It seems everyone is working around here.

[guanin]

My Dad and stepmother and cleaning up the lawn and I-m consciously avoiding starting on my essay. I was going to give myself the day off today, but I took a break last night by reading the entire novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter, which I couldn’t put down even to eat. The denouement seems to come much too quickly, but it's a short novel (a tad less than 300 pages), so obviously it couldn't span the humongous amount of material that season 1 did. The TV writers really fleshed out and added a lot of stuff, which I think ended up working better, so I do like the season better than the book, but I still couldn't stop reading. I love how Lindsay writes Dexter's thoughts, the little inside jokes and mocking asides.

My presents were all duds. Apparently I didn't make it clear to Dad the other day that I don't like getting clothes. Now I realize that the reason I gave was that all the clothes my aunt and grandma get me are too big because for some reason they get from the Petites section of the department store when they're sizes run at least two sizes bigger than the Juniors. I'm also very picky. So I ended up with three shirts that are way too big for me. *sigh* They used to give me money, instead, but they stopped for some reason. Why do women over fifty have this need to give you clothes? I'll get my own, thank you. I'm the only one who knows what I like. I should have just told Dad that I wanted a DVD, which I did now, so he’s giving me money instead. Really, I should have learned better after he gave me a pajama shirt last year (I don't wear pajamas), which oddly fit, but has spent it's whole existence with me shoved in the back of the closet. He never used to screw up my presents like this. He was practically the only one who gave me stuff I like. I don't know what happened.

I miss Christmas. It's completely different without mom. This and New Year's are the only days in winter when I wish I were in Illinois, where my family is. There it's fun. Here it's just us. Not so great. Then again, it's FREEZING over there and there's snow everywhere and my grandparents haven't left the house in a week because it's so fucking cold. And that's why I refuse to be over there in winter if I can possibly help it. Makes me wish they lived in the Southern Hemisphere so then Christmas would be in the summer.

And I just realized that I did yet another depressing post. Ack! The other night wasn't so bad, by the way. After a few awkward moments of not looking at each other in the face, my friend actually started the conversation as if nothing had happened. We didn't say anything about getting together before she left, though. And I still don't want to talk to the other one. We should be going to the movies this weekend, though. We'll see how that goes.

Comments

[drakochi.livejournal.com]

Hello! Passing by to wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy new year! Health, happyness and success for this new year!

My mom and me decided to buy presents for my younger bro and sis only. We get ourselves whatever we need/want without having it under the tree. I'll just get myself plenty of Dr.Who novels. Other than that I work 5/6 days a week during vacation time XD I am less useless that way.

[guanin.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Right back at you.

That's a good deal. That way everyone's happy. This presents thing can get really insane. My grandma used to get presents for her great-grankids, but now there's 19 of them and she says no way. That's too much money. When I'm in PR, I just get presents for my Dad and my stepmother. *snort* I say I'm on "vacation", gesturing the quotation marks. I just finished the intro to the first essay, 370 words out of 3,000. It feels good that I'll be getting it out of the way soon.

[drakochi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was wondering about it. How do semesters work in UK? I mean I thought you have one semester from September to December and the next one starting in January... So how come you have homework on Christmas break?
And good luck on your essay! What is it about?

[guanin.livejournal.com]

The undergrads in my hall started mid-September, but my uni started Sep. 30, so it was really October. So since that gives us less time in the first semester (and I can't figure why they arrange them that way), we hand in our second first term essays a week into the second semester. Either that, or they want us constantly busy so we don't get out of rhythym, which I tend to do if I have too much leisure time.

Thanks! It's about the emergence of caudillos in post-Independence Latin America. Basically, after the colonial government went to pieces, there was a power vacuum, no one could decide what kind of government they wanted to replace it, and warring factions and coups broke out all over the place. In the midst of these, strongmen with good connections and sense of strategy manipulated everyone to become essentially the precursors of dictators. Now that I think about it, Adam would have the skills to become a caudillo.