Having already posted a number Christmas-related pictures from the apartment in Brighton, MA, it only seemed proper to do the same for Christmas in Durham, NC.
RANDOM
And now I'm off for Christmas present wrapping. Happy Christmas Eve, all!
24 December 2006
Christmas in pictures
22 December 2006
furries ...
In response to the fashion sense of a woman I saw on the T today ...
The hat was just like that one, and this woman was also wearing a furry vest and fur-lined suede leather boots.
Fashion lesson, children: wearing fake fur may be gauche, but wearing real fur is callous and disgusting. Just don't do any of it; there are so many other textures out there, you won't get bored if you avoid the fur.
End of lesson.
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P.S. Yes, I know what actual "furries" are, but the title seemed nonetheless appropriate.
Sesame Street religion
[Rather condescending] season's greetings from some puppets at Belief.net.
Yeah. I just don't know what they were thinking. This is more what I would expect to find in my inbox from Fandango.com.
ready to go
A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs. B is for Basil, assaulted by bears.
I woke up at 5:00, as per the usual, and had a cup of milk with a small carrot-cake muffin for breakfast while watching an episode of Forever Knight. And also while packing, and unpacking, and packing again.
Now I'm at the office, and Manuela and I just came back from a Dunkin' Donuts run. Usually, I would have already gone with Sharon (by 8:30 at the latest), but she's already on vacation--and has been since Wednesday. Actually, there are quite a few people missing around here.
I wrote out some rather brief cards to my coworkers when I first arrived, but I don't want to put them in the mail folders yet, as I mean to go and get some Hershey's kisses during my lunch break, which I will then affix to the envelopes (somehow). The cards are very me, an Edward Gorey assortment in stark black-and-white, red, and green. I'm fairly certain that some of my coworkers won't know what to make of them, but I hope they don't find them offensive. At the very least, the included chocolate will keep them from being offensive to anyone's sensibilities.
Having forgotten to print out my flight itinerary previously, I did so after the card-writing. It seems that my flight was originally meant to take off at 6:30 P.M., but will now be leaving at 7:20 P.M. Oh, well. I'm still scheduled to get in to Raleigh/Durham before 10:00 P.M., so I guess that should please me well enough.
Ooh. Two checks today (only, technically, I'm not allowed to bank one of them until the 29th). Kind of annoying, but still very nice. I didn't deposit last week's check either, so I'll still be able to deposit two this afternoon and leave the third alone until I return.
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From Netflix, I received the first two discs of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I watched the first disc all the way through, hoping it would improve with familiarity, but it's really not that good (for anyone out of middle school). It has its funny moments and inside subtle jokes that adults can appreciate, but it just couldn't hold my interest for more than a few minutes at a time. I think I was also turned off by the fact that it's American animation with aspirations to anime, a trait that just doesn't work for me. So I've knocked the remaining discs from my queue.
It is fortunate that I have so many new DVDs to watch while Netflix is being disappointing.
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And I forgot to pack Emilio. Again. Sad.
21 December 2006
3x Thursday: A Little Help
I am not as ambitious as Melissa, and cannot come up with thirteen things of a single topic in a day's blog entry. Instead I'll do this.
1. Do you believe there's such a thing as a chemical imbalance? Do you think that treating these problems with drugs is a good thing? Why/why not?
Yes, on both accounts. I have had family and friends who suffer from depression attributed to chemical imbalances. Without the drugs, they would fall apart to the point of dysfunction each and every day. My mother has no thyroid. She needs to take prescription drugs so that her body may accomplish what a body with a healthy thyroid would do on its own. It should also be said that being without a thyroid (or an over-active thyroid) affects not only your physicality but also your mental functions as the chemicals go to all parts of the body, including the brain.
I'm not sure what you intend by the word "good"--I would say that it's good that people can now do for themselves what was never even in the realm of possibility half a century ago. My great grandmother spent the better half of her life in an asylum due to any number of mental problems (and probably thyroid dysfunction, too), because no one knew what to do for her. My mother doesn't have to suffer the same thing because she can take drugs for her problems. Yes. I call that good.
2. What about drugs for brain-related stuff like depression? Do you think one should be able to get over it themselves, or do you think sometimes we all need a little help, and sometimes we need meds for a while?
I don't believe there's an all-inclusive answer to this question. Anything brain-related should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Prescriptive drugs will help some people some of the time. Sometimes just exercise will help. Sometimes turning to religion helps. But then sometimes nothing will help an individual. Don't get me wrong. I don't think anti-depressants and anti-psychotics should be given out like M&Ms, but I disagree wholeheartedly with those who would discount them entirely.
3. Whom do you turn to when you have emotional crisis? Why?
It might be a lazy cliche, but "I get by with a little help from my friends"--and when I'm done pouring my heart out to whomever, I sit down and write my reflections. Writing is a very therapeutic activity for me.
Bonus Question: Are you ready to deal with Christmas? Will you be happy or sad when the holidays are over?
I know this was meant for the comment section on the source site, but I may as well go on, right?
I'm nearly ready for Christmas to be here, though I'm still not entirely convinced that it is nearly here. I'm in Boston, and it's been unseasonably warm here for the past three months; I think we've only had two days where it flurried a little. I suppose I'll have a bout of sorrow after the day passes, but it probably won't hit me until January is underway. Mostly, I'm looking forward to the after-Christmas sales.
binging on life
Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.Unknown
"Participants must promise that they will try really really hard to update their web sites every day from December 1, 2006, to January 1, 2007. With holiday obligations, this realistically means you might post a minimum of 20 entries for the month." - Holidailies
So, counting this as the twenty-first post of the month, I can at least be proud that I've reached the minimum for Holidailies. Excellent. Though I'll probably end up dropping off the blog-map once I get to North Carolina.
And I'm leaving tomorrow night. I still haven't really packed anything, though most of what I intend to pack is sitting on top of my suitcase on the floor by my bed.
I think I might splurge for a cab from work tomorrow afternoon. It's not that I won't have enough time if I go by T; I just don't feel like dealing with the crowds of people, which are likely to be akin to the ones I encountered at Thanksgiving. It took me two tries to get on the red line, and another two tries to get on the silver line. A maddening human sardine experience. No, thank you. Not again. Not right now.
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There was another box from Amazon waiting for me in the vestibule when I came home yesterday evening. It was a Christmas present from my friend Sue, the third and final set of DVDs from Forever Knight.
After opening it, I decided to follow my own plan and take pictures around the apartment--of the presents I've received, our decked-out Christmas tree, the weird little ornaments I bought at Target. I was uploading the pictures to my Flickr account when Michelle came home from work.
She went on a hunt in her room for the final episodes of Witch Hunter Robin; because I've had two copies of the final disc sent to me from Netflix, and neither of them has worked (the first was cracked down the center and completely unplayable, and the second could only play the first two episodes on the disc because the remainder was damaged too much). So Michelle burned those to CD for me (remarkably good quality, too), and I watched half of the first episode on the disc--until I decided that I would be clever and save the rest for tomorrow night when I'm sitting around Logan.
I also watched the first three episodes of Forever Knight Season Three, but fell asleep during the fourth one, waking up around 3 A.M. to the glow of the main menu screen. Turning off the television, I went to my laptop and checked my mail.
Arkaidy had posted an additional chapter to "Across Time"--one of the links I have in my "Favourite Fanfiction" in the sidebar--which I then proceeded to read until about 3:45 A.M. It was an interlude to explain the survival of Ares, Hercules, Zeus, and a few of the other gods into the present (because, if we follow a certain element of canon, the gods should fade out and die--but they don't, and Arkaidy has a decent explanation for their continuation).
Actually, the godly come-back makes sense to me because of "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Hercules"--a modern day episode where Ares and Strife show up at the end. So, surely, Ares has to survive in some way; and Strife has to be resurrected after his death-by-hind's-blood ... somehow.
But I shouldn't have read it last night. After I finished reading, getting back to sleep was nearly impossible. And when I did go to sleep, my dreams were vivid and strange and all too real. Actually, I sort of wish one of them had been real. I was enjoying it until my consciousness went, You know this is a dream. This would never happen. Being a conscious dreamer sucks sometimes.
When my alarm went off I didn't really hear it until forty minutes later.
20 December 2006
present? presents! ... and our tree and its ornaments
I said I would take pictures, and so I took pictures. And this is the rather pathetic fruit of my efforts ("pathetic" being in reference to my nonexistant picture-taking skills, not the items in the pictures themselves)--but you get the idea. Click the little babies for a larger view.
I got a haul: a pretty card from the 'rents; a DVD player, also from my folks; a Venetian mask; Forever Knight Part III from Sue; and Fables, Nick of Time, and Serenity from Andrea.
TREE!
These are mostly blurry, but still pretty.
FREAKY PENGUINS!
My sped penguin ornaments--so weird, so retarded, so perfectly cute.
MORE ORNAMENTS!
Again with the blurry, but some of them are okay.
And that's all for now folks!
not a moment too soon
Yesterday morning I was writing about my issues with Beta Blogger; and, ironically enough, yesterday night Blogger suddenly announced the end of calling this new version "Beta." It doesn't really change any of the complaints I have with the system, just the name--but they're making it out to be a very big deal, kind of forcing people into making the transition.
I'm just as happy I decided to go ahead with it beforehand; I'd feel very irritated if I hadn't done so of my own volition, and were now being coerced into the change.
Among other changes (because, while I'm at it, why not?), I added new things to the sidebar--a task which swallowed up the better part of last night. There's a short list of some of my favourite fanfiction (the ones I could track down, anyway), and a rather long list of most recent music artists heard on my iPod and iTunes (an idea I borrowed from Geoff's sidebar, a list which he calls "Playing On Myne Ipod"). More will be added to each list as whatever it is occurs to me; and, potentially, more kinds of lists will be added to the sidebar as they occur to me.
In terms of music, I found that Wikipedia was the most useful source for locating official musician and band websites. Google helped, too.
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"Movies you enjoy watching most this month" is today's Holidaily prompt, but I feel like I've already gone into this before.
Though I make fun of them to no end, I enjoy the classic Rankin & Bass Christmas productions (and I've definitely addressed them before).
A Garfield Christmas Special
A Charlie Brown Christmas
The Santa Clause ... Yes, it's Tim Allen. Yes, he's kind of awful. No, I just don't care (though, I refuse to watch any of the sequels).
I also used to love Benji's Very Own Christmas Story, but I haven't been able to find it in my parents' video collection after the several moves they've made in the past six years.
There are probably others that I'm not thinking of right now, but I might edit this post later to include them. Oh, yeah. And I'll probably sit down to The Nightmare Before Christmas at some point this holiday season, as well.
The one movie that is always brought up as a Christmas classic, and that I've never watched from beginning to end, is It's a Wonderful Life--a fact that makes me feel like one of the dopey officers from The Ref who accidentally records the film over the police evidence. But it's so damn long, and I've seen the "never-been-born" premise done in so many other shows and films, that I don't think I'm missing too much.
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I think tonight will be a digicam night--of Christmas-y picture-taking. Our tree, the freaky penguin ornaments that don't make sense, and my holiday acquisitions (of which I have a fair few already).
19 December 2006
only partially founded fears
I had been toying with the idea of switching entirely over to Beta Blogger. I had messed around with the click-drag design before, and I just wasn't fond of the "fixed" elements on the page--the boring banner, for one thing. Also, the click-drag method is very archaic and giving me flashbacks of the ever awkward Geocities.
But I really liked the expandable/collapsible archives in the side-bar, and I couldn't get that with the older template. So this morning, with much trepidation, I saved my original template and made the switch. And after doing some web-searching for hacks and code, I've finally managed to make my journal look (sort of) the way it originally was--only with the excellent archiving.
The header was a bit more of a finagle, and I was on the right track in my touch-and-go trial-and-error editing, but I became impatient with myself and found some excellent directions for tweaking the code in another blog.
I still haven't got the widths of the post section and the side bar where I want them, but they're close enough to satisfy me for now.
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When I was shuffling through some papers in one of my desk drawers yesterday, I finally located my invitation to the BU Holiday Party "Evergreen Dream." One of my coworkers has been urging me to come along since last week; and I had wanted to say that I would, but I thought that I had accidentally thrown the postcard in the bin. Actually, this coworker suggested that I had accidentally tossed it away, but I thought that was rather out of character for me. I never throw anything away, and my desk stands as a monument to this fact--or, at any rate, the clutter piled a foot high on a back corner of my desk should be evidence enough.
So I'll be going the party after work for food and beverages. I'm looking forward to shameless noshing ... and to not having to make my own dinner tonight.
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Torchwood's "Out of Time" was, as predicted, finished downloading when I arrived home last night. It has to be one of the funnier, and also one of the sadder, episodes to date. I think my favourite segment is when Ianto takes the time-travelers shopping. He's in the middle of explaining the magic of the automatically opening door when one of the ladies exclaims, "Bananas!" in sheer delight. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, bananas completely out-rank the technological advances of mankind.
I totally approve of the plot and character development with the Gwen/Rhys relationship. They just can't stay together, in my opinion--not when Gwen can never tell him anything. Judging by the sneak-peek, next Sunday's episode looks like it's going to up that drama quotient.
My only grudge against this episode was that the writers didn't really let us find out anything new about Captain Jack Harkness. Jack was sitting in a carbon monoxide-filled automobile, and he couldn't share anything about himself with a man who's about to die? I don't know if it's due to something truly complex about the character, or if the writers just don't know what they want his entire back story to be yet. Either way, it was kind of frustrating. He's such a lonely character, and his expression was downright heart-breaking as John Ellis was dying.
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