lightning fast trip

Winter break was a quick one.
Our flight D.C. to Detroit went quickly and well. David did pretty okay on his first fight ever. We landed in Detroit, ate some lunch and hung around David's parents' house.
The next day, we went to meet up with Amanda and exchanged gifts. It was nice to see her again, if only for a short amount of time! We also tried to see David's grandparents, but couldn't get ahold of 'em. We drove back to Warren and went to Bo's family Christmas. We came back so late we decided to do Christmas at 2 AM and sleep in the next day.
Christmas started off with a huge, delicious breakfast. Two of David's uncles came over. We watched movies, Superman, and lazed about. We ate dinner with them and then headed to Kzoo. We got to Kzoo about 9:30. We waited for Meg to get home and then decided, since it was late, we would open presents, get it over with and sleep in the next morning. We did. Megan liked her two seasons of Gilmore Girls, my mom's "tea for two" set (two cute mugs and four loose leaf teas) went perfectly with the tea kettle my dad got her (we had no idea we were getting gifts that would go so well together!) and my dad liked his coffee. I love giving gifts. David and I got some awesome stuff. I got some socks from sock-dreams.com (wooooonderful socks!) and enough money on a gift card to get a CD player installed in my car (yesss!). David got a very nice outfit that is very appropriate for internship/grad student life.
I soon realized I was the only one without a laptop. Meg has a beautiful iBook, David has his huge laptop, my dad has a tablet laptop (where you can flip around the screen and write on it), and my mom has a laptop, too, now! David and I made a joke about how we should all be on our laptops and also talking on Instant Messenger. So, we showed my parents how to use AIM! Now they are totally caught up in the technology world.
We headed to Rocket Star for some quality coffee shop time. I dropped off two copies of my zine in the zine library. Meg, David and I showed each other the newest funny videos on youtube we've been laughing at. It was nice.
The next day was our first full day and started off pretty rocky. Brody has been acting up recently and decided it would be a good idea to latch on to Megan's hand with his teeth and not let go. Luckily, Megan's hand is okay, just swollen and has a few wounds on it. No broken bones or anything like that. Whew. Brody will also be going into training after he is out of quarantine. I hope it works and that Brody and my family can live in harmony and finally relieve some stress that dog has been putting on my family.
Mike came to stay with the family for a while. It was nice to see him, as always. It was especially nice to see him since he brought along a Wii! What a blast that stuff is! I was sore from boxing Megan and Mike and I swear I pulled a butt muscle bowling.
We also went to get tattoos. David got the golden spiral, I got my other hip Hedwig tattoo done and Mike got his Harry Potter tattoo touched up. It was awesome to see DJ at the shop. He seems like he's doing fantastically well.
Anyway. David and I went out separate ways, hung out with all our friends, went to coffeeshops, bars, wherever. We caught up with Kalamazoo and tried to see everyone we could. Here's where I will name drop--it was wonderful to see (mostly in order of how I saw you): Clay, Mike, April, Ian, Johnboy, Quaz, Natalie (!!), Scotty, Traci, DJ, Kim, Dan, Bill, Emily, Brian, Katy, Spock... hopefully I did not forget anyone. Congrats to Dan & Emily, who are now engaged.
It was strange being back in Kalamazoo. I was looking forward to being there and seeing friends, but I also felt myself slipping back into bad habits. I used the move to Virginia to start on everything I wanted to do and be. Being back in Kalamazoo, I realized I was being the old Alison. Not that I'm that much different, but it's different enough to bother me. It was really awesome to see my sister, family, former co-workers, friends, etc. But I don't really belong there anymore. Most the people that live there I don't keep in contact with and they don't contact me. No big deal. Kalamazoo moves on without me. Yes, it would be nice for someone to say they missed having me there, but they have no reason to. I wish I could bring some people here with us so this town would be more interesting, but I have no interest in moving back to Kalamazoo. First off, no jobs. Secondly, Michigan is depressing. I'm enjoying Virginia much more. Thirdly, most of the people I still keep in contact have moved other places. David and I were talking about how, in a few years, most of the friends we had in that city will be in other places. That's good, though. Kalamazoo seems to have a way of stagnating people. Anyway, it was good we were only there for a few days. Now it's time to get back to business.
The flight back to VA SUCKED. First, we were supposed to take off at 9. We boarded the plane at 8:30. We sit and sit and sit some more. Finally, the captain comes on and says something like, "Well, folks, if you've looked out the windows, you've seen the fog. The fog's even worse in D.C. and they're not letting anyone fly in." So we sit. Sit more. Finally, at about 10/10:15, they let us leave the plane to stretch. We re-boarded at 10:40 and sat for about 30 more minutes. Finally, we took off. We were supposed to land in D.C. at 10:10. We landed around 1:30. There was about a 30 minute wait to land in D.C. from the back-up of flights. It was so long of a wait that the pilot said if we had to wait 20 more minutes, we'd have to fly to Atlantic City to fuel up. The bright spot of this flight was the head flight attendant who decided to change up the original flight safety spiel. It started off with the usual stuff and then she pops in (not even breaking character) "please pretend to pay attention". She also had other gems popped in there like: "...then we would not have come to work this morning.", "If you are sitting next to a child or a politician, please secure your mask before securing theirs", "For those of you that have never been in a car before, this is a seatbelt. Please secure it tight and low around your waist like Britney Spears' jeans", "the in-flight movie is Gone With the Wind", "The lights in the cabin will be turned off. If you look above you, you will see a white button that will turn on your own personal reading light. Do not press the blue button, as this is your seat ejection button". The best part is that most people didn't even notice because she kept the same tone of voice (and it was very stereotypical flight attendant style) and the other flight attendants didn't even flinch! Everyone acted as if it was totally normal. The people that did notice were laughing their asses off, though. It was priceless.

I've put all the pcitures I took on my flickr site, along with a TON of wedding pictures (by Beth) that David's parents scanned in for us and put on a CD.

Also, Chris and Cherie were broken into before Christmas and hit pretty hard. While we were in Kzoo, we talked to a few people about collecting some money to replace stuff/repair their window. We're going to buy them a few movies they had stolen. If you're interested or if we already talked to you and you can spare a few bucks, let me know.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and that you have a good New Year's Eve/Day. Ours will probably consist of Yuengling black & tan and continuing watching the Twilight Zone marathon on Sci Fi.