Recent life
So, what have I been up to other than being emo? Well, not nearly enough. In the later part of last year I started working with the local temp agency once again, but unlike last time when I got a fairly steady if boring job for a month, this time there hasn't been so much. I've been able to get some work through them but not enough to count for much besides mitigating expenses. This year I plan to get a full-time job, whatever it may be, in NoVA, because being stuck down here with no friends in the area to hang out with isn't going over too well with me.
Christmas
Christmas has always been a happy time of year for me. This year I wasn't feeling quite as happy overall through Christmas, but even with that it cheered me up a bit. My family gets a real Christmas tree each year and while I always feel like they're smaller than the year before, they always end up looking great standing in the corner of the living room. We have a lot of ornaments that go on the tree (more than will generally fit, so we have to pick and choose) and these ornaments have been collected over the years. Some we've had as long as I can remember, some were gifts to us on various occasions, but they all have memories associated with them and we tend to talk about those things as we decorate the tree every year. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, but then I'm a sentimental person.
My family likes to eat... on any kind of special occasion we like to have a very nice meal. It helps that my mom is a great cook. For Christmas the tradition has been to have a roast or other red meat for Christmas Eve and a sort of Thanksgivingish dinner Christmas day. When everything's ready for these meals it tends to look so lovely and scrumptious I take a picture.
I got some nice things for Christmas that I'm sure I'll enjoy and make use of for quite some time. For one thing, I got a rice cooker! I'd never seen one used before going to W&M, but living in the J-house and then making regular use of one while living in Japan, I wanted to have one on hand for various cooking endeavours. 'Tis a very nice one, and apparently I can even steam vegetables in it while it cooks the rice.
Also got a messenger bag, because I needed something to carry things in when going places and the old bookbag I have is very high school. It's quite comfortable and functional, couldn't be happier.
The other gift of note is a clock/radio that my iPod can hook into... my old alarm clock made one of the most horrible sounds one could possibly wake up to. This lets me wake up to my music, which is much more pleasant and actually seems to be more effective for me. I still have the old alarm clock at the ready in my room so I can set it a little after the first one as additional encouragement to go ahead and get up the first time.
I'm also especially pleased with the gift I got for my mom, which was a wine rack. I think it's a nice addition to the kitchen, and it's practical considering we tended to have several wine bottles sitting around in there anyway. It's looking a little empty right now:
Kitchen
If you've been to my house before, you might notice that the walls in the kitchen are no longer decorated with awful 70s flower wallpaper! Right after Christmas my mom decided it was time to go ahead with the plan to take down the wallpaper and repaint the kitchen. It's now a nice shade of red, with new wall plates for light switches and electric plugs and lights under the overhanging cabinets. The countertops and flooring are still pretty ugly, but they are on the agenda at some point in the future.
As much as I liked the addition of the wine rack to the kitchen and the partail makeover it got, I've been thinking that I'd probably really enjoy trying to get a place of my own looking really nice whenever I have one. I'm looking forward to that.
After
Since Christmas there's mostly been more... uhh... hanging out with my family. My sister headed back to Charlottesville for her last semester at UVA yesterday morning. Things were definitely a bit livelier here with her around... she's pretty much the opposite of me in almost every way: extremely talkative, outgoing and confident. This evening we had tasty shrimp for dinner... Mrs. Leggett from across the street gives us some every year. She and her family used to own Suffolk's seafood store until a fire above it and some crap with the city government forced it to close down for good. She still has the connections though. After dinner had tea and played Scrabble with my parents... sounds incredibly lame I guess, but it was better than wasting that time at my computer like I usually do.
Well, that's about it. While I was getting the picture on to my computer, I ended up looking back through some pictures I took over the summer... made me a bit sad, but strengthened my resolve to make my life now one that I can be happy about. I'll try to keep you up to date.
Christmas
Christmas has always been a happy time of year for me. This year I wasn't feeling quite as happy overall through Christmas, but even with that it cheered me up a bit. My family gets a real Christmas tree each year and while I always feel like they're smaller than the year before, they always end up looking great standing in the corner of the living room. We have a lot of ornaments that go on the tree (more than will generally fit, so we have to pick and choose) and these ornaments have been collected over the years. Some we've had as long as I can remember, some were gifts to us on various occasions, but they all have memories associated with them and we tend to talk about those things as we decorate the tree every year. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, but then I'm a sentimental person.
My family likes to eat... on any kind of special occasion we like to have a very nice meal. It helps that my mom is a great cook. For Christmas the tradition has been to have a roast or other red meat for Christmas Eve and a sort of Thanksgivingish dinner Christmas day. When everything's ready for these meals it tends to look so lovely and scrumptious I take a picture.
I got some nice things for Christmas that I'm sure I'll enjoy and make use of for quite some time. For one thing, I got a rice cooker! I'd never seen one used before going to W&M, but living in the J-house and then making regular use of one while living in Japan, I wanted to have one on hand for various cooking endeavours. 'Tis a very nice one, and apparently I can even steam vegetables in it while it cooks the rice.
Also got a messenger bag, because I needed something to carry things in when going places and the old bookbag I have is very high school. It's quite comfortable and functional, couldn't be happier.
The other gift of note is a clock/radio that my iPod can hook into... my old alarm clock made one of the most horrible sounds one could possibly wake up to. This lets me wake up to my music, which is much more pleasant and actually seems to be more effective for me. I still have the old alarm clock at the ready in my room so I can set it a little after the first one as additional encouragement to go ahead and get up the first time.
I'm also especially pleased with the gift I got for my mom, which was a wine rack. I think it's a nice addition to the kitchen, and it's practical considering we tended to have several wine bottles sitting around in there anyway. It's looking a little empty right now:
Kitchen
If you've been to my house before, you might notice that the walls in the kitchen are no longer decorated with awful 70s flower wallpaper! Right after Christmas my mom decided it was time to go ahead with the plan to take down the wallpaper and repaint the kitchen. It's now a nice shade of red, with new wall plates for light switches and electric plugs and lights under the overhanging cabinets. The countertops and flooring are still pretty ugly, but they are on the agenda at some point in the future.
As much as I liked the addition of the wine rack to the kitchen and the partail makeover it got, I've been thinking that I'd probably really enjoy trying to get a place of my own looking really nice whenever I have one. I'm looking forward to that.
After
Since Christmas there's mostly been more... uhh... hanging out with my family. My sister headed back to Charlottesville for her last semester at UVA yesterday morning. Things were definitely a bit livelier here with her around... she's pretty much the opposite of me in almost every way: extremely talkative, outgoing and confident. This evening we had tasty shrimp for dinner... Mrs. Leggett from across the street gives us some every year. She and her family used to own Suffolk's seafood store until a fire above it and some crap with the city government forced it to close down for good. She still has the connections though. After dinner had tea and played Scrabble with my parents... sounds incredibly lame I guess, but it was better than wasting that time at my computer like I usually do.
Well, that's about it. While I was getting the picture on to my computer, I ended up looking back through some pictures I took over the summer... made me a bit sad, but strengthened my resolve to make my life now one that I can be happy about. I'll try to keep you up to date.