Merry Belated Christmas and Happy New Year!

I bet you all are tired of hearing about how tired i am all the time. Well, I will leave that out of the equation, but let me just tell you that the following took place within three days.

daN and i had about 22 hours each more worth of work to do than we thought we did. We had planned on leaving for Maine on Saturday, December 22 (our anniversary!). We didn't. We spent the day wrapping and cooking and finishing presents and cleaning our filthy apartment. We got about 4 hours of sleep, cleaned some more and packed the car, and then we left for Maine around 9:30 in the morning. We were one of three cars on the road, so we actually made it to Rockport to see daN's nephew within 3.5 hours. Whew! We weren't even speeding!

Sunday night, we hung out with daN's brother and sister-in-law playing Karaoke Revolution. Christmas Eve (Monday), I helped my Mum get ready for the evening's festivities at Nana's house, and then we took off for her place. Christmas Eve at Nana's is always wonderful. I love my family. It's so much fun, and we really savor each other. I feel so lucky.

Christmas morning, we actually slept in just a little, and then Christmas presents happened where we were staying at daN's brother and sister-and-law's place, and another of his brother and his girlfriend were also there. People arrived a tad late, as is how it goes, and the orgy of present opening commenced, followed soon by dinner. We got to hang out with everyone there (including daN's mother, brothers, and their respective significant others) and then we went to my Dad's house in Gardiner for Christmas there with his girlfriend and my halfsister and my brother. It was a good time. He made a real full on dinner, which was a wonderful break from a lot of the rich foods that had been on our plates in the meals before (not that there is anything wrong with rich food).

Yesterday, I took a bus home. Let me just say that I had a great time. daN and i stole walks, which made a big difference. Thank goodness! But he is still in Maine, and I went to work today and will be going to work tomorrow, and then walking to South Station from work and taking the bus up to Maine tomorrow afternoon.

At any rate, I'm kind of glad to be back to MA for the day or two. I got to have coffee with Q and Kate in Davis Square this afternoon and do some more housework yesterday afternoon. It wasn't the bad.

New Year's plans? I have no idea. I am sort of hoping that we'll be able to come back to Boston on New Years Eve instead of New Year's Day so that I have a day to recoup before going back to work for another three days. We'll see, though.

I can say this... or, ASK this, rather: when are we allowed to make our own Christmas tradition? It's tough to do when you live in another state and don't have kids. It seems that children are the metonymy for the license to one's own holiday traditions. Can getting closer to 30 and just not being energetic enough anymore for all the running around be a good enough reason?

That all being said, I had fun. I am getting to the really fun point where I get so excited about giving things that I forget that I will receive things, too. And I got some great presents. Extremely heartwarming presents. There are always the hilarious gifts from my uncle that hint at my baron and void womb; the framed photo of me and daN from my Mum's wedding; the cranberry chutney, spiced blueberry jam, and the handmade candies from my Mum; the cashmere stoll from my Dad; the great movies and trail guides... it was a good time. And all usefull! Ooh! I also got some Bailey's Irish Cream and an inflatable mattress! AND, daN got me an iPod dock that has all kinds of great converters for other countries and it's completely portable! And it sounds great. I'm listening to my podcast of CarTalk right now.

I should go. I have to pack for Maine. Again. And i would LOVE to do some yoga! Yeah... i'm getting excited now. Anyway, happy new year!

Visited States Part II



create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

It's a bit more respectable than last year's. Hopefully, this year I'll add California and some other West Coast states to the list.

On a Closing Note before the weekend before Christmas:

I think I am finally settling into adulthood. It feels great to be able to say that. daN and I have decided we’re going to move south of the river to Jamaica Plain sometime soon after the new year, but we’re going to rent. His commute from Somerville to Foxboro is too long to put it off any further, and we realized that we won’t be able to afford house payments AND graduate loans. Since daN plans on going back to school soon, and then myself after that, it didn’t seem like a good idea to put ourselves in the position where we wouldn’t have ANY money to spare each month, knowing how much grad school costs.

At any rate, the point is, we’re settling nicely into adulthood and making good decisions and are more comfortable with ourselves, our pasts, our interests, and where we are in our lives now. It feels good.

Flying Humans

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/sports/othersports/10flying.html?ex=1213592400&en=bde797c2d885f22b&ei=5087&excamp=NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-1219-L2&WT.mc_ev=click&WT.mc_id=%20NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-1219-L2

I promise to do a real update soon. In the meantime, check out this crazy article about flying humans!

Photos!

Long awaited, I finally posted photos of Mum's wedding, our Christmas tree, hanging out at Dad's this summer _ with many artistic views by daN of Dad's cat Toonces _ and, also, on my new Facebook profile, some of Friendsgiving. Sorry, but I don't know the link for that one yet. However, you can see the others at picasaweb.google.com/lindsay.leclair

Enjoy!

1. "Don't Catch Colds" Pass
2. YAY CHRISTMAS!

We are putting up our tree today, so not a long post, because we need to go GET the tree.

Anecdotally, I think that my "Don't Catch Colds" pass has expired. For several years, I managed to not catch whatever was going around. This year, I've been catching nearly everything that's been going around. I guess my immunity was good for a certain set of microbes, and now the microbes have outgrown my immunity, so now I have to catch new microbes and strengthen my immunity.

That's all well and good, but the upshot is that I've been unusually under the weather this season. It's a good thing I decided against being in the company holiday play.

Also, I'll be 28 this Thursday! If you're in the Boston area or have the evening of Saturday the 15th free, we'll be celebrating at Do Re Mi Karaoke at 442 Cambrigde Street in Allston. Please come! But let me know so I can reserve the properly sized room.

YAY TREE!

Catalogue Choice: Ever feeling like you're getting an inappropriately large number of catalogues?

Paper use has a huge impact on the environment, and each year catalogs use 53 million trees and billions of pounds of paper. Processing and transporting this paper results in billions of pounds of
carbon dioxide emissions, and requires 53 billion gallons of fresh water. This website gives people who shop via catalogs the choice of which catalogs they will receive and those they wish to stop.

www.catalogchoice.org

Kudos for the Week

1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold -- a book
Read it. It's a wonderful narrative whose structure supports the theme without making it difficult to read, which is more than I can say for many other books that I've read recently. While it deals with heavy hitting subjects and afterlife, it still manages to reinforce the idea that human experience matters. It might be my favorite book that I've read this year -- I don't know, though, it's a tough call between The Lovely Bones and John Irving's recent opus Until I Find You.

2. Little Miss Sunshine -- a movie
Last night we finally watched this movie, and it's a hillarious and yet life-affirming black comedy. It managed to expose the trials of human awkwardness in a funny way without being overly pejorative or critical. To me, it seemed to celebrate the varieties of human experience while being sympathetic to its many horrors. Little Miss Sunshine was just the right combination of "these poor people" + "holy shit, that's really funny!" + "oh, no, what next?" to retain its poignancy and avoid being too painful a la typical Ben Stiller movies.