the maw of Fafnir

Merry Christmas, all. Yes, I know I'm a few days late, but it's been hectic. There was my brother's birthday, then mom's birthday, then Christmas, then a 12 hour drive to Massachusetts, then a 4 hour epic cleaning of my mom's laptop, and it's off to DC tomorrow. So needless to say, it's been busy, and I should really be in bed since I need to be up in six hours.

In any case, I got to see Jeremy tonight. Turns out that even though there's a New Year's party this year, it is unlikely that I will go, being that his girlfriend (who seriously does not like me) will likely go. Frankly, since I feel it's likely she'll try and kill me if she ever meets me, I'm kind of okay with just hanging out with Jer tonight. Although, honestly, she really shouldn't worry about him -- he is dating *her*, not me. Don't you remember? We had that whole kafuffle last year and he chose you over me. Sending text messages in order to interrupt his hanging out with me just makes you look psychotic. ANYWAY, whatever. I'm done with the dramatic angst for now, although if that other damn boy doesn't get out of my dreams, I will go insane.

My fishtank apparently is still doing badly -- the water's gone all cloudy and I'm not anywhere near it to fix it. Thanks to Mike, though, they did get a water change. I can only be glad that someone actually was around to feed my fish. Thank you, o wise sir. I'll check it when I get back and try and fix it.

In terms of (bandito?) loot from this Christmas, I received far too many DVDs (including Serenity special edition, BSG Razor, Buffy & Angel) and far too many books (including the Goodkind book, and the remaining two books in the NightWatch series) and also an extremely nice pair of earrings and a wallet. I gave my brother a the giant lego set of the Millennium Falcon and an awesome dragon, and other neat stuff to the rest of the family, including a lot of Google stuff. It's problematic when you work at a neat company -- people just seem to want Google stuff from you.

Right. I'm off to bed, to arise early and drive 8 hours to DC with my dad. In a minivan. Hope I'll have the right set of music to keep myself from going insane.

New Year's in a few days. Guess I ought to start thinking about my resolutions or somesuch. Ew, committments. I'm really not any good at those.

Didn't end up going backpacking this weekend. Instead, something much more painful and requiring of endurance: Christmas shopping. And work.

Whoo.

Fantasy Flight Games (Blue Planet, Lord of the Rings board game, others) is having a $5 sale through Dec 3: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/5dsale2007.html (x-posted to SGS mailing list)

Thing I'm happy about: over 15 hours of Christmas music.
Thing I'm less happy about: That 1245am meeting I have tonight.
Thing I'm working on: Convincing myself that I don't need to go to that really neat book talk I wanted to go to, but instead should actually do work.

The day has dawned sunny and cold, should be down in the 40s for most of today. I had dinner with my brother yesterday, which was awesome, minus the fact that we were both some level of exhausted. We only did dinner and chatted over Italian food But, as I pointed out, we'll see each other for Christmas, and that'll be good.

Christmas is turning into such a complicated affair this year. I think I'm visiting not one but both of my grandmothers, which will include me being in a car for 840 miles or so. I'm looking forward to it, but it means that I need to start planning presents NOW, before I get swamped with vacation planning.

Thing I am happy about: It's FRIDAY!
Thing I am less happy about: I'm still sniffly, and the lack of restful sleep has not been helping.
Thing I am working on: Remembering to wake up in time tomorrow to get to the airport for my 830am flight.

For Christmas this year, I want a pleasant surprise.

Sadly, this cannot be a new computer, for I now have a working Admin-access computer with accompanying monitor (nice), keyboard (average but at least the right color) and mouse (OMG, DIE). Need speakers, or at least some way of hooking the ones I have here up to the computer in the kitchen. I don't really want to move the speakers, but I don't have any way of plugging in the computer into the outlets in my living room. Because the outlets in my living room are from the sixties, when they didn't have 3 prong appliances. Neolithic twerps.

In other news, I found a recipe for bread. And I will attempt to make said bread sometime this weekend, maybe. Assuming that I don't reread the recipe and go "HOW LONG?!!!" and run down to the local McDonalds to acquire some of their McWonderBread instead. Not that that's the same kind of bread AT ALL, but beggars (or at least lazy ones) can't be choosers.

In additional other news, I called my parents something on the order of 5 times today. Once to say "Hi", once to let my mom know that I thought my shirt was ruined because I spilled coffee on it, once to ask my dad about checks with old addresses, once to tell my mom that my shirt was fine, and then finally to let them know that I had spent large quantities of money on their card for food since I'd just spent excessively large quantities of money on my card for electronics and was running close to my credit limit. They were highly amused. Highly amused.

I ate toast today. No, really. I really did eat toast, so this is now officially an "I ate toast" blog.

Actually, right now, I feel more like troglodyteking since I have a bunch of stuff that I want to talk about in a high-minded philosophical manner, but I can't formulate it well enough at the moment to be able to write it down. It involves something to do with relationships, so I'm not sure it would be all that interesting to many of the people on here, especially those concerned with logic and problem solving.

See, that's the biggest tolerance that I think most relationships have to develop. Most (not all, there are always exceptions) guys are very much like "you have a problem? Great, here's how to solve it and let me be logical in the meanwhile" and girls (again, not all) tend to want to explore the problem to the fullest extent and meander about before trying to come up with a solution that they're happy with. Guys just sort of optimize the problem and discover the correct solution, regardless of how easy (or nice) it is to implement. That, and I like complaining. Gives me something to talk about.

It was raining today, yet another thing that reminds me of troglodyteking. He does often like the rain. Bunches of my guy friends (who coincidentally ALL like to hike) were overjoyed by the rain and the coolness of the weather. Meanwhile, I went out for a small walk, got completely drenched and ended up shivering for a good half an hour. I'm not ready for fall, much less winter. Though, I did check www.farmersalmanac.com and it said that this winter was supposed to be mild. I wonder whether it predicted the drought that we had last year, since I'm getting the sense that it's going to be a long protracted rainy winter. We'll see - maybe I'm just pessimistic and the weather gods will surprise me with their benevolence.

On the other hand, winter = Christmas = family = good, so maybe by that transitive process, we can say that winter = good. But maybe not.

So, in conclusion: I ate toast. I went shopping. It rained. I was cold. The end.

hey, y'all.

merry christmas! and stuff. i'm in ohio with grandma, jamie, fiona, parents and dogs, which is just about the best christmas present i could have gotten. so there we go.

it is nowhere as cold here as it was last year. so... it's all happy.

love to all.

omg. going home for christmas on the 23rd.