mainly about food

I think I've eaten more (junk?) food in this past week than I have all semester at school. For example, for breakfast yesterday I had cookies and a mug of hot cocoa with mini-marshmallows. Having a huge Christmas Eve dinner is a tradition in my family, so my day ended as about as healthfully as it had started--for dinner we had: Butternut Squash and Onion soup with ginger, garlic, and cinnamon, Mache Salad with Roasted Beets, Chevre, and Hazelnuts, Roast Beef, Mashed Potatoes, Asparagus with a sauce of sherry, heavy cream, mushrooms and shallots, and homemade truffles and coffee for dessert. For a while I felt like someone was going to have to roll me to the 9 pm vigil Mass, but as soon as I stepped outside the frigid air snapped me out of my food-induced stupor and I made it to church without assistance. And the food-filled fun won't be over until Monday: Christmas dinner (Roast Turkey, Gravy, Mashed Potatoes, Candied Yams, Stuffing, Green Beans, Creamed Onions, Cranberry sauce, and some sort of dessert thing) will be at my grandparent's house in several hours and then tomorrow, when all of our relatives come to visit (oh, it's the most stressful time of the year...), we'll have a huge pasta dinner (pasta and sauce, fried peppers and onions, meatballs and Italian sausage, salad, garlic bread, and Italian cookies for dessert). Basically, I'm going to be spending a fair amount of quality time at the gym on Monday.

Deo Gratias

Lux fulgebit hodie!

I was at the mall for approximately four hours this afternoon, Christmas shopping, and I now remember clearly why I loathe going there. When I was younger I was a little mall-rat and that was the hot place to be on any given night (Oh, the excitement of sneaking cigarettes in the corner outside, watching the cops kick brainless young teenage boys out for fighting, trying on clothes, and eating in the foodcourt.), but suffice it to say that my opinion of the mall has changed drastically since those days. The exciting thing is that I probably have to go back there tomorrow, because my shopping is not even close to done.

random song lyric:

his clothes are dirty, but his hands are clean
and you're the best thing that he's ever seen,
stay lady stay

It's still snowing, and, gosh, there is snow everywhere. It's windy and seven degrees outside--it's only 9 am, but I don't expect it to get much warmer as the day progresses. I'm probably the only one who finds this exciting, but bear with me, I haven't seen the snow in quite a while. There's about half a foot of pure, powdery snow, the whitest white imaginable. Think of the most dazzlingly white thing you've ever seen and that's the color of this new-fallen snow. The color of clouds. Of radishes (the inside, of course). Of meringues.

I'll try to make sure my next post is not about snow...

from November:

Taste how it shines
the day as it is leaving
the gray light
the cold, sharp as a knife
sweet clinging dust-and-ashes tang of woodsmoke
susurrations of the dead
leaves on the pavement.
Even here the seasons must change.
I dream an anticipatory dream of snow and
cities spun of icy wind and glittering lights,
but this evening:
the patio and the lawn are flooded with yellow
(it's only five o' clock),
there is cigarette smoke on
a bitter breeze that lifts the leaves.
See how the trees are framed against the sky, see how the grass is wet and dark, see how the pale stars fade in
silently.
Do you see?
The pale stars dance on the void, dance silently on the face of the void.

It's snowing right now, I can see it coming down steadily in the glow of the streetlight.

house and home

After a full day of traveling yesterday (an hour drive to the airport, two uneventful flights with a three hour layover between them during which I was subjected to horrible Christmas muzak, and then a 45 minute drive home listening to symphonic arrangements of Led Zeppelin songs) I'm on the right side of the country in one piece. There's still nothing quite like coming home to houseful of people thrilled to see you, going to your room where there are clean sheets on the bed and collapsing into a sweet, dreamless sleep knowing that you don't have to get up at any particular time (and when you do, you can eat breakfast in your pajamas). Home again, home again. It's wonderfully wintery here and we are supposed to get snow tonight and tomorrow; my fingers are crossed for a White Christmas. (All of this is still a bit surreal: on Friday after finals I was chilling in SoCal in a t-shirt and flip-flops in balmy 85 degree weather and now I'm bundled up and it's not chilly outside this morning, it's cold, there's a thick layer of frost on everything, the trees are stripped bare, and the sky is thickly covered with steel-colored clouds. It still boggles my mind that I can fly straight out of an endless summer and into the heart of winter in one day.) Tomorrow I'll go Christmas shopping, to the gym, and run other assorted errands, but today I'm going to 1. seep some more, 2. go to my grandparent's house and have Sunday dinner/my family birthday party, 3. go to church. It's so good to be here! (Last week was one of the longest, most screwy weeks of my life and it started to feel like I'd never get here.) I miss my friends already, but this is a much-needed break.

Apparently I haven't posted since November. And now we're half way through December... So, finals week is in progress and so far, so good. Of course, I still have my seminar, lab, and philosophy finals left, therefore, it is still possible for this week to suck a lot. I'm just glad it hasn't yet. And I get to fly home in four days! Four days from now I can sleep in my own bed, sleep in as late as I want to (note the emphasis on sleeping)and be with some of my favorite people ever. And now I have to go, because I'm running on three hours of sleep here and am therefore unable to write anything of interest right now.