<p>Yeah, her dad will boast all right, but he won't contribute a dime. She'd be lucky if he'd spring for the cost of a sweatshirt. LOL. (I'm just glad that Chicago wrote a letter about the NC parent form that was nasty enough to get him to fill out the darn thing .... if nothing else, the EA app to Chicago was worth it just for the earlier financial aid deadline --at least that's one thing I don't have to worry about for awhile)</p>
<p>We've been making a lot of jokes about the Christmas tree - does it exist, does it deserve to have ornaments, etc.</p>
<p>OK everyone, I'm having vodka with grenadine in honor of my daughter. Its a deferral. </p>
<p>Now that I think about it, sending enticing tidbits for the purpose of "preserving interest and softening the blow for the soon-to-be-deferred." makes the most marketing sense. </p>
<p>Since Chicago doesn't happen to be my daughter's top choice in any case (she'd rather be in Manhattan), I'm not sure what further efforts she will put into the app.</p>
<p>Oh shoot. Well, onward to the next step of the thrillah from calmom's D....</p>
<p>calmom's vodka is on me. But practice up on the Manhattans, barkeep. We hope she'll be drinking some celebratory versions of those in a little while.</p>
<p>Sorry about the deferral, CalMom. I agree that it's better to keep any optimism unvoiced regarding colleges in this league. </p>
<p>The fact that college admissions has changed so much from when most of us applied is huge. It took me about two days on CC to figure that out and for any parent of a student applying to, say, the top 150 or so schools, I sometimes think the first thing you should say is, "Forget everything you think you know about college admissions."</p>
<p>It's a bit early in the day for alcohol and miles to go before I sleep, etc., so I just take some bubbly water with a lime.</p>
<p>Eeek...so much to do before D gets home Thursday at midnight.</p>
<p>Well jmmom, any celebratory drinking will have to wait until February at least, when the Brandeis blue ribbon comes in, unless d. decides to add some sort of rolling admission safety to the mix. Or perhaps I will be able to drink to my son on his transfer quest. Well, actually for that I could go to a real bar with my son, him being of legal age and all.</p>
<p>this place needs a little levity, especially after reading the political threads on here (oops, my mistake....)</p>
<p>someone found a good link to zits cartoons. When folks here were lamenting aging and the ill effects of gravity there were a couple of good ones.</p>
<p>try these:</p>
<p>Then have another good laugh or another good stiff drink...</p>
<p>Calmom--Darn Chicago! A toast to your daughter anyway!</p>
<p>Drats, I had been holding out for Calmom's D all day. Your right mstee, a toast to Calmom's D and all the great acceptances that are coming her way</p>
<p>Fireflyscout, I can even think about my poor little charlie brown tree with out smiling about your well read tree :) Maybe tomorrow, I'll actually put it up</p>
<p>Time to break out the eggnogg.</p>
<p>Our tree has been up with lights since Sunday. No decorations yet. I keep waiting for someone besides me to rally.</p>
<p>Oh, Alu. I knew we were kindred spirits. Our tree is up as of Sunday. Lights on yesterday. Garland by moi today. Decorations tonight, I'm hoping. If DS doesn't have a better offer (which he probably does). It's a little hard to gather round the hearth when the kid-adult hybrid members of the family go to sleep when we are waking up and vice versa.</p>
<p>Hahahahaha, m&sdad! :D Hang those cartoons up on the SA bulletin board, in the back next to the jacuzzi. This would be the fitness area of Sinner's Alley. Bring a Pilates ball in here, and we'll release the hounds. :)</p>
<p>Well, here's to Calmom's D's deferral! One more piece in the puzzle, eh, Calmom? One more clue to the riddle of where our kidlets will be in a year. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy...rounding the corner to 2006!</p>
<p>Almost got into a slap fight in Barnes and Noble with a crazy woman who accused me of line-jumping. I wasn't line-jumping. I was trying to avoid a collision with the young mother who was being drug by her miniature King Kong child through the line rope into a display of calendars. The crazy woman in front of me bent over to try to grab the toddler (a pretty risky move, these days), backed up and careened her big caboose right into my knees. I saw her version of Santa's sleigh coming at me and stepped sideways ahead of her to avoid being hit by Her Grinchiness, while balancing my stack of slippery calendars and half-price Christmas cards in my mohair-gloved hands. </p>
<p>Crazywoman saw me in front of her and went ballistic. At the top of her voice so that everyone on both floors could hear, she bellowed, "EXCUSE ME, M'AM. THE LINE STARTS HERE!" I looked over my shoulder assuming that some other poor schmuck was the object of this old bag's wrath. There were only three of us in line, the two of us and the mom with the King Kong toddler. I looked to the left, nobody on that side. And, to the right, only a terrified cashier cowering behind the counter...Hmm, perhaps the person had made a quick getaway and was hiding behind the travel section.</p>
<p>From the corner of my eye, I could see the young mother on the floor reaching out for her toddler, catching the corner of the little guy's puffy jacket. All of this in slow-motion, while I continued to scan the store for the unfortunate person who had tried to cut in front of the nut bag who had obviously forgotten to take her meds. </p>
<p>I did a pretty good job of avoiding eye contact until I noticed that she was looking at ME. Moi?! "Are you talking to me?" I responded with genuine surprise and Chrismasy spirit. Don't ask me what she boomed back because all I heard was, "WAH-WHA-WAHWAH-WHA!" Whoosh! The mom with the child put on her jet pack and flew out of the store. We were like two bull elephants in musk, standing face-to-face. Hearts froze and customers quietly shuffled toward the door. </p>
<p>I stepped aside and said, "Merry Christmas." Mrs. Jesus, herself, could not have done a better job sounding merciful, even though I wanted to stuff my calendars right up her chimney. </p>
<p>The cashier was real nice to me, and I went to Sur La Table after that and bought my D a fancy, single cup coffee machine. It was a happy ending to a crappy incident in the book store. One old bag in line during the holidays is nothing compared to college apps. Jingle on, CC'ers. :)</p>
<p>We won't have our tree until Friday. It's a little late but D isn't scheduled to get to LAX until around midnight tomorrow and we have tradition: we go down to the tree lot by the rail yards in downtown LA, have Talmudic discussions as to which is the best Christmas tree, buy one, have it tied to the top of the car, and then brave freeway traffic for the 15 or so miles home, keeping fingers crossed that the tree doesn't come off the car. (They do a good job tying it on...you just gotta worry about something!)</p>
<p>LOL Sluggbugg. This is why I like to do my Xmas shopping on-line. One year I ordered and paid for a dumb college book from Amazon, and a package arrived that was suspiciously light. Turned out they had sent me a Gameboy by mistake. Kids were delighted. </p>
<p>As to Chicago... I have just learned that statistically, deferred EA applicants at Chicago have a significantly greater chance of admission in the spring than RD apps - probably because their apps have already been vetted in terms of minimum requirements, and they do better on the "demonstrated interest" test. I had kind of assumed as much, just on a two-bites-of-the-apple theory. I've made some suggestions as to my daughter as to supplemental material she could submit -- if she even wants to go to Chicago. </p>
<p>I think she was attracted primarily to the location and the architecture,. Her top choice currently is NYU, where she apparently is attracted to the boys. She is hoping for Gallatin, which really would probably be the best fit in the universe for her. Except for the little problem NYU has with giving adequate financial aid to its students. But we shall cross that bridge when we come to it.</p>
<p>My son can't seem to get home. Finished an exam, ran to the dorm, grabbed the suitcase, ran to the subway, etc. They changed his flight without telling him so he couldn't check in on-line. He originally had a 2 hour direct flight home, arriving in time for dinner. Re-booked on another flight that was "d-e-l-a-y-e=d" with no time listed, just that word flashing. Finally found out he was flying to Detroit first with a 3 hour lay-over, said lay-over getting shorter all of the time. The first leg is so delayed he now lands in Detroit 10 minutes before his next flight leaves - in another terminal. Arrrgh! They actually booked him on 2 flights home, the original 10 minutes to get there flight and one several hours later. If he's lucky he'll be in close to midnight. </p>
<p>At least he didn't check his bags, just brought whatever dirty clothes would fit in his carry-on. </p>
<p>A toast !</p>
<p>Ohhhh, now we're into tree stories, are we?</p>
<p>H and I may have 4 siblings, the youngest of whom is now over 45, but our two boys are the only kids in their generation, hence the only grandkids. And with grandparents who are infirm and reminding us regularly that "this might be the last year we can all be together", we've ended up flying to TX and FL to visit them at Christmas for the last few years. Meaning we're never actually <em>home</em> on Christmas. (And this year, again, we're leaving on Fri. and won't be back until New Year's, so no live tree.) Last year as a goof, we bought a cheesey cheap-o plastic self-assembly tree from Target. It is in 6 sections, with the "branches" snapped into the "trunk" via coat hanger thingies. </p>
<p>H is scheduled to arrive from overseas tonight at 9:30, and S#1 is scheduled in from the east coast an hour later. S#2 decided he wanted to put up the fake-o tree yesterday while I was at work. I got home, and he'd put it up, all right: upside down. :) The small branches are at the bottom and they taper outward to the largest ones at the top. He hung two pine-scented auto air freshener cards in the branches "so it would smell more piney" -- we later decided it was <em>too</em> strong and encased the cardboard pinetrees in ziplock baggies to try to cut the smell down to "bearable". He's very proud of his mad tree skillz.</p>
<p>What a guy. (If you were a college, wouldn't <em>you</em> want him a year from now, for creative diversity at least? ;) )</p>
<p>(PS: over30 -- my kid is having similar-but-different problems getting home from Logan today after <em>his</em> last exam! The flight he is sitting on at this moment arrives in Dulles with 10 minutes before the connection leaves from another terminal, and the later flight arrives at midnight-thirty (and he also has only a carry-on, thankfully). Are we sure they're actually different people? Never a dull moment, huh....)</p>
<p>Mootmom, LOL! That sounds like the tree that hangs from the ceiling that I posted about above. And how creative to hang the pine-scented car smellies.</p>
<p>And no, I'm not sure we're different people - too many similarities. We might be living parallel lives.</p>
<p>Over30, that's a normal pitfall of winter flying -- bad weather tends to be very disruptive of flight schedules. I actually have very fond memories of cancelled and delayed flights and rerouting back when I was 16 or 17 years old, flying back and forth from my college. I always had to change planes in places like Phoenix, and while the weather was always perfect in Phoenix, invariably the plane I needed to catch was stuck waiting out a snow storm in Chicago or Denver or wherever it had departed from, and I was left to figure out how to make the changes I needed to get wherever I was supposed to be going.</p>
<p>I say fond memories because I actually felt very proud of myself and grownup whenever I managed this situation, and became very adept at exploiting whatever I could get the airline to give me for free in terms of meals, etc. My own kids seem to have a special talent for getting their seats upgraded to first class. My daughter has twice managed to miss or get bumped from international flights where it was at least a 2 day wait for the next plane. Free hotel room! with free meals! Life happens. </p>
<p>So I know it is very frustrating on your end, wondering when your son will arrive... but from a kid's perspective, it is more of an adventure. I know I got tired of the whole waiting-in-airports thing as I grew older, but as noted -- it seemed like fun back in my teens. Though it is even nicer for the over-21 set, as airlines often try to assuage the tempers of inconvenienced passengers with free booze.</p>
<p>Moot, the boy is a genius! Hook up a string of Star Trek ornaments with Leonard Nimoy saying, "Shuttle craft to Enterprise, shuttle craft to Enterprise...Spock here...Happy Holidays...Live long and prosper," (we actually have one of these) and you've got a perfect college guy tree. Clothes dangling from the shelves of a bookcase have been the traditional guy tree, but I think TJFH has come up with a brilliant idea! Eww, I can only imagine what other dorm debris might be used as ornaments. </p>
<p>We could call it the Xmas Corp. Inverse Conic Arboreal System and sell it in the Sharper Image Catalog. CC parents would buy it! :D</p>