i took some rather unimpressive photos while i was home in chicago this christmas. sadly, they don’t even come close to capturing the essence of my visit.
the first days before christmas seemed to drag on forever. too much family and shopping, not enough coffee and nicotene. it snowed on the first night i was there, but after that it was fairly warm. no white christmas, after all. instead, christmas in mokena, il. it was a pretty good christmas party. lots of wine and cheese. my dad and my aunt almost got in a fist fight when i said i wanted to drop out of school and get a job. sounds kind of weird, right? well, my aunt thinks i should absolutely positively get my PhD. she sums up her reasoning in a question: “what else are you going to do with your life?” so i was spared, as i have an infinite number of alternatives to graduate school and a career as an academic bullshitter. my dad, however, took the whole conversation as a bitter affront on his useless PhD. it was kind of uncomfortable and made me think of all the cool places i could spend christmas instead of at home if i had mucho dinero.
once christmas was over, time flew by pretty quickly. i spent my time catching up with friends for beers and good times. the highlight was seeing some friends from high school. there were some engagements, but thank god no kids.
lesson learned this trip: 9 days is way too long to spend in family-land, no matter how much money i saved in airfare. in the future, i’ll spend the extra dough on an earlier flight back to sanity.
back in austin, i’m incredibly relieved. still a little woozy, but relieved. i took my sister and ginger out for punk rock pizza last night. i also saw Peter Pan which was a magical tittilation of the ol’ heart strings. my sister didn’t agree, but i for one had to choke back a couple tears. i do believe in fairies!!
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