Quickly, quickly:

Rolled into P-burg two days ago and have already bounced from Rockport to the in-laws', where I now sit (no Internet at my mom's. Eep) preparing to do Xmas Eve-y stuff.

A couple of hours back, I finished my annual reread of Hogfather, which was very nice and lifted my floundering spirits a bit. This year's been wretched for December depression. I'm not sure why. I NEVER get the holiday blues. Not like this.

Maybe it's Spyder's voodoo curse. Like a bad mojo grenade. I shudder to think.

Nng. I better go be sociable. I have lots of people to write and no time to write them in. Feh. Bloody holidays.

But Stacy and I go see T2T tonight, and that will be very very good. I need a break from my vacation already. How fucking sad is that?

Okay. The time that my watch says it is can't possibly be right. That would mean I slept until ... gaaaaaah.

I write this from Jeff Miller's cozy flat in historic Morgantown, midway through my Appalachian holiday odyssey. It's chilly here in the town of my alma mater, and pale and wintery up there in the sky. Which is only right. Wooch. Happy Solstice.

I showed up much later than I'd planned on last night, which is the pitfall of packing at the last minute and playing a kind of Tetris with the bags of presents in the trunk of the car. But it was a pretty good trip, and I got to listen to Nature and Organisation while going through Cumberland (Michael Cashmore = fuckin' genius) and even managed to stay up waaaaay too late doing four years' worth of catching-up. Aiya.

Now matters of food must be attended to, and the commencing of the last leg of the quest. Back in a bit, hopefully.

Oh, yeah, and The Last Dark Art #3 went up today, only a month behind. Whoohoo!

Wooch.

So - Xmas shopping very nearly done. Week about to start the downslope. Weather not acting up for a week now. Things are pretty good.

I've been so fucking out of it ... I owe lots of people letters and phone calls and whatnot, and I spent all weekend not able to make myself do anything. Gaaaaaah. Think I got a bit of the holiday blues this year, for the first time in memory. Dunno why.

I depart for P-burg on Saturday, with a possible stopover in Morgantown that night for a long-overdue reunion with Jeff Miller ("the other Jeff, the vegan one"). Stacy will be in Texas, of all godsforsaken places, attending her friend Rachel's nice upscale Jewish wedding, and won't make it to WV until Sunday, so I get to make my odyssey to Appalachia almost as drawn-out as I like. This looks to be a nice change of pace from the rush-madly-home holiday trip of previous years, and I look forward to't. Been making sure I have lots of tunes for the road; why my office ever let me near a computer with a CD burner in it is beyond me, but waste not, want not.

Plus, At Nearly 29, I Discover I'm a Lesbian

Had a long drawn-out heart-to-heart with Martha A. on Friday night, wherein I confessed all sorts of odd things about my sense of self that I'm only recently coming to terms with, including how strongly female-identified I feel very much of the time, which is not an easy thing to say out loud, though Martha's one of a handful of people I can talk about that with and there's not even a hint of judgment. And she told me after I'd rabbitted on about it for some while that she sometimes thinks of me as a woman, which is one of the nicest things I can imagine hearing after putting my heart on the plate like that, even if she was just making it up. Erm.

Anyway, once it was out there, it sort of explained a lot. Lynx told me about ten years ago that it's obvious I actually like women (as opposed to the sense most guys mean that, which translates as "I like to fuck women"). That really meant a lot, and it's maybe become even more true as I've discovered how little I connect with men, even most of the ones I'm close to. (There are exceptions. Andy for one. Jeff Miller for another.) My real soulmates tend to be female, and somehow that's where my deep self resonates, like that's what it recognizes. Or so it seems to make sense to me.

So there you have it. Underneath it all, I'm a chick. There are worse fates.

(Which is probably also why I recoil so strongly when Stacy explains some marginally undesirable behavior on my part as "Well, you're a guy," which is the kind of thing that causes my inner c*nt to bristle with indignation. Oh, gods, that's a dreadful image. But nonetheless.)

Oh, and Martha also gave an enthusiatic thumbs-up to the sex scenes in A Thousand Thrones ("You can tell it's not just porn because there's all this lesbian drama"), which was sort of the acid test to see if I've actually done my job, and I felt unconscionably proud. So there you go.

Something too much of this, as Hamlet the Dane said once when he was about to go too far. Le sigh. Nothing to be done.

Hrm. I suppose I'll go burn some more CDs now (The Highbury Working seems appropriately Solsticey, somehow) and await the arrival of my Nature and Organisation disc, which I ordered ages ago when it was out of stock, but I'm told should show up any time. Mmmmmm. Cashmore guitar.

Oh, yeah, and get some work done too. Feh.

The second week of December has little to recommend it. It's neither close enough to Christmas to be really exciting nor soon enough on the heels of Thanksgiving to sustain the warm turkey-flavored glow, and besides, there's no LoTR movie opening this week. It's just gray and cold and, as of this morning, covered in a layer of ice from the freezing rain.

Ack.

Last weekend was full of much holiday shopping, which was good, and fruitful; only a few left to take care of now. Discovered that the Montgomery Mall has a Hot Topic, which is a fine thing indeed, although when I finally picked up my longed-for "Not All Who Wander Are Lost" sticker and brought it home, I found I'd at long last run out of room on my guitar case. Very sad. It had to go on my comics box, which is not quite so appropo, but what can you do.

Also managed to see Treasure Planet on Sunday, mostly with my mouth open and making small noises, and thinking "Aha - this is why Spyder's seen it like forty-five times now." A fine offering from the Mouse, and a great concept well-executed. Highly recommended. And not just because the cat-chick space captain has Emma Thompson's voice, though that doesn't hurt things at all, at all.

Not much else in the offing this week. Martha A.'s coming over on Friday (other Martha's out of town, and we get second pick, which is pretty nice). No writing has been done. It's been that kind of month so far.

Not looking forward to braving the icy wastes in Wheaton tonight. Damned weather. Feh. Bollocks.

I need a drink.

Ai ya! SNOW!

The Fimbulwinter, which seemed to pass us by this year, has returned in earnest, with a vengeance. It is white as anything outside. Very Solsticy. Really a very lovely day out there, once you get past the cold and the hazardous driving/walking/standing around conditions.

I am, somehow, at work (though let us make the distinction right off between "at work" and "actually working"), drinking mint hot chocolate and listening to a few of the shitload of Porcupine Tree CDs Tony burned me over the weekend, anticipating that this will be a short day if the University has any damn sense - not that the latter is anything to bank on.

I should very much like to be home, bundled up in something warmish and comfy, perhaps having a pipe. It seems the thing to do.

Got a lovely package from Spyder yesterday, in the form of a way supercool Jenny Haniver poster with the lyrics to "Cocteau, Goya, Blake" on it. It made my week; many warm fuzzies. As I said to Stacy, I am very lucky to have such wonderful friends.

Some of whom I owe letters to, I think. It's that sort of time, in any case.

Speaking of time, have I really just blown my first hour on nothing but slack? It seems so. Well, alright. Sweet.

Safely returned from PA late late Saturday (or early early Sunday - did you know 114 intersects with 15 at a really convenient place south of Harrisburg? I sure didn't, but if I had, I sure as fuck wouldn't have driven all over Creation looking for a sign marked "Gettysburg" for as long as I did, nor had to prop open my eyes with toothpicks for the last hour or so of the drive home. Live and learn, though).

Ah, family. Families, as Jed Walker says in The Wake, "do both - they rock and they suck." Yup. It was about 90% good, though, and we sure ate a lot. And spent an appropriate amount of time fawning over, and loving on, and bonding with, Babby Nicholas, who is about as cute as should be allowable by moral law. There are many photographs now, which if I'm smart I should not allow out into the world, lest it become known that I'm some kinda poufy sensitive guy who likes kids and stuff.

Oh - wait. Never mind.

Also got a sort of Christmas advance, first in the form of some grandmaternal spending money, which got mostly blown the next day at the Encounter's big Black Friday sale, where I got a shitpile of cool gaming & comics stuff. And second from my mom, who took me and Tony to Dave Phillips' music store, where we both left with new twangy things. Tony got a mandolin, which I promptly moved in on when we got back to the house and tried not to get too much drool on. And I got a Martin Backpacker, such as I've been lusting over for, oh, three years or so now, and am very, very happy. I will never travel without a guitar now ever again. Ever ever.

And the DC NaNo "Thank God It's Over" party is on Friday, where I'll go and see if anyone remembers me from a month and a half back. Whoohoo!