(W)inter(n)

 In last week's post, I mentioned that I had applied to an internship, and I felt that the interview went well and that I was well qualified for the position.

Well, apparently the interviewers felt the same way. On Monday morning, I received a call from the Church History Department, offering me an internship as a research assistant. And I accepted! I start January 10. It will last for a year, and it will be forty hours a week.

I am really excited for this. Most of you blog readers know that I worked for the department from 2014 to 2017, and it was basically my favorite job ever. (Previously, my official job was as an editorial assistant rather than a research assistant, but I did research then as well.) I will feel like I'm finally making progress in my life. This means that I probably won't work at This Is the Place again, as fun as that has been. Not only will the actual work of my new job be more stimulating and enjoyable, the pay will be better, and so will the commute. It's a win-win-win. 

What was not a win, however, was that I had to shave my beard, which I have had since January 2018. I think I look better with a beard. In late 2017, they finally allowed women employees to wear pants, so maybe beards' day is coming?

I will be doing this internship for school credit, so I will have some assignments to do when I'm not at work. And I still have to do my portfolio. So it's not like I'm going to have all the free time I had when I worked there before. But it still will be nice to only worry about one class. And I will still continue at the internship once I graduate in May.

And the good thing about being an intern for the Church is that they're not just going to send me out to get coffee. :)

That was the most important news of the week, but other fun things happened this week.

On Monday night, I took the night off of work to accompany my grandparents to CenterPoint Legacy Theatre in Centerville to see the stage production of A Christmas Story. I used to watch that movie when I was a kid, but then I overhauled my media consumption, so I haven't watched it in around twenty years. The musical was pretty true to the movie. But the movie is more about vignettes than it is about plot. They had token songs about, for example, "a major award" and sitting on Santa's lap. They were fine but didn't have any substance. The play was enjoyable but mediocre.

On Tuesday, the evening at This Is the Place was pretty slow because of the rain. When the shift ended at 9:00, it was mostly rain, though I could tell it was starting to change. By the time I got in my car ten minutes later, it had changed entirely to snow and stuck to the roads. I drove 20 mph the entire way home. 

We live on one of the steepest streets in NSL, and when I got to the bottom of our street, I noticed a car had crashed (there's a crash there at least once a year). 

"That's not good," I thought. But the reason (well, one reason) I got my car is because it has all-wheel drive, so I proceeded up the hill. Well, I got stuck. It wouldn't go up. Obviously, I couldn't stay there. So then I put it in reverse to see if I could back down. I certainly wasn't going to press on the gas in reverse in the snow, but just being in reverse didn't work either. So I put it in drive again, then cranked the steering wheel to the left to turn around. Even though it's illegal to park on the street during the snowstorm, that's exactly what I did. I just parked on the flat part. I could have tried to go another way to get home, but I thought that would have just given me more opportunities to crash. I was amazed at how much snow had fallen just in the space of an hour.

My car turned from blue to white!

This week, I finally submitted my paper for my research seminar. So I am officially done with the semester, though I'm going to keep transcribing an interview to submit to the Marriott Library. 

Then yesterday (Saturday), my brother's family arrived in Utah for Christmas. Yay! They didn't come last year because of COVID, but I have loved having them here for the winter holidays in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Unfortunately, they're leaving on Christmas Day. 

It's just so nice to have everyone gathered together and do festive things.