Cold--be gone!

A bunch of teenagers from Dallas Texas came to town for debate competitions. They looked more like miniature Princetonians than our students! Interacting with them in the store made me miss my sister and her hubby. Also their children: Barney, Mrs. Hufflepuff, Gizmo and Mogli... whom I haven't seen in so long--I barely remember what they look like (hint hint mommmy to put up pictures!)

What cheered me up was the fact that I was asked to help with our Christmas table. We needed more Christmas-y decor, so I wrapped different sized empty boxes: black paper with orange ribbon and vice versa. They came out awesome. Not exactly the traditional Christmas look, but for our store, it is what it is. Our store manager was so stressed out because his boss (the president) wants us to come up with some grand idea or promotion or make a move (= change floor displays) so that we make an extra $5,000. That's a pretty big challenge. Getting people to buy more stuff, that is. So my manager basically added a mountain of stuff in a very esthetically UNpleasing manner. For example, instead of 9 Christmas ornaments stacked neatly, he put out 15 of the same ornament, stacked in one big block. Then behind the tall and ugly blocks, he put out a bunch of chocolates. Of course, when a customer walks into the store, he/she has no way of seeing the chocolate and ties and stuff because of his terrible layout. Then comes Lisa. I ran into her in the warehouse and told her what Daniel was doing and how awful it looked. "There, there" she said, shaking her head while rolling her eyes, "I'll take care of it." That's when I came into the picture with my wrapped boxes, and together we made the table look so elegant and uniform with the tallest things in the back going to the flattest things at the front. Perfection. Whether or not that makes the store earn $5,000 I frankly don't care. It doesn't affect my paycheck, thank goodness.

That evening, Matt and I led worship at the graduate Christian fellowship. It was more Matt than me, because he was leading with his guitar and the rest of us joined in together. He did a great job and a lot of people told him so afterward. It was a nice change from the usual piano-led worship. That same evening, we had a guest speaker who talked about being in the world but not of it, in the context of academia. He is a Christian philosopher and in the group there are 3 or 4 philosophy students too. He talked about how we shouldn't hide the fact that we were Believers in our academic settings, but also not hide our academic pursuits from our Christian circles. What was so interesting was that he is a Calvin grad! He poked fun (not disrespectfully) at the Calvinists and the CRC denomination; he quoted Plantinga a lot. It was just fun to hear names and terms that we haven't heard in a long time.

In other news, Matt and I started listening to "A Christmas Carol" on CD. I've never read the book, but only seen the Goofy movie or something like that. I'm LOVING it. The reader is excellent, the best really. It's so much fun to snuggle up on the couch, with hot chocolate, with the Christmas tree all lit up.

And the greatest news is that our space heater has arrived!! I was so excited when I heard the thump on the porch, I ran right out of the apartment and called out a hearty "thank you!" to the delivery guy--even though I was in my slippers and wearing an apron from cookie baking. I suppose there are less embarrassing things in life. Here it is!!

You'd be this enthusiastic too if you had to sleep in such a cold room. I can't wait to try it out tonight! :)

Also, tonight it the French department's holiday party. I'm excited to go, but I have no idea what to wear! Nowhere in the email was there anything about dress code. Should I wear jeans? A skirt? Or in the middle with dress pants? I have no clue. I'm hoping between now and 5:30, I'll get an email from Matt letting me know what he finds out from his classmates...