Three things.

I've not been blogging much lately. I feel like I haven't done much of anything at all, aside from work. And I don't talk about work on my blog. So, sorry I'm out of touch. That's thing #1.

Thing #2: Celebrations. This Saturday night Pete and I went out for dinner at a fave place. This place has two meeting rooms, and both were full of men in suits and women in sparkly tops. They were laughing and cheering and celebrating and singing Christmas carols. That's one of the things I like best about this time of year: the celebrating. We had done some celebrating of our own the night before, with a superfun birthday party for two friends (who are brothers, whose birthdays are Dec. 7 and 8 respectively). Plus the usual end-of-the-semester happiness and a few propers from my workplace. But we don't talk about that here, remember?

As for the third thing, I was reading a friend's MySpace survey today and it asked the question "have you ever seen the Northern Lights?". I have seen the Northern Lights, and when I think of it I have a warm, happy feeling. It was more than six years ago, when I was a senior in college. Just weeks after 9/11 happened and the other four women I was living with in a rental house had gathered friends who had nowhere else to go when our little campus was evacuated from a bomb threat. Well, anyway, later that fall we saw the Northern Lights. A few of us gathered in the frosty cold, outside this house, outside Decorah, and saw the beautiful colors in the sky. It makes me glad for being alive, just thinking of the Northern Lights, and the place where I saw them, and all that happened in my life before and after that moment. So that's the third thing.

Happy Monday.