Things I’ve learned this holiday season
- When the roads look perfectly clear but all motorists are pulled to the side of the highway to put on chains, you should probably step out of your vehicle first, giving yourself a chance to slip and fall on the black ice BEFORE you pull up to a motorist and ask, “why are you putting on chains??”
- How to put on chains.
- How to check the oil in a car.
- How to replace windshield washer fluid.
- How to take off chains.
- How to dig your car out of three feet of snow.
- How to catch a runaway dog that’s less than two feet tall in three feet of snow.
- If you try the dangling-of-treats-in-front-of-camera approach to get the dog to pose for a Christmas photo to go in your Christmas cards, expect most of his expressions to look like he wants to eat you. And by the way, Merry Christmas!
- Boxing Day does not exist in America.
- Some Americans believe Boxing Day has something to do with boxing.
- You get better deals after Boxing Day.
- The day you decide to dress up like an anime doll (complete with high pigtails in Christmas scrunchies and furry boots, effectively de-aging you some 10+ years) to make your first video game purchase (DDR!), you will run into old friends and extended family who haven’t seen you in years. And to them, you haven’t aged a bit!
- Snow isn’t all that bad when you’re plowing through unchartered back roads with your little Corolla. The best part? Front wheel power (and no ability to get stuck, thank you snow chains!) and back wheel slippage.
- The best way to find some things is to stop looking. All summer you looked for the perfect pair of semi-dressy shorts to pair with neon leggings, dunks and suspenders. In the dead of winter, you find the perfect pair on the clearance rank for EIGHT DOLLARS, and you weren’t even looking.
- It’s really, really hard to cut through a frozen Tufurkey roll, even with The Knife That Cuts Through ANYTHING. Give up while you’re still a head (and ten fingers).
Well there you have it—further proof that learning can happen outside the classroom, even when school isn’t in session. Happy holidays everyone! Hope your Christmas vacation was just as educational.
Why I don’t take vacations
Being that I am a person of extremes, vacations rarely do me any good in the long run. Working vacations are fabulous. Vacation vacations are not.
Working vacations, if done right, generally combine a perfect balance of work and play, creating a healthy balance of reality; just in a different setting. For me, this is how I live my life at home, just magnified and more intense. The result? Little to no readjustment, but much refreshment.
Vacation vacations, if done right, generally involve a entire process of forgetting reality all together and just “relaxing”—and while that sounds ridiculously tempting, it’s generally a “putting off”, “delaying”, or “running away from” of your problems, i.e., reality. The result? A painful readjustment process in the face of sharp, rude reality when you get home. And sand in your suitcase.
As time goes by
Today the best friend and I met up for lunch at Finch’s Tea & Coffee House on Pender Street. I ordered the veggie sandwich on multigrain with potato nutmeg soup and masala chai tea. She ordered the avocado sandwich on a baguette with chamomile tea. The food was superb, and the atmosphere, lovely.
In less than a week, I leave for California. I return to home shortly after the 21st. She leaves for Mexico on the 20th, and arrives home early next year. We barely get to see each other as it is, and as it often happens, our vacation times tend to narrowly miss each other. This Christmas is no exception.
Her and I have been friends for over thirteen years now. Between then and now, time has taken us all over the place; different schools, different lifestyles, different goals, and different tastes in nearly everything—but despite that, we’ve always remained the bestest of friends.
Today, I’m thankful for soulmates.
Here’s to the firestarters
Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Proverbs 29:18
We all may be alive in the technical sense of the word, but could it be possible that we all carry parts of ourselves that have died long ago?
When we were children, we loved without abandon, questioned without hesitation, dreamed without guidelines and lived without limitations… But then we “grew up”, and much like the proper adults we were expected to be, we put walls around our possibilities and became “realistic”.
But How much of us died because of that?
Somewhere along the way, many of us have lost our drive for life and settled for mundane mediocrity. Have you ever looked at middle-aged people earning minimum wage in dead-end jobs and wondered what series of events led them to where they are today? Surely they didn’t dream of being a Wal-Mart greeter when they were a child. What happened? What went wrong?
How to organize your computer and still remember where you put everything
If you’re like me, your desktop probably doesn’t look like this most of the time. In fact, if you’re anything like me, it probably looks more like this.
As part of Operation: Clean Out The Engine Sludge, I recently reorganized my entire computer and put every last file away where it belonged. If you’re thinking, gosh, that sounds like a lot of work, it is. It took me about 2-3 hours and freed up about 10 gigabytes in space, but it was well worth it.
Today I thought I’d share with you how I organize the files on my computer in a way that makes them easy to find again, even if I leave them there and forget about them for months. I call it the “How To Organize Your Computer And Still Remember Where You Put Everything” system, or “The Alphabetical Reference System” for short.
Bring on the cheer
Its officially December. This may not be terribly exciting news to you, but to all considerate Christmas lovers around the world, the coming of the twelveth month means one thing, and one thing only:
We’re officially allowed to bring on the cheer.
It’s a little known fact that singing Christmas songs, playing Christmas songs, referring to Christmas songs, putting up Christmas decorations, having Christmas decorations up and having a Christmas tree after January 30th and Before December 1st is considered a no no.
Malls don’t always follow this particular unwritten code, but this year, I think we can let them off the hook—with that whole economy thing going on, nobody can blame them for trying to pump out premature Christmas cheer in hopes of sustaining what should be their busiest time of year.
This may be incredibly difficult to believe, so brace yourself, but some people don’t like Christmas. Some people don’t even celebrate it, or any other cheerful equivalent of it. Some people say it’s just a big hullabaloo (that’s an actual word by the way, did you know that?) created by the commercial giants with the intent to suck away all our money. And you know what I think?
I think these people need a big dose of HAPPY! CHRISTMAS! CHEER! shoved up their backsides.
You know you’re spending too much time on your blog when…
Chanel says: (8:18:46 PM)
so I had a dream about [redacted]
Marissa says: (8:19:26 PM)
OOOH TELL ME ALL THE DIRTY DETAILS!
Chanel says: (8:19:45 PM)
it wasnt THAT good
Chanel says: (8:19:51 PM)
actually, it was quite weird
Chanel says: (8:19:55 PM)
he was sitting next to me
Chanel says: (8:19:59 PM)
very close to me
Chanel says: (8:20:19 PM)
and then something prompted him to lean over and whisper in my ear,
“so I heard you blogged about me”