I’m back!

In the month and a day that has passed, travel season has ended — kind of sad, really — and I’m back in the office full-time for … a long time.  Spring has a much lower amount of travel.  I think I’m okay with that; maybe the restlessness I felt in Jackson was because my office was less wonderful than the one in Virginia.

Anyway, no, I still haven’t called the cable and internet company.  Somehow, the thought escapes me while I’m actually able to call.  I doubt anyone there is waiting for my phone call at eight at night.  I promise I will, though.  I think it might be nice to be able to watch something on TV in the comfort of my own apartment.  It’s the little things, right?

Moving on:  Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope your days were wonderful and filled with family and friends and food and everything else that’s lovely about the holidays.  Also, I hope that you found some sweet deals during Black Friday — that is, if you chose to brave the crowds and early morning crazy.

I think I’m going to load everyone up with a couple of entries over the next two days.  I’ve got to head back to Virginia at some point tomorrow, but before I go, I promise I’ll write something substantial.  Until then, though, I need some advice!  Don’t you want to help?  Doesn’t helping someone out put you in the holiday spirit?

Okay, here goes:  I have two weeks off for Christmas.  (Hooray for working in higher education … and using vacation days.)  Since moving, I’ve felt like the child of divorced parents because I have to split long weekends and breaks between Jackson and Indianapolis; because I have a little bit more time, I can, in theory, spend time in both places, but I don’t know how to make that work.

Here are the options:

1.  Fly to Indianapolis after my last day of work and spend the whole break with my family and (like, two) friends in Indianapolis; plan a visit to Jackson/Memphis another weekend when I am bound to see (mostly) everyone
2.  Fly to Indianapolis after my last day of work and spend a week and half-ish with my family and (like, two) friends in Indianapolis; fly back to Virginia, rent a car, and drive to Tennessee for New Year’s weekend
3.  Fly to Indianapolis after my last day of work and spend a week and half-ish with my family and (like, two ) friends in Indianapolis; fly back to Virginia; convince friends to come visit me!

Help, please!

Happy Crush of the Week Day!

This crush is way more than a flavor-of-the-week type of situation.  During my senior year of college, in a really roundabout kind of way, I discovered the glory that is Will Hoge.  He is quite possibly one of the greatest musicians ever to grace this earth, and I hardcore love him.  I’m not even kidding.

Will is one of the hardest working musicians in the industry, not to mention insanely, unbelievably, unfairly talented.  He writes some of the most genuine songs I’ve ever heard — songs that will hit a little too close to home, songs that will make you cry hysterically, you name it.  Plus, he shares so much of the process with his fans.  His website is full of updates from the studio and from the road, so you really know what Will’s up to.  As an added bonus, his updates are often pretty funny and make me feel vindicated for hating mayonnaise.

Oh, and he’s also pretty much a super badass.  (Sorry for the langauage, Mama and Daddy, but there’s no other way to put it.)  Will was in a serious accident earlier this year, but he got better, got back to the studio, and got my heart, lock, stock, and barrel for creating my favorite album of 2009: The Wreckage.  Please do yourselves a favor and download that on iTunes.  (Or you can listen to it on his website, but you’re going to want to buy it.)  It is magnificent.

Now that y’all know who I have a crush on this week (and for always), let me tell y’all a few people I don’t like:

- Creeper high school students who think it’s acceptable to ask an employee of a college if “partying” is a major
- Creeper high school students who spend a little too much time reading my nametag (I know what you’re doing.  Stop it.)
- Creeper high school students who make fun of the way I talk (Of all places to be told my accent was “country,” how in the world would it be rural West Virginia?)

Occupational hazards, all of them.

Here are your two crushes of the week — a day late, yes, but crushes of the week nonetheless.

First up, we have Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  Did y’all see 500 Days of Summer?  Who would have thought that the quirky little kid from Third Rock from the Sun would turn out to be both extremely talented and adorable?  (The adorable part we might have guessed.  He was a pretty cute kid, long hair and all.)  500 Days of Summer is quirky and real and lovely, and Joseph’s performance in it is fabulous in a bless-your-heart-you-poor-thing kind of way.  He made me want to crawl inside the movie and give him a hug; besides wanting to put you in my pocket, that’s one of the highest compliments I can give, so there’s that.  Oh, and let’s not forget this:  Any man who can dance is great, but any man who can and will perform a choreographed dance routine to Hall and Oates is downright wonderful.

Second up, there’s Jon Hamm.  As a Mad Men fan, this one’s a no-brainer.  Don Draper isn’t really my type, what with all the womanizing and sketchy past.  However, an older episode of The Tonight Show was on last night, and Jon Hamm was a guest, and I LOVED it.  Jon is absolutely hilarious — He did a great job hosting Saturday Night Live, too, if I remember correctly. — and he seems so normal and well-adjusted.  And if there’s anything anyone in Hollywood should aspire to be, it should be normal and well-adjusted.  Way to be ahead of the game, Jon Hamm.

There are three weeks left of travel season, and oh, my goodness, I am grateful.

There are times when my body only lets me sleep for three hours before heading into a day full of college fairs.  There are times that my body simply cannot handle the task of standing and smiling and talking and being cheerful when high schoolers approach my table and say, “Wait … y’all ain’t got no nursin’ or nothin’?”

“No, we don’t have any nursing programs or anything,“ you want to respond, but instead you say, “No, I’m sorry, but we have biology and chemistry and pre-med.”

And that’s never good enough.  And that’s kind of how it feels sometimes:  No matter what you say, no matter how much you smile, no matter how hard you try to connect with these little high schoolers, it’s not enough.

The truth is that not every college is right for every student, and sometimes it seems like none of the kids you meet are right for your college. It all seems much worse on a few hours of sleep, but making one kid see the light makes everything much better.  And if it doesn’t happen at least once every fair, you know it will tomorrow.

And if all else fails, the sun is shining, the weather is perfect, and there’s always coffee.

But this excuse is a good one!

I know I flaked on Crush of the Week this past week, but I was seriously ill on Tuesday night.  I was so ill, in fact, that I left work early and only left my apartment to stumble into Kroger for soup, juice, and Kroger Nite Time (or store brand NyQuil).  I’m fairly certain I just took the Kroger Nite Time with my juice box and went to sleep until the next morning, so sorry, gang.  Some random, fever-bearing illness got the best of me.

And no, it wasn’t swine flu.  Well, I have no medical evidence proving it wasn’t swine flu, but considering I’m all better now and have been fever-free for several days now, I’m going with plain old cold.

Interestingly enough, on the subject of Crush of the Week, the whole time I had my fever (Monday and Tuesday), I could NOT get “Fever Dog” out of my head.  Oh, Stillwater, how I love you … but mostly Jeff Bebe.

(PS:  I rewatched Almost Famous over the weekend and noticed that in one scene, Jason Lee is rocking a Jeff Bebe t-shirt with a picture of Jeff Bebe ON IT.  Someone find me that t-shirt, please.  That’s what I want for my birthday.)

Anyway, this Tuesday, I will give you two Crushes of the Week to set things straight, and it will be wonderful.

Remember when I used to do Fun Fact Tuesday and y’all learned way more about me than you cared to learn?  And then remember when I moved and completely neglected my duties?  Me, too.  Thanks, moving!

Anyway, I’ve decided to introduce a new feature to replace Fun Fact Tuesday:  Crush of the Week.  Yep.

We’re kicking this one off with Jason Lee in Almost Famous.  Technically, I think that means my crush is on Jeff Bebe, lead singer of fictional band Stillwater.  There’s something weirdly hot about Jason in Almost Famous.  Maybe it’s the beard, maybe it’s the frontman of the band thing, maybe it’s that Almost Famous is one of my favorite movies, but Jason Lee is wonderful.  I would gladly be the mother of his oddly-named children — you know, just in case the whole married-to-a-Turkish-supermodel thing doesn’t work out.

BUT I never said I wasn’t weird.

I just saw that my ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend are now Avett Brothers fans.  Considering they both have questionable taste in pretty much everything, I’m sad for The Avetts.  I’m also pretty darn sad that I would have anything in common with either of them anymore.  Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate my life choices.

Sorry about the major downgrade on your fan base, Scott and Seth and Bob.  It’s cool, though, boys:  I’m yours and that’s it forever.

No, Elizabeth, I am not referring to things I own.

There’s an expression about the little things in life making life worthwhile.  Between last week and the beginning of this week, my frustration with a work-related issue has grown exponentially (and has since peaked — we’re on the downswing now, thank goodness).  That, combined with a slight sense of road weariness, has made me breathe a little less easily these past few days.  It’s not an unusual occurrence during travel season.  Little things stress you out, little things frustrate you, and all the little trips start to get old; all the cracks start to show, and it’s hard to find a way to put them back together that doesn’t involve a full-on nervous breakdown and/or sobbing hysterically in your car.

Don’t worry.  I’ve totally opted for sobbing hysterically in my car.  The nervous breakdown is pending.

Anyway, here are the little things that have made me feel better thus far:

- Beautiful, sunny, fall-like weather
- Being in a city again!  Asheville, you are wonderful.
- Driving through the mountains this afternoon
- Stopping in Little Switzerland — much less exciting and eventful than I had hoped but still quaint
- Doing a little early Christmas shopping  (WHO AM I?)
- Waking up just in time to see The Avett Brothers on Letterman last night — fabulous
- The Avett Brothers’ new album, I and Love and You:  thirteen beautiful, glorious songs completely worthy of listening to obsessively for the remainder of travel season
- Trying Cheerwine for the first time at Bojangles last night.  I’m clearly celebrating all that North Carolina has to offer.
- Impending trip to Charleston this weekend!

What about y’all?  What little things are keeping you from a nervous breakdown this week?

This week started out with so much promise that it was difficult to consider the fact that all good things come to an end.  What goes up must come down, and please believe that everything went down a little too fast for my liking.  Tuesday was fairly terrible.  On the bright side — and because I am relentlessly positive, I do believe there is a bright side — what comes down must also go back up again, and things are slowly making progress toward the positive side of things again.

My job is wonderful.  It’s both incredibly gratifying — Yay!  Kids are considering all of their options for college!  Hooray for higher education! — and ridiculously exhausting.  This week weighed in much more heavily on the exhausting side.  I am completely and totally worn out from everything that has happened, and I am in major need of a day off, plenty of sleep, a s’more (yep), and a glass of wine.  Classy, I know.

Anyway, like I said before, things are getting much better, so that means that by this time next week, I’ll certainly be back to thinking my job is completely gratifying and only slightly exhausting.  If all else fails, I have all day on Saturday to do nothing but sleep.  And that’s definitely something worthwhile to look forward to, right?

I checked into the hotel last night, and I got a goodie bag for being a rewards program member.  Nothing buys my loyalty like bottled water and Rice Krispy treats.  I’m serious, too, by the way, but it’s not really about what’s in the goodie bag; it’s the gesture, really, and it was a super huge surprise.  Well done, Comfort Inn.

I checked into the hotel tonight, and I got upgraded to a better room because I’m a rewards program member.  My loyalty is pretty much cemented.  Mad props to the concierge for his thoughtful placement:  I’m on the first floor, right by the wireless router.  Also, I may love him a bit for asking me if I was familiar with the movie Juno. (The obvious answer is yes, of course!  It’s one of my favorites.  And I want to be BFFs with Ellen Page.)

Being a rewards member clearly has its advantages.  Now, if Choice could perhaps do something about the rainforest-y weather we’re having in North Carolina, I’d surely appreciate it.  The whole foggy, misty, cold thing is doing terrible things for my hair and my otherwise cheerful demeanor.  Ugh.

And finally, I’d like to leave y’all with the following snippet of an actual conversation with a teenage boy this morning:

Student:  Do y’all have a men’s volleyball team?
Allie:  Men’s volleyball may be offered as an intramural sport, but it’s not an official sport with the college, no.
Student:  Oh.  Do y’all have fun activities like coed mud wrestling?
Allie:  Well, we’re a Methodist college, so I don’t know how okay Jesus is with that …
Student:  I guess you’re right.

Yep.  This is what I deal with daily.