Back in New York

I look a little morose in this picture, but you get the idea. I’m tired, y’all. It’s about midnight and I just got home from JFK about a half hour ago. I’m hungry and I really don’t want to unpack, but I have to at least get some of it done tonight so I can move around in my bedroom (it’s a bit wee). The good news is, my free wifi is back! The other good news is that I was able to take the photo above with the camera on my brand new MacBook, which was sorely needed for the pursuit of writing. I’ll miss Iphegenia Doubtfire (my old iBook G4), who has more than served me well and deserves her retirement. She hasn’t died, though, so I can still use her if I start feeling nostalgic. (I’m only half-joking about this; I’m unreasonably sentimental about stuff. I think this has its roots in the fact that I used to believe all my toys, from the stuffed animals to this electric candle I used in a choral concert one year in middle school, had personalities with desires, goals, expectations, even itches.)

My new computer’s name is Viola, after the main character in my favorite Shakespeare play, Twelfth Night, to match my iPod Sebastian. Now that I’ve finally found and installed Microsoft Office on Vi, I can continue with my MB revisions and hopefully get those to my editor in a couple of weeks. Okay, time to put some of my stuff away…I just remembered, my mother packed me some pierogi to take home, and that needs to go into the freezer STAT. A bientot!

365 days…

That’s how many days until next Christmas. Next Christmas, I swear I will be prepared. I will have my presents bought by the end of November and Christmas cards (imagine!) written out before Thanksgiving. I will do it! Next year, I will be an adult!

Oh, who am I kidding? I’m the biggest procrastinator, next year I will write the exact same post I wrote below, about how I didn’t get anything done until the last minute, what a slacker I am, goals for the NEXT Christmas, etc. Well, at least I’m consistent.

So how was everybody’s holiday? Mine was spectacular. I thought I would be sad because this would be the first Christmas I didn’t spend in Chicago, and it was in a way, I missed my aunt and uncle and cousins and grandmother something awful, but also it was a very low-key holiday, just me and my siblings and my parents, and we were relaxed and happy and the food was still totally delicious. My mother, upon my request, made a full Wigilia dinner on Christmas Eve and then we opened presents and ate cookies and then they even let me get away with putting the kibosh on Pasterka (we went this morning instead) because I was so super jet lagged. This morning after Mass we watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, which my brother bought me for Christmas, and ate the Giordano’s pizza my aunt and uncle had sent to us from Chicago (dinner at Giordano’s is a Christmas tradition for the Molzabs). I’ve had plenty of time to read (right now I’m devouring East of Eden) and I even was able to fix my iPod because my sister generously donated the use of her new MacBook Pro for the cause. I had a long chat with my cousin Emma tonight, Jenny and I drove around Dublin/San Ramon looking at Christmas lights, and tomorrow I’m going with my mom to the outlets, I think. Sigh. This is the life. I feel so happy and relaxed; California is good for my soul.

One thing I didn’t do is send my manuscript to my editor, because I keep thinking up new things to do with it; sometimes it’s stuff that I should’ve fixed but slipped my mind (there’s one or two of these) and sometimes it’s a desire to make sure everything is absolutely right before I send it on, but I do intend to fix everything I can and get it in my editor’s inbox by the 31st, which is my deadline.

Anyway, I’m just really content right now. I feel like I’m really getting the break I needed, nothing is stressing me out. I’ve never had that experience before during the holidays. I’m thankful for that. Happy Holidays, everybody!

Random thoughts

• I’m number one in my facebook March Madness pool! Last year I was dead last pretty much the whole way through, because my bracket was basically random and I picked University of Illinois to go all the way, which sucked when they lost in, like, the second round. This year I always picked the top-seeded team to win unless I was attached to the bottom seeded team, which means that I usually sided with California/Pac 10 teams or Jesuit universities, since I went to one (my school isn’t good enough to participate in March Madness, so I never have the urge to, say, put them through to the end despite all odds, like my b-fri Cambria did with USC this year). It’s working out well so far, but I don’t expect to be on top for too long. Still, it’s nice not to be last; that was my goal.
• As far as I know my roommate and I haven’t gotten an electric bill for March, but our lights are still on. I don’t know. It’s been bugging me. I really doubt we overpaid last month. Now would be a really bad time for my electricity to get cut off.
• I planned an egg hunt for the people in my office yesterday, and it went really well. I got up super early and went to the office before anybody else got there. It was really strange, because I’m always, like, the last person there in the mornings–so eerily silent. But I hid all the eggs and around 3:00 I set everybody loose hunting for them. I was worried it wouldn’t work out very well because I thought there wouldn’t be enough eggs, or everybody would find them very quickly and it wouldn’t be much fun, or that there would be party poopers. But none of that happened! Actually, they looked for the last egg forever and it was, of course, right in front of their faces; Alex actually picked up the table it was on, didn’t see it, put the table down and it rolled off and into a corner and he STILL didn’t see it. It was pretty awesome. I also got a chance to show off my non-math skills, having miscounted the eggs and then being unable to calculate how many there REALLY were. According to me, 34 is a multiple of six. I’m very embarrassed, but hey, I never professed to be a math whiz.

• Why does the word “whiz” have an “h” in it when the word “wizard” doesn’t?