He would steal the bubonic plauge if he could....

And......I'm back......again. I think I'm not even going to bother apologizing anymore for posting so infrequently. I think from now on, it's best to hope for at most, monthly updates. I'm not sure I can remember to do more.

So, to pick up where we left off. Last time I was talking about how excited I was to go home for Christmas and New Years. Well, the trip is done and over with now. It was GREAT!!! I saw my family, and had a marvelous time with them over Christmas. I got to hang out with my mom's side of the family as well, which is always a blast. It was interesting to explain to people what I do at my job. Whenever I do that I feel kind of like a side-show oddity or something (more on that later). Marvin and I also got to spend a night with Courtney and Josh, which is always a fun time. Then we headed into Minnesota for some time with our college friends. We spent a night in Mankato and then headed to Sherburn for New Years Eve, which I have to say, was one of the best New Years Eves EVER!!

So, all of this visiting made me realize how lucky I am that I have the people I love in my life. For example, with Courtney and Josh, it had been at least 5 or 6 months since I had seen them last, and it was like nothing had changed at all. No matter what happens with those two, I know that they are friends for life. I feel the same way about my college friends. I got to Mankato and I felt like I had never left. My family is also so wonderful and supportive of me. I know that they were really worried for me to move out to Colorado and are still worried about the kind of work that I do, but they never give me anything but unending support. I love that.

Coming back to work after the trip was kind of rough. I think the kids were having a rough transition with Christmas and being away from their families and everything, but my first week back was pretty rough, and I've got some bruises to show for it.

This past weekend Marvin and I went to a friend of a friend's house after I got done with work to hang out with some people. There were several of the new USOC interns there that I hadn't met before. As I said it's always interesting to see people's reactions when I explain to them what I do for a living. I get a lot of blank stares and a lot of "Huh, wow....that's really interesting...I've never heard of that before." I feel kind of like a novelty that people can use to tell interesting stories to other people about. "Hey I know this one girl who works with messed up kids....she got hit in the face once!" or "Hey a girl I know has to keep teenage boys from swallowing thumbtacks." One of the girls that we hang out with every so often was telling me that whenever she talks to her mom, her mom wants to know about interesting stories from my work. It's just strange to me that I hear about strangers who talk about what I do for work.

I think this is why it's so great for me to hang out with the people that I work with every now and then. I went out with my co-workers the other night after work for a couple of hours. It was SO nice to just hang out and talk to a group of people who can laugh at the same stories that I tell and know that they understand me. Marvin came with, and I felt kind of bad, because he didn't really relate to the stories that we had to tell. Luckily one of my other co-workers was really interested in what he does at the Olympic complex. This guy is a professional boxer by the way, which I think is super cool. Sometimes he fights heavyweight and sometimes he fights cruiserweight. His last fight was a fairly publicized one against David Tua in New Zealand. He fights on HBO sometimes too. Needless to say I feel super safe when I work with him.

Speaking of the people I work with, we had an experience last night which I think really solidified us as a tough-to-break team. There are three of us that really make up the core to the team in our cabin. There's me, the boxer, and another girl. Last night we got the news that the other girl was probably going to have to leave our cabin for another one. That was really upsetting to all of us, because we've become so close and I rely on the other two so much to back me up. So the three of us got together and first talked to our direct supervisor and then confronted the person that was making the decision. We explained to him that we didn't want her to leave and that our boys shouldn't be punished for the fact that other staff isn't doing their job well. We explained that we would be willing to retrain all of the bad staff that isn't doing their job, but we didn't want our team to be broken up. And we got accomplished what we needed to. And it felt SO good! Our cabin supervisor talked to us afterward and told us how proud he was of us for sticking with each other and sticking together as a team. As surprising as it is, this is the first time that I've ever accomplished something to change the mind of what someone higher than me wanted. I feel like I'm part of something that's going to be really hard to break now. I like that.

Anyway, there's my update on things. See you next month..??