she moves she

Here we are.  It’s Christmas.  And all I can think about are Mai Tais!

I blame it totally and completely on Barack Obama.

If he wasn’t on a Hawaiian vacation right now, CNN wouldn’t have shot a live segment from Waikiki Beach.  It was torture.  Watching some precocious journalist yap about insignificant details of the President To Be’s holiday while Diamond Head is looming in the background and the water is lapping onto familiar shores.  True I didn’t spend too much time on that beach but I have been precisely in the spot where the reporter was standing.  I know for a fact that he was steps away from a walkway that stretches up the entire beach that I walked one evening after a miraculous dinner of Ahi Tuna and Mahi Mahi.  The sun was setting, it was 80 degrees and there was a strange harmony in the air.  There is something about that area of the world.  It’s just complete perfection.  A wordless feeling.  My intense love for it is bizarre.  Maybe I lived there in a past life.

So it’s Christmas in Dixie and all I can think about is snorkeling with sea turtles, Mai Tais in the morning, and the most magnificent landscape I might ever see.  Thanks a lot Obama.  Thanks a lot CNN.  Thanks a lot stupid reporter man.

Speaking of tv segments…I’ve had two in the past week.  I marvel at how bizarre it is that six months ago I was living in Chicago, working downtown, finishing my Masters and now I’m living in a cottage in Alabama, working at a zoo and doing live interviews on the 5 o’clock news.  I can never say that my life isn’t full of surprises.

You can watch one of the segments here.  It’s quite special.

After three months of being back home I can resolutely say this was the best decision I’ve made in years.  Chicago, while being a wonderful city, was not right for me.  The past few days hearing of -25 degree windchills has only reinforced that the undeniable urge to turn my life upside down and backwards without knowing where or how I would land was actually the wisest move I could have made.

Merry Holidays.