I'm alive

This week is going by at warp speed, which is my excuse for not blogging since Friday. Saturday Melissa and Thomas picked up the kids pretty early since they were headed to the lake to celebrate Thomas' and Trevor's birthdays. Matt and I then had breakfast with Granny and Granddaddy and Mom and Dad to celebrate Granddaddy's birthday.

From there we headed to Seven Lakes with Jacob and Carrie to do final landscaping and cleaning on a house we've been renovating. Unfortunately I don't have any "before" pictures of this house, but it is the most complete and amazing home transformation I've ever witnessed. (Click here for "after" pictures, although they were taken before Saturday's cleaning and landscaping and before the granite went in.) We ate subs on the dock for lunch and Carrie and I tried to convince the guys that we should keep it as our own lake house instead of selling it. Sadly, we totally cannot afford that.

Since I'm pretty annoyed with real estate right now I spent all day Monday at Panera looking for freelance writing and editing jobs and setting up a website showcasing my journalism portfolio, resume, etc. It's rather lame and still unfinished but at least it's up. It's so much easier to point people to a website than to attach huge files to emails, which takes forever and half the time winds up in their bulk mail anyway.

I also talked to my editor here in town and got assigned three cool stories for upcoming issues: one on the town of Greensburg, Kan., which was 95 percent destroyed by a tornado last year and is rebuilding as a totally "green" city; one on NFL cheerleaders; and one profiling the UNC men's basketball team, which will be the March cover story.

Last night was the draft for Matt's college guys' fantasy football league, which Jacob's also in, so Jacob and Carrie came over and Carrie taught me how to make her family's version of fried chicken. It turned out that the only difference between her way and mine is that she leaves the skins on, whereas I usually take them off. Her way must be unhealthier, but it sure is a lot less trouble as well as delicious. I am a convert.

Tonight we're going to a going-away party for Betsy, who's moving to Asheville tomorrow. Girls nights will have a Betsy-shaped hole in them from now on. Sad, but Asheville is so her kind of town, and now we'll have a free place to stay there. :)