Since everyone else is....

Upon returning from vacation and checking blogs most have mentioned, in some form, their favorite college basketball team and their faring in the Madness. I have similar news. The Division III basketball world is already knee-deep into it's madness, and this year both the women AND men from Washington University are going to the Final Four!
This is awesome because it's the men's first time EVER to go, and it's the women's first time to go since I graduated in 2001. The women started this year 1-3 lost their starting point guard to a knee injury and have finished 29-5 overall in true Bear fashion. They have not been a dominate team, but they have found ways to win, and at this time of the year, I think that is more important. Read about them HERE I give my "Yeah Bears" salute. I'll be listening in "washed-up has-been" style this Friday at 6pm eastern on my computer if anyone is looking for me. I've been gone awhile and you all may have forgotten that I exist. I still live in the same house, I have just returned from a much-needed, very restful 10-day vacation. Ski and surf. I did nothing but eat, it seemed, so I have gained about 15 pounds which I look forward to sheding with the advent of spring and the resuming of competitive sports. I still love my long lost friends who I look forward to seeing with the termination of my sentence in Indiana-ville. (ONE MORE WEEK!!!) I still have a boyfriend whose parents I was visiting out in LA for a few days. He still lives here and will be back in a week as well. I have now officially had an IN-n-OUT burger, and have seen a sunset in La Jolla, got a massage in CO, did some skiing, saw some dear friends and took a spin through the Denver Art museum, ate lunch on a roof across from Coors field, and was then subsequently attacked with a debilitating case of the sniffles. I finally gave up and just jammed a tissue up my schnoz and left it there for the duration of the flight. Hey? I ask you, what is more embarrasing: that, or having your nose spontaneously and uncontrollably drip liquid on the magazine your seat mate is reading? Yeah...snot-wick it is. I hope you missed me, I missed you.
I lead a charmed life. Time to start a new season of it. I don't know what it will bring. I have no guarantees. I have a potential new project at work in the works.. (a LOCAL one!) and other than that... I do not know what lies ahead for me. The future is a blackened chicken sandwich... no.. er.. I mean a blackened hole of unknown-ness. I feel rested but scared, and hopeful yet terrified, and answers seem obvious yet impossible to carry out. I went to the retreat...I know God only sees the good, yet I feel he must be disappointed in me, in my selfishness. In spending an absurd amount of money on vacations and massages and movies, yet I didn't miss the little glimpses he left for me: the exit row seat on EVERY leg of every flight (even when I had a "B" boarding pass, the arrival of jane lee's delicious Christmas mix just before I am ready to get into the car for hopefully one last drive to Indiana...

I saw Him in the fact that the condo we stayed in had amongst it's game collection a DELUXE edition of Scrabble, four willing and able participants, and a rocky mountain-ous view that God painted himself...just for me.

I saw Him in the sea lions and their adorable two-by-two waddlings as they sunned themselves on the sand.

I saw Him in the beautiful little four year old I had dinner with. We drew animals on her notepad for two hours.

I saw Him in the vastness of the ocean and in the hospitality of old and new friends.

I saw Him in the embrace of someone who knows me, really knows me, and somehow, someway, loves me still.

I saw Him in the tears.