Setsuled's Journal

The gift I received the most for Christmas (I think four times) was the whimsically unlabelled Starbucks gift card. I have no idea how much money is on most of them, making each coffee purchase an enlivening game of Russian roulette.

All in all, it was a good Christmas, better than I've had in a while. I'd say the high point was reading Caitlin's journal entry.

I woke up to-day at 1pm--a big difference from yesterday's 6am. And I feel better. I stayed up until 3am, first talking to Cryptess, then playing Pictionary with Ha, then watching Eddie Izzard--I really did manage to stay up far later than my body felt like it wanted to. I call that--Victory!

I'm wondering if I'm something of a schmuck.

I'm gonna tell you this story and I want you to tell me if I'm justified in feeling kind of burned:

Okay. Everyone asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Mostly I couldn't answer--I was having enough trouble trying to figure out what to get everyone else. But once, when I was at Lake Arrowhead and my mother asked me, it hit me; I wanted the Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD. I mentioned it, and my mother said, "Okay."

Now, I'd almost forgotten about it by Christmas. If I'd never seen it on Christmas day, I don't think I would have been bothered. But Christmas morning, at around 9am, when I'm opening presents with my parents and sister, suddenly my mother brings up a package to "the family" from Bella, the new dog (a tiny, adorable, half Chihuahua, half Yorkie thing). It was the Indiana Jones trilogy--"In widescreen!" my mother points out to me because, most of the time, I'm the only one who cares about that.

So basically, it's like I received it for Christmas. Only I can't watch it most of the time. I can't watch it on my own. I can't lend it to someone if I wanted to. I can't take it with me. Hurrah.

Well, okay, maybe I am schmuck. I'm certainly not gonna bring this up with them. Why sow animosity? And after all, they are buying me new contact lenses and they gave me two Nightmare Before Christmas shirts--that I genuinely like--from when they went to Disneyland without me a few months ago.

I went with them to see Cold Mountain and I fear I may have unintentionally soured the experience when, after the movie, I talked about how I didn't think it was Anthony Minghella's best movie by any means, that while it had some nice components, the whole wasn't so great. I talked about how, in some movies, I find over-prettification to be insulting and disturbing. I didn't like the juxtaposition of very realistic, bloody Civil War battles against the idea that in this reality, Nicole Kidman and Rene Zellweger will always look as perfect as magazine perfume advertisements, no matter how rugged their situation and setting, and Kidman's love scene with Jude Law shall look like an advertisement for Godiva chocolates, even though they're making love in an abandoned wood shed in the snow covered forest.

Returning here last night, I received a new journal book from my aunt. I mean, three journal books with a very nice, interchangeable sleeve cover for all of them. I mean, it's really nice. I'm happy to have it.

I sat down to watch the rest of the Farscape DVD I'd gotten on the 24th only to find, halfway through an episode, that the DVD had a warp in it that prevented the DVD-ROM from reading it further. Annoying.