Peter

zinco @ 4:26pm: Ah! What better way to spend Christmas than reading a high school acquaintance's Facebook updates.

S. christmas this year SUCKS!!! no one to love on me and to make matters worse... when you get older, its not so exciting... so EVERYONE in this house BUT me and the dogs are sleeping... soooo NO PRESENTS FOR [S.] YET.. some BS! i wana just run into my parents rooms and be like "WAKE UP ITS CHRISTMAS!!! oh sorry... i thought you missed the excitement of your child on christmas morning"
6 hours ago · Comment · Like

S. so my parents finally woke up... 1030 they woke up... then dad decided 1045 was the proper time to leave for mass... its 1135 and the gifts are STILL WRAPPED under the damn tree.. cant get my new whip yet, no man to cuddle with, cant unwrap the gifts i spent 2days wrapping... this blows... lmao!!!
4 hours ago · Comment · Like

S. DADDY'S HOME WHICH MEANS WRAPPING PAPER DESTROY TIME!!! hoping a sweet sexy man is in one of these gifts but santa is a failure so im not expecting that... LETS HAVE AT IT!!
4 hours ago · Comment · Like

S. fuk this damn holiday! i cant wait for it to be over... not even on xmas can we sit down and do something together... i swear to god just effin kill me... moms in the god damn kitchen doing what the hell ever and dad is getting all into my business why i'm pissed off... cant we just open the god damn presents like a normal family on christmas morning? nope... not this family.
3 hours ago · Comment · Like

S. seriously concidering packing up the truck and going back to NC tonight
about an hour ago · Comment · Like

S. i spent 9hrs shoppin on black friday and 2days wrapping b4 christmas so the shit would LOOK NICE from under the god damn tree... we cant even have a peaceful family day at christmas. no... my parents take it upon themselves to lecture me about god and the poor. i will NOT be up here for xmas next year bcuz im tired of not being appreciated by my family.
35 minutes ago · Comment · Like

Hopefully your Christmas is free of irony, although no one's ever is.

pigeonrat @ 10:35pm: Huh, Avatar is estimated to have grossed $73 million this weekend.

Yet I still haven't talked to any actual person (or, hell, seen anyone post on an online forum or anything) who is, or was, genuinely excited about it. When my sister and I were leaving the Rifftrax satellite thing at 9:40 on Thursday night (it was great) and saw some people lined up, and I realized the only thing they could be waiting for was the midnight premiere of Avatar, I was absolutely aghast. I mean, I have nothing against it, maybe it's really good, I don't know; I just haven't seen anything at all that gives me any motivation to go see it. (Although the Golden Globe nominations are somewhat intriguing. But that's not the movie itself creating the interest, you know? It's someone else saying that the movie is worthwhile.)

Anyway, good for James Cameron, I would have felt bad for him if his baby had crashed and died like I feared it might.

I saw Precious today and liked it a lot.

pigeonrat @ 9:51pm: It's been a long day. And Brittany Murphy died!

pigeonrat @ 6:32pm: ( Snow pictures )

Bonus picture of my sister's cat:

pigeonrat @ 4:04pm: There really is a LOT of snow outside.

I went out and walked around for awhile (about an hour and 20 minutes). The snow was up to my knees. The roads are totally crazy. Right next to my parking lot, a car was stuck and blocking several drivers in both directions (it must have been stuck for awhile for that many cars to build up, given how few were driving around that way). It got unstuck shortly afterward. I didn't see a lot of other stopped cars in Shirlington, but from 31st St (the road I live on), you can look down onto 395-south just past the Shirlington on-ramp, and it was crazy how many cars were stopped right in that area. It was a death trap. From the time I left my place to the time I came back, that side of the highway was either blocked completely or nearly blocked, with a single stream of cars edging through until one of those cars got stuck. There also was a plow on the side of the road that didn't seem to be able to move, and then another plow came through, and then fifty yards later it looked like THAT plow got stuck. It was just awful, but I have to admit, watching those cars and trucks spinning their wheels and waiting to see if they would manage to get going was sort of mesmerizing. I stood there quite awhile on my way back, just watching.

But walking around on the mostly deserted streets was pretty fun and I guess I did a good job of bundling up. I was very, very tempted to flop down and make a snow angel in that beautiful pristine snow, but I resisted, primarily because there were other people around and I didn't want anyone to see me fall down and think I was having a heart attack or something. Across the street from my place, a little girl was sledding down a hill with her mother and having a great time. (It would have been dangerous because they could have gone down into the street at the bottom, but, seriously, if any cars came down the road they would probably have a good ten minutes warning before the car actually reached the vicinity of the hill, so it was pretty safe.)

I'm glad to be back home now. I haven't yet done any of the productive things I thought I would do with my snowbound day, but there's still time. And I am well-supplied with Oreos and clementines. Right now I'm going to play Sims 3, though (and I'm probably going to witness the birth of the tenth-generation descendant of my original Sim! Yes, I'm a total and complete nerd, but it's not like I could go out right now and do totally cool and hip things even if I wanted to, okay?!?!).

pigeonrat @ 11:20am: There sure is a lot of snow outside.

zinco @ 2:38pm: I haven't posted about anything in my life for more than a month, in part because there's not too much going on, and in part because what is going on—Erin's cancer and its treatment—isn't something I much like talking about on here, since it'd primarily deal with my reaction to someone else's misery, which is mildly awkward. Erin is tired a lot of the time, and while sometimes she likes to see me, other times she's not up to it, and even when she is up to it she feels bad when I come over and we don't end up doing all that much due to her not having the energy.

I really need a job, but I haven't been looking because I haven't been happy. And I'm unhappy because I don't have a job. Actually, I'm unhappy for a lot of reasons. And since a few nights ago, I've started feeling persistently high-strung, in a way that Aunt Carol said sounded like how she felt following or prior to a panic attack, and what Nate said sounded like a manic episode. Manic or panic? I don't know, but it's not all that pleasant, and kept me from sleeping too much a few nights ago. I don't necessarily think about the things I have in my life that are stressing me out, but they've been building, evidently. When I was working at Dunkin' Donuts I developed an eye twitch, which kept going for weeks. I wondered if it was from work-related stress, and it disappeared immediately after I quit, so that may have answered my question. Right now, I don't feel incredibly stressed about any one thing, but there are many things. I think about Grammy, I think about Erin, I think about Carol, and in all that I spend much of my time alone and not doing very much. (I am making an effort to get better at drawing, however.) I'll get on working when the new year rolls around, as at this point I haven't got much of a choice if I want to keep occupied.

Ah, and it's Christmas time, and I've only shopped for two people, so far. I intend to go to a craft fair in DC sometime soon to pick up something for Mom, at least, and hopefully some other people as well. It'll be crowded as hell, though.

pigeonrat @ 8:50am: Oh my God, it's so foggy in DC this morning. I honestly had to ask myself more than once if I was on the right highway, the highway I've taken five days a week for most of the last three years, because it looked so strange and desolate. You could make out the buildings right next to the highway but anything beyond that was just a world of white. It was unsettling but pretty neat. I'm still not sure I didn't just pass through some kind of portal into a parallel universe.

pigeonrat @ 8:30pm: I shouldn't worry so much about stuff.

On an unrelated topic, I nearly forgot I need to order some Vermont syrup in weird bottles for my parents for Christmas.

edit: And on another topic, almost all my Xmas decorations are up! Wreath, lights on window, tree, tree lights, ornaments. All that's left are the knick-knacks. The lights make it feel Christmasy and nice in here.

pigeonrat @ 6:00am: Yesterday's Twitter posts

• 11:53 #RiffTraxSANTA Please bring me an OPPO BDP-83 Blu-ray Disc Player with SACD & DVD-Audio!! Thank you! j.mp/3ZHgcL #
• 12:03 @rifftrax Can I ask you guys: will you ever do another HP movie? Pretty PLEASE? POA was a YEAR ago! Can't wait to see the show on Thursday!! #

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pigeonrat @ 1:08am: BTW, I saw The Fantastic Mr. Fox today and it was awesome. It was SO Wes-Anderson-y, but all the visual design was amazing. How the heck do you create a foaming fire extinguisher using stop-motion? (Maybe that wasn't done in stop-motion but I think it was. I definitely look forward to the DVD commentary.)