If Santa existed, he'd have been arrested by now.

2004-12-25 / 1:06 p.m.

Happy Christmas, readers! Live, from my dysfunctional house to your (in all probability) functional one. Dateline, 11:26. Mom and I just finished doing the present thing, and she�s now engrossed with the handheld Tetris game I bought for her. See, this was a brilliant idea. My mother loves Tetris; furthermore, when it�s around, she quickly slips into her old Tetris addiction, and it totally absorbs her. She�s been at it for like a half hour now, completely focused on the game. I could miss her completely if not for the occasional obscenity or plea for one of those straight, skinny, blocks. I�ve now put off going to the widow party and my cousin�s house for as long as she�s on a Tetris winning streak�she�s totally oblivious to what time it is. As for me, there wasn�t much in the way of super exciting gifts, but there were a couple of fun things. I finally got a button maker. I�m excited about that, as I can advertise 1� inch of whatever I want forever. This year has also proven that my mother has completely lost touch with my taste in clothes: there was no doubt after the fitted leopard print top. Yeah, I know right? Share the gross out.

As far as gifts go, the really kickass ones are always from your friends. Hillary got me rain boots!! I can walk through every puddle river on my campus, and relish all the water I kick up on others without suffering from any dampness myself. Bruce, a good judge of my maturity level, got my a shirt sporting the sophisticated pickup line, �Are you from Tennessee? Because you�re the only ten I see.� Classy, classy. From Michelle, I got a book that I actually really want to read--The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004. It�s a collection of short fiction and nonfiction from essays and magazines and the like. It�s edited by Dave Eggers (a writer I enjoy) and promises to be entertaining.

And now for an unordered list!!! yay! How uncharacteristic of my journal writing style!

Why my Christmas is weirder than yours:
• My mom put scatch-off lottery tickets in the cat�s stockings.
• My cats have stockings.
• None of the cats won anything--not even a free ticket.
• The requests for liposculpture and speed as Christmas gifts were countered with �why don�t I get a face lift? Help you find a new daddy�� (dead god, please note she said that facetiously).
• The adult role model is shouting at a video game
• I got new tweezers in my stocking, and was extraordinarily pleased
• The suggestion that we take my new set of shot glasses with us to Merry�s/cousin�s to christen them was not immediately shot down

How come all of the best foods turn out to be bad for you? I think I just ate a day�s worth of calories in a half a handful of walnuts. ::sigh::

Gawd, I know this is spanning too many topics for one entry, but I have to squeeze this in. Hillary came over last night, and it was just like the old days. We hunted someone from a past life, who gave us all kinds of gossip about what our friends from the graduating class of 1999 are up to. We also watched �Mean Girls,� which was hilarious; it was even better than I thought it would be.

Bah, okay. I can no longer put off getting in the shower. My mother is threatening to make me stay at my cousin�s past 7:00 if we don�t get going in the next half hour, and that�s totally unacceptable. Enjoy your Christmas, everyone. I wish you tasty dinner, warm fuzzy feelings, peace and harmony at your family gatherings, and the fortitude to contend with the kind of questions extended family tend to ask. (ie: �What are you going to do with that (worthless) degree?� �Are you seeing anyone (that can give me grandchildren)?�)

Some pictures (a temporary entry)

2004-12-24 / 7:29 p.m.

"Marco!"
"Polo."
"Marco?"
"Polo."

Someone had gone to great lenghts--either in the name of assholery or theft to remove ninja turtles toys from their boxes, replace them with old school actions fitures, re-seal the boxes very convincingly, and return them to K Mart. Many famous heroes (and the kid from jungle book) were represented, but only Aquaman was photographed

My cat, Lucy

....Who can also shoot lazers from her eyes

My shower radio. It's eyes are the power/volume & tuner buttons, making them frequently point in different directions. He reminds me of Argentine president Nestor Kirchner who is often parodied for his weird eyes. btw: Menem is back in Argentina and apparently planning to run for prez in 2007. I find this interesting

Some stuff I painted experimenting with acrylics

I added "asshat" to MS Word's spellcheck dictionary

2004-12-22 / 10:21 p.m.

So I�ve applied to most of my schools�all but two. Indiana and Texas left to go:
Indiana because they�ve asked me to write about my greatest accomplishment and how it prepares me for school there (and, as I�ve told you, it seems that getting out of bed in the morning to my daily life isn�t quite impressive enough), and Texas because it involves about, um, nine separate applications. yeah. fuck. Over Christmastime, I�m going to mull over what�s significant about my life, and psych myself up for excessive (digital) paperwork, and tackle the remaining two after the new year. The least confident of the little voices inside my head says to apply to a few more for safety�s sake. Not unlike my senior year of high school, I�m being bombarded with schools sending me glossy brochures with come �hither type phrases like, �available fellowships.� It�s tempting, but I think that the professors who have been doing my recommendations might attack if I were to ask for more letters in the Spring semester rush.

In a blatant act of escapism from thinking about grad school and the money it requires for attendance, I�ve spent the better part of the last two days cavorting with Roger. We gave blood, watched �Napoleon Dynamite,� braved the malls (Roger is one of those asshats who waits until post December 21st to shop), and ate dinner with his family among other things. What this means is that while this entry may appear to focus on Roger, it�s really just about what I�ve been doing for the past few days. I�m still self centered as ever, don�t worry; schmoopy boyfriend journal entries aren�t my area. I�m not going to be that girl. Anyway�

Dining with Roger�s family is an experience apart from, well, anything one might expect from a typical lame-dinner-with-boyfriend�s-family-meal. I had met his parents before, but last night I was introduced to his siblings as well. I�m terribly jealous of his family; all appearances suggest that they all get along extremely well, yet they�re not functional in a boring conventional way, but rather are the most unique household I�ve ever encountered. While I was there, his sister periodically insisted that his (and her) father was a bear, his brother told of his participation in a musical about a Canadian fir tree which was knighted, and his father claimed ownership of the number seven. The conversation at the table was a constant stream of �witty repartee� (to use a Kristen-ism) with the 1812 Overture as ambiance music. Not only that, but they�re nice too. I�ve liked lots of my former boyfriend�s parents, but Roger�s family is far and away the most enjoyable to spend time with.

Ha! And all this talk about Roger reminds me that I never mentioned our exploits in Athens last weekend. That�s to be left for another time though, as I�m pretty sleepy (despite the fact that it�s barely 10:15). Though, realizing that I spent Friday night, Saturday, most of Sunday, all day Tuesday, and the daylight hours of today with Roger, it seems reasonable that I�m so tired. And hey�.as preemption to any dirty jokes that you might think are begging to be made here: anyone who has spent more than five minutes with Roger knows that he�s exhausting just to be around, even for a little while, let alone several days.

in memoriam

2004-12-19 / 7:50 p.m.

So the sad news: the cheap theater, most recently known as Home Center Six (though it has changed hands a fair few times in its history) appears to be no more. I have yet to encounter solid, indisputable evidence to say that it�s done for, but all signs clearly point to yes. It no longer appears on the moviefone website, nor is it on the automated phone thingie. The title board outside is still up, but the same movie titles have been on it for weeks. Furthermore, the titles are becoming less recognizable every day, decaying from their original forms to things like, �Stpfd Wves,� �Ki Arhur,� and �Sooby D.�

Not only am I disappointed that I no longer have the option of a 2 hour escape from home for less than $2.00, but the �dollar theater� (which hasn�t cost a dollar in years and years) was the location of numerous high school memories. It was a frequent haunt to our crowd, especially after we started driving. A buck fifty was a small price to have an excuse to get out of the house for two hours. We�d often go in big groups, sneaking food and soda in via large purses�not that we needed to, no one there seemed to care. You could also see movies that you wouldn�t be willing to pay full price for�once Hillary and I went to see �A Bug�s Life� pretty late one evening after she had been arguing with her parents. There were a bunch of noisy kids in there, but we weren�t much better behaved�I seem to remember tossing gummi bears up into the air and catching them in my mouth, though perhaps I�m mixing memories around.

I�ll miss the place. I�d like to call for a moment of silent reflection, to think about our dear, departed, dollar theater.

��.

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I�m designating this entry�s comment section to anyone who wants to share cheap theater memories.

You'll never find your way home

2004-12-17 / 1:02 p.m.

So for better or worse, I�m home for break. Finals went alright: I swung a solid A in Statistics; Nonfiction? I probably could have swung the A if I put a little more time and effort in, but for a pass/fail class, it didn�t seem worth sacrificing all the other crap I had to churn out in the last week and a half, so I turned in half assed revisions and will have to accept the �p� rather than the A; Spanish is almost certainly a B; foreign policy is a total guess�I had an A- going into the final, and she�s a tough grader. Who knows?

I�ve been oddly productive since coming home. I�ve only been here two days, and I�ve gotten a gym membership, painted my first work in acrylics, applied to ASU and almost finished my GSU stuff (to be finished tonight when I go to the writing center to print stuff out), bought a Christmas present or two, finished The Golden Compass and spent lots of my mother�s money.

The Golden Compass was a good story, but I found the writing kind of sloppy, and the editing outright bad for a popular book that�s been published in a couple of editions. Did anyone else notice that? Regardless, I checked the sequel out today.

I bought big, tortoise shell, sunglasses yesterday�I feel whole again for the first time since I lost my last pair of abnormally large, tortoise shell glasses. They cover up a good bit of my face, and they�re quite dark. This morning, I went out on errands almost straight from the gym. I wore the glasses around a lot�often indoors�and pretended that I was a celeb that had totally let herself go, hiding from the paparazzi. I kept this charade up through visits to Wal Mart, the post office and the Grocery store, though I think my purchases probably gave me away. My grocery store cart might have passed�.I could see a down n� out movie star buying egg whites, soy milk, and a single mango; but my wal mart loot wasn�t quite as glamorous. I don�t even think �wal mart� and �glamorous� can ever coexist harmoniously in the same sentence.

The used CD store is my achilles heel of money spending. They had this great ad in paper though, and if you trade in 5 DVDs, the'll give you $50 in store credit. huzzah. I went today, and not only did I get my 50 dollar card, but they had also recently put a lot of decent CDs on $3.99 clearance. I bought one for Roger (half-priced, used CDs for Christmas. best. girlfriend. ever.) and a handful for myself as well, including the Ben Kweller CD that is not "Sha-sha." It's cute, but not as cute as the one Roger already burned for me. Please know that when I say "cute" I really think that's the best way to describe the album--honestly. "Sex reminds her of eating spaghetti"? come on. that's cute.

The saddest news of all will be saved for the next entry. I know you�ll be biting your nails in anticipation until I post it.