The Festival of Geekery
Yes, I am one of those people who has never gotten the warm fuzzies at Christmas. Obviously, I enjoyed copious amounts of gifts as a kid, but as I got older the excitement wore off and was eventually beaten to death with a shovel, when my mom asked my dad for a divorce on Christmas day
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I generally don't mind bouncing from place to place over the span of a week. I get stretched thin, filled with anxiety and depressed when I'm expected to play Dr. Manhatten and teleport from house to house in the course of a day. Luckily my families are more laid back about taking different days in return to quality time than they used to be. Mom and her side generally gets either the Saturday or Sunday evening before Christmas and My dad and my siblings (I have two younger siblings from my parents and an older half brother from dad's previous marriage) get Christmas Eve. As if having a mildly (who am I kidding?) dysfunctional family wasn't stressful enough, Joe's mother insists that not only do we need to come over on Christmas Day, we need to tell her what time we're coming, at least a week in advance. I'm not sure why. There isn't a formal dinner or anything. When they do have food it usually has an abundance of shrimp in it, which will maim or kill me. Yay, food allergies!
Personally, I'd rather spend Christmas day being selfish and lazy. Curled up on the couch with my pajamas, Joe, the cat(s) and a good amount of ale, playing games or watching the Invader Zim Christmas episode. I should look into Santa Clause Conquers the Martians.
Your Christmas Branch sounds fucking incredible. I like quirky non traditional Christmas decorations, but can't get myself to part with having a pine tree. I like using a lot of black, red and blue in my decorations. Right now a corner of my living room looks like Tim Burton threw some lights on it and then vomitted on top of them. The tree itself has several winter themed Cthulhu ornaments, a pirate, a zombie, a severed head, several light sabers, Cloud Strife as Santa and a moonanite among other geekery on it. The only thing I did to make the kitchen festive was get some of those glittery birds they sell at the craft store and tie them to my grapevine wreath with some thick copper wire. Sparkly and industrial. Fantastic.
Next year I'm thinking maybe we'll try to go for a steampunk Christmas. We'll see how my mood is by then.
Also, yes! I got your gift! I took it out and put it on right over my jeans! Talk about sexy. I'm going to take a photo of it in action over the next few days, so stay tuned for that.
I'm such a nerd that I also carefully placed aside the paper and ribbon to use in my journal at some point in time.
BTW, I forgot to mention this in your journal entry, but you mentioned you have steampunky stuff that you've made. Do you have photos? I'm a huge fan of your wire working skills (I drool over your bracelets, not even kidding.) and haven't gotten anything shiny for myself in a while. If you do, let me know and we can converse more via email. artful.danni@gmail.com
<3
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Lots of mismatched clock hand earrings, some brooches made of clock hands and microchips (okay, not exaaactly steam, but I'm more of a steam/cyber or general retrofuturepunk gal...) and generally a fair number of pieces involving bits of hardware. I'll try to dig up my digital camera sometime in the not-too-distant future.
Your families sound a lot like ours--only M's dad's family really celebrates Christmas proper (M's mom and stepdad are Jewish, as is my dad, and my parents are generally pretty flexible about holidays), but they take it SUPER EXTRA EXTREMELY seriously (and also have a hard time keeping track of food allergies--mostly, they don't really understand the cross-contamination thing, which makes Christmas a fun exercise in trying to balance the need not to offend with the need to keep breathing), so they expect us to be there the whole time, even if it means not seeing as much of our other families (to whom we're much closer).
*sigh*
I'd love to eventually have New Year's be my big winter holiday. It's secular, I like the symbolism (new beginnings and continuity at the same time!), and it gives me more time to address cards.
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I agree with New Year's. I usually make small, secretive resolutions such as: 'Quit being emotional over ridiculous things when you know damn well it's a ridiculous thing!' and 'Draw more'. I like the idea behind it and I like the lack of obligations that come with it.
Also, futurepunkish pieces work for me. I like metal, gadgets, watch bits and wire.
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