Happy Thursday!

As you may (or may not) know, today is Christmas Spirit Day!   If you don't know what that is, that's ok... I'll explain another day.  In the mean time, please humbly accept my tidings of comfort and joy.

Bullet points seem to be the only way to get a lot of unrelated thoughts out of my brain, so here we go!

• I'm so glad we're done working on the basement for awhile, so I don't have to write about it for awhile.  Back to sharing whatever strikes my fancy!
• Tomorrow is Friday.  This should be exciting, but I go straight from class to work until 10:15, so that's kind of a bummer...
• I saw this article on the Facebook and I really really liked it.  If you want to know what it's like to be The Sort of Pretty Girl, Ophelia explains it really well.
• Ever since I read this post by Joy the Baker, I have been craving a really big pastry. Really Steph?  Out of that whole post, the huge pastry is what sticks with you? Well... yeah.  Also, I want to bake these someday soon.
• You've heard of Apparently Kid, right? Kid Snippets did a tribute, and it's fantastic.  Whenever you need to laugh and lighten up, Kid Snippets are the way to go.

•  I was reading in my sociology book about a concept called status inconsistency (or discrepancy).  This is where people have a mismatch among their statuses, like a 14 year old college student.  I read this and I thought to myself, "this is my life."  I'm not really a "normal" college student, but college is my life.  I'm kind of an adult but not really. It's hard to figure out where to fit it.  Then my friends, Tina and Kari, shared this with me and it was such an encouragement.  Thanks, ladies!  I'm realizing that by not fitting in, I can connect better with others who don't fit in. 

• Another term from sociology is resocialization, which means learning new norms, behaviors, etc. to adapt to a new situation in life.  I have done this several times this year: adapting to unemployment, adapting to life on the other side of the pond, adapting to being back home, going to school, and a new job.  For a girl who's not crazy about change, it's been rough.  But I think I've turned a corner and I'm finally starting to feel settled.
• I had a great time celebrating this girl's birthday with her and other friends.  Love you, Mindy!

• Dancing With the Stars, Season 19 is in full swing! I'm loving it, and having a hard time picking a favorite.  I would list
  about 8 couples as my favorites, so we'll need to wait a few week and see how things develop before I weigh in.
• I've been missing England a lot lately.  I'm not sure why, but I think of it often and at random times.  Maybe we'll be revisiting London on the blog here soon.  Maybe not... I make no guarantees.

• The dogburts are as crazy and sassy as ever.  I think they're starting to get settled into a routine a little more, for which I am grateful.

Warning: this dog may contain gluten

• 
  Tim was in Alaska earlier this week.  The people he was working with said Alaska has about 2 weeks of fall, and he was there right in the middle of it.  His pictures are fantastic!

I think that's all for now. What have you been up to?