I might just have to have a fire in our fireplace.