Home for the holiday

[bironic]

Happy post-Thanksgiving/post-weekend. Long time no entry. (Again.) I spent a week or two finishing an extracurricular job and generally being too busy, and then one week in New York visiting family and remembering how to slow down.

The Thanksgiving trip turned out to be really nice. It provided an opportunity to reconnect with my mom, dad and sister as well as a chance to get to know better the people who are basically stepfamily now: dad's fiancée and her extended family, mom's boyfriend's son who is living at home for a while. Sometimes it involved troubling late-night conversations—more common as I grow up—but for the most part things were lovely. There was a day trip on a boat, some shopping, bonding time in the kitchen, ceiling painting, box packing and old stuff chucking, some couch lounging...

I also got to show my friends A. and Mr. A. around Long Island for a day, attended my other friend A.'s baby shower and spent a long afternoon at the company that used to employ me/destroy my will to live. You may recall stories if you read this LJ up until 2008. I hadn't been back since I quit to go to grad school five years ago. The visit was actually great. About a dozen people I'd worked with were still there, somehow, and there may be contract work in my future. The worst (aside from the fact that the office relocated from 25 miles/60 minutes away from my old house to less than three miles) was that one of my favorite former coworkers, who'd also left and for whom I'd done some freelance jobs, died of a freak intestinal issue over the summer. He was only 28 and had a brand-new daughter.

After driving back to D.C. with Pop Culture Happy Hour podcasts for company, I unpacked a bunch of boxes of books and CDs and assorted other things I'd never moved down here. The Vampire Chronicles! Sandman graphic novels! Poetry! School yearbooks! Old writing now on a Flash drive! Seder plate! Wine glasses! &c. &c. It's nice to have the books in particular. *hugs them* Three and a half years later, my little studio apartment starts to look well-furnished.

.

What else. I told you about the Dracula ballet. synn and I went to the annual Crafty Bastards fair a few weeks ago and played Hipster Meme Bingo with the merchandise, keeping an eye out for moustaches, zombies, bacon, robots, T-rexes, tentacles, owls/cute baby animals, cupcakes and narwhals and stuff, with bonus points for combinations of the above (t-shirt with UFOs abducting dinosaurs! prints of UFOs abducting penguins! tote bag with Obama punching out a zombie!). So that was amusing. Not that I am immune to all of those tropes. No cephalopods this time, but I did get a greeting card with a tiny penguin.

'Tis the season for gift shopping/making/giving. And Festividding. (Half a draft done.) And snow. And sweaters and blankets. And maybe finally acquiring a TV stand that will hold my hundred-pound CRT as well as a shelf of DVDs. Dear vendors: giving load capabilities in flatscreen inches is not universally helpful.

Comments

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I know there was other stuff in your post and I'm happy for you, but I'm just amused to find that hey, there ARE other people who still own CRT TVs. We still don't have a flat-screen. Or, for that matter, an iPhone. A nice, sturdy support is definitely required, though XD

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Yes! Besides being a lazy cheapskate, I like the picture quality and the fact that the aspect ratio never gets messed up. When this one breaks or I finally get fed up with trying to find a non-defective converter that'll let me hook it up to my laptop, it'll be flatscreen time, but until then, I will be old-fashioned.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

*insert sensible cmoent from someone not being sat upon by a small redhead*

[bironic.livejournal.com]

*waves*