Winter Fun

In the interest of not being a whiny bitch all the time, here are some fun things to do in the winter. It's best to do these things where there are a lot of people. Since it's the shopping season and you're likely to be spending some time in a mall, let me help you while that time a way in a counterproductive, smart-assy manner.

1. This is perhaps the most important thing to remember when you go into a mall this Christmas season-park next to whatever restaurant in your mall that has a bar. Go in, walk up to the bar and order a double shot of whatever you like. Try to down it in the time it takes the bartender to get your change. When he or she comes back say, "Thanks, that's just like being back home." This will hopefully give you a chance to do the second best thing at a mall.

2. Lie to strangers for no reason. Going back to point one-if you're lucky, that bartender I was talking about will ask you where "back home" is. This is your big chance. Here's how I like to think this conversation will go for me.

Bartender: "Oh? Where's home"
Me: "Latvia."
Bartender: "Really? Latvia?"
Me: "Yeah, verily. I am from Latvia. No shit."
Skeptical Bartender: "You speak awfully good English for someone from Latvia."
Me: "Yeah, that's a pretty common misconception. Our education system is more advanced than even our dairy industry. We all speak perfect English there."
SB: "I don't believe you."
Me: "It's cool, baby. Smell you later."

Then you just leave. It's easy. They're at work, so they can't follow you.

3. Fun thing number three is righteous indignation. This is best at the "X Items or Less" checkout express lane. For example:

Me: "It says eight items."
Asshole Who Can't Count: flat stare at me.
Me: "You clearly have more than eight items."
AWCC: "Mind your own business."
Me: "Up yours, baby. It IS my business. "
AWCC: "Well, I never!"
Me: "Well, now you have!'

Man, that's the best. People almost never say, "well, I never!" Bound to happen someday though. I'm ready for it.

4. Fun thing number four is tearing ass through a crowded mall. When there are too many people in a mall, traffic grinds to the pace of the slowest slackard. When I walk through a mall I like to pretend someone is chasing me while I'm trying to be all cool about it and walk as fast as I can without actually running. This is extra bonus fun if, like me, you are covered in tattoos. Security guards love tattooed people hightailing it out of their little domains. Try to look guilty if you can.

5. Messin' with security is a fun game unto itself. There are lots of ways to do this, but I find the best is to just keep an eye on them. They're used to following people around and spying, but almost no one thinks to return the favor. Follow them around as long as you can. Taking notes while you do it will, if you're super lucky, get some attention. It's never happened, but I dream of one day having a security guard demand to see what I've been writing about him. Man, that would be sweet.

I have to run. I hope this helps someone besides me cheer up this winter. If none of this works I'll spend next post elaborating on Plan B(ooze).

Feliz Navidad!

Ugh

Winter can suck it. Every year about this time I start wincing every time the furnace kicks on, because to me it's the sound of money being tossed into a fire. I'm wearing three shirts, a hat, gloves and a scarf right now. I'm freezing, but I can't bring myself to crank up the heat any higher than it is now. Add in getting dark at five o'clock and everyone in the house but me (knock on wood) either actively being sick or getting over a cold and things start feeling pretty grim.

Intellectually I know that if I actually got up and accomplished something I might feel a little better, but it's taking all the energy I can muster to sit here and type this instead of just going back to sleep. This constant compulsion to hibernate is one of the main indicators I have that I'm getting depressed, that and weight loss. All other signs fly under the radar of my normal level of irritation, but this sleep thing just isn't me.

Monday Monday, so good to me

Well, it's not quite ten AM and I've already had four cups of coffee and breakfast. Mondays in the summer are a lot keener than Mondays in the winter. For one thing the prospect of taking the recycling to the recycling center is a lot more attractive when its 75 degrees than it is when its 30 degrees and raining. Also in the summer monetary thoughts are more along the lines of "I think we can swing going camping again this weekend" as opposed to "what the hell are we going to do about Christmas".

I do sort of have a tentative plan for the day. If we can get the recycling done, then maybe hit the grocery store and still have time I hope to start getting ready for Christmas. When your house is in a state of untidiness its hard to get into the Christmas spirit. When the London Philharmonic is belting out the holiday tunes and the Christmas village is in the planning stages it becomes a lot easier to feel all cheery.

Part of the problem today is that I feel all like a pile of crap. Mentally, not physically, which is a nice change of pace in the not being sick department. It's hard not to get bummed out this time of year. There is a lot of family strife going on at my grandmother's house this year, and I'm trying not to let it affect me overly much, but it is tough going. It's way too early in the season to feel utterly defeated, so it's going to take some serious staving off. It may be time to start speaking loudly and carry a bigger stick. Then maybe I can fight off the main symptom I suffer when I start getting depressed, which is an almost unstoppable desire to just sleep all the time. Normally I'm a night owl who has very little trouble getting up and moving in the morning, provided there is coffee and a compelling reason. Delia kicking me in the head demanding I get up and make her some breakfast is usually all the urging I need.

Today, I'm sorry to say, my ass is a dragon. I could go back to bed right now and not wake up until it is time for me to go to work. Not only would this be easy, it's very appealing right now. I must resist, even if resistance is well neigh futile.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Well, tomorrow officially kicks off the Christmas season. It's time to pull the ghost lights off the porch and break out the multi color C9s! I love the big cheery Charlie Niners. They are my favorite Christmas lights, next to the neat bubbling tubes of colored liquid they used to put on trees when I was a kid. You can still buy those today, but they aren't the same. When I was a kid you could roast a marshmallow with one of those lights. Long third degree burns were a sign that Christmas was nearing.

Stupid safe LED technology.

I think we're going visiting today, but when we get back I hope to prep the living room a bit for Christmas Village. It's time for the town people to gather round and listen to Sister Sarah and her Band of Sinners in the tiny village, displaying their unflappable Christmas spirit despite living in a town that's often overrun by zombies and fishmen.




The fishman is a little hard to see.


It's amazing how these people keep a-wassalin' despite roving packs of Krenshar.

So, here's to you unflappable citizens of Christmastown. Neither poor economic climate nor rampaging monsters keep you from spreading goodwill and cheer in your little town. I hope you don't loose too many carolers to the cult of Dagon this year.

Merry Christmas!

The Red and Green Crush

Thanksgiving is over and done with. It went pretty well this year, all things considered. Now we're facing the slide, kicking and screaming, into the Christmas season.

The main thing about Christmas that makes it one of the most stressful holidays ever is money. Christmas always coincides with days off for holidays, most notably Thanksgiving. My job is pretty awesome, but the rare holidays that I get off are of the unpaid variety. AND when an unpaid holiday falls on a Thursday (stupid Thanksgiving) there a disturbance in the economic force that is my paycheck.

I know I shouldn't stress about this. People like to say that Jesus wouldn't want us to commercialize his holiday all the time, but you may note that of the three original Christmas presents one of them was freaking GOLD. This, I believe, is what lead to the evolution of Christmas movies where the hapless dad turns to a wacky life of crime to finance the big day.

I had wanted a guitar for Christmas, but I'm revising my Christmas want list right here, right now.

1. Razor blades. I like Gillette Mach 3, which are pricey but way the hell cheaper than the fancy dancy four-blader they have out now.

2. The H.P. Lovecraft compendium that Barnes and Noble printed. It's a thirteen dollar hardback on the bargin shelf. Can't miss it.

3. Some string.

4. A rock, to wind the string around.

That's it. That's all I want for Christmas this year. I'm not going to say anything cheesey like world peace, though it would be nice if we could collectively get through this fiasco without anyone getting pissy with anyone else.

Facebook

I logged in to Facebook this morning to find a friend invitation from someone I went to high school with. This is the second time this has happened, and I think I'm going to have to click the little deny button again. It's not that I have anything against these people; both of them were nice to me and nice people in general.

The thing is, on Facebook when someone sends you a friend request you can look at their list of friends. In both cases the list of friends seemed to be mainly comprised of people I went to high school with. I skipped out on my 10 year reunion (a number of years ago, in fact). I did it on purpose too. Other than geography throwing us together for a few years of public school I don't feel like I have a lot in common with these people. I only talked to a handful of people in high school to begin with and only talk to one person from the Dark Days here in the Present Era. And that's because I married her. That and she's pretty rad.

I remember one day in a college history class a feisty professor telling us to look around at the people in the room, proclaiming that these people were the pool from which we would draw the people that we'd be friends with until our dying days. She told us that the people we went to high school with would fade away into obscure memories and our college friends would last us until our golden years.

I didn't really make a lot of friends in college either. There are five or six, but not people who I met in classes. They were neighbors in crappy leaning-to-one-side-quite-noticeably apartment buildings, friends of friends, relatives of my future wife. The other people I met in college were just there, the people you talk to more out of proximity than inclination. Not that I have anything against most of them. Maybe I just don't connect with people very well, or at least very often. I did make one friend, but I haven't seen him in person for years.

Anyway, back to Facebook. I feel betrayed, like Facebook has ratted me out. My cover is blown; my vague ideas that I would be the one student from high school that no one would remember more than vaguely are shattered. Thanks, Facebook. Thanks a lot. Asshole.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like the Same Old Thanksgiving Blitz

So, Dad got a divorce. This happened a while back; I can't remember if it was after Thanksgiving last year or the year before, though I tend to think it was last year. My parents divorced a long time ago, so for the last 20-something years I've been one of those people that has at least two of every major holiday. Two Thanksgiving dinners, two Christmasses. Then, oh about eleven years ago, I got married. Bang! THREE holidays. Mom's house, Dad's house, T's parents.

It's exhausting.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining that there are so many people who want to see us on the Holidays. It's nice to be in demand, even if it's just a couple of days a year. But the divorce did lead me to trick myself. I thought to myself, "OK, back down to two holidays. Two is do-able."

Friday Dad and Maria (his girlfriend, who is a lovely woman who talks and smiles and does everything else that a nice, normal person does) came to dinner at our house. I asked what his Thanksgiving plans were, thinking he'd say something about ordering a pizza and watching football. To my surprise (I almost said "Horror" instead of "surprise", but really that would be a vast exaggeration) he drops the bomb.

"We're having a ham and a turkey. Are you going to come by?" Dad asks.

Hell's Bells and cockleshells. I say yes.

So, now we are at two dinners, minimum. My Aunt Donna will be at my mom's place. I don't know what's going down there on Thursday, but I imagine that we'll be expected to put in an appearance. I didn't have the mental fortitude to find out for sure. This was a mistake, because now it's looming on the horizon like a tropical storm. Hurricane Third Dinner.

The only real problem with a three-dinner run is that you have to seriously pace yourself. At dinner numero uno, you have one plate piled low. This is vital to the mission if you don't want to end up in the hospital tent with army doctors hovering over you at the end of the night, shaking their heads and muttering how you are the worst case of exploding stomach that they've ever seen. Even if you do manage to pull this tricky balancing act off, you endure a dinner of "you-barely-eat-anythings" and "that's-why-you're-so-skinnys". This usually takes place at the first house. At Dinner Two, the Plan dictates that you eat a bit of the food left out for people to graze on. If you're lucky, which means getting there after everyone has already eaten. If you get there on time, it's another uncomfortable round of "is-that-all-you're-going-t0-eats". Dinner three is too much for most humans. I generally fold and just have a cup of coffee, enduring the dirty looks of whoever spent all day in the kitchen.

I'm ready for it. I can take it.