In which we begin again.

It has been a very weird winter here in the Windy City! Yesterday I was laying around the flat with my sister and she mentioned that one month ago had been Christmas Eve, which is shocking because Christmas Eve seems like a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. I have been working working working working at the office, but now, in a one month late Christmas present, school starts today.


I am alternately dreading the thought of/excited for the season premiere of school. I have two writing classes & one reading about writing class. I have been feeling desperately uninspired lately so I am hoping that new assignments and new books to read will galvanize me into writing again. When I read something fantastic, I am always inspired to put finger to the keyboard again, in hopes of writing something equally fantastic. So now it's second semester, and I am a little "over" grad school. I am not quitting. I think I am just second guessing myself. I hold a gold medal in second guessing; I won it on a particularly unfruitful and indecisive shopping trip during the 2008 Olympics.

Depicted on the medal is the Greek God Descisio, ordering his servants to bear him

hence to his villa so he can mope about not buying the sandals that he really wanted.

In related news, I have this mammoth overdue fine at the public library, so I justify new book purchases as career research.


Yesterday I happened upon a former friend of mine critiquing my work. I was browsing through the archives of a community we used to host together and there she was saying I got too bogged down in descriptions & details, and that I was trying (as in, trying too hard) to be a writer. I wasn't even hurt or upset because she was right, I was, though I don't feel that I'm that way anymore. I think I have a talent, and I just have to learn how to move it along and funnel it correctly into something readable. Which, grad school, I guess that's where you come in.

In other news, I am very excited about the spring premiere of:

1. LOST. Final season oh man oh man.
2. Nowhere Boy, a good lookin movie about John Lennon the teddy boy.

In which I wish I had posessed the foresight to buy a hat.

I am living on the ice planet Hoth right now.

So how was Christmas, how was New Year's? My life was a ridiculous dream for 2+ glorious weeks. I had a long romantic train ride home, a flurry of baking and present wrapping, a luxious morning, a long drive, a foot of snow (seriously it just would not quit), doughnuts and cookie baking, sledding for hours, family baking intermurals, two delicious dinners, endless movies, showers of presents, laid-back days of work, free chocolates... the list goes on and on.

New Year's was pretty cool too.

Needless to say, I am loath to leave the wonders of the holidays. Yesterday (it being Epiphany and all) I took down my Christmas tree, which is my least favorite holiday chore. I don't mind so much the work as I mind the depressing reality of post-Christmas times. I know that everyone is obsessed with the commercialization of the holiday but to me it remains sparkling and magical and a complete wonderland of delights. It is the only time of the year that I feel unabashed in acting like a complete giddy child and basically annoying everyone in my family by constantly singing at the top of my lungs. I would not lose that for the WORLD. You can bet your bottom dollar that it will always be said of me that I know how to keep Christmas so suck it.

Anyway I am not yet engaged in the full hatred of snow. I am still enamored of its charms and wintery delights, though I do need to purchase a hat. Preferably one with ear flaps because though I will look like a complete lumberjack, I will at least be a complete lumberjack with warm litle earsies.

Yikes, this is not what I had in mind.