And thus I return to post again. I hope everyone had a good Christmas, cause, well, I'm nice, and actually, I too had a rather nice Christmas. It was stressful (when are conditions in my family not stressful?) but we got back to the true meaning of Christmas more than presents, which would be...baking. And...movies. So all in all, a generally nice time. Weird having Krista and Jim living just five minutes away, but I get to see Julian quite a bit more often. He's almost three! And he's so cute! Jim apparently narrowly avoided grabbing my ass, thinking I was Krista (sigh) but then got to harrass Stacey today after I straightened her hair ("there are now two sisters I can mistake for my wife!"). Watched Pirates with the family tonight, Freaky Friday last night, and should conceivably watch 28 Days Later tomorrow. Should also make sugar Christmas cookies (yes, we're finally getting around to them) but that's been pushed off for the past three days.

Oh, highlights of Christmas presents included X2 DVD, Fargo special edition DVD ("funny lookin, eh?"), and the 90's game.

I'm amused that thus far, I've talked to Greg every night of the break on the phone. It's really making me feel warm and fuzzy.

Only a few weeks til I go back to Florida. I can't wait for the huggin, but I must say, I am really enjoying my family, for the most part. And Stormy has been so lovey. The break was much needed, esp to get away from all that bull and politics crap. V. nice to get away from the sheer stupidity. And theoretically I won't have to deal anymore anyway, so woooo.

Speaking of family, must watch Unexplained Mysteries (no, not Unsolved) with Melissa.

Oooh! and here are my, um, shoutouts:

Hope Pixie has a better conclusion to her vacation and things get better in general for her.
Am very glad for Alan, now that he has a chick (and a soul).
Hope Katie feels better in general as well. She deserves it.

And now, to the show.

It's snowing. It's beautiful. It's the one nice thing of my bad day so far.

I just heard the fourth gunshot in less than five minutes. Makes me very glad that all the dogs are inside.

I got my grades today. Though I did get a B in French, I'm not pleased with my RCC grade, which was an A-. Am now hoping somehow that I can get it changed, as this does not make, for example, a Yale-worthy GPA.

Jim came by. He took back with him his dog, an extension cord of ours, a power drill of Doug's, and our Christmas light tester, and left behind him a video for us to watch. I have yet to look at the title. Am just happy I did not decide to get in the shower right before he showed up. Again. It's very strange having them only live like 10 min away.

I'm sorry I didn't get to say goodbye to people before I left, like *cough* Michelle. But I was thinking of you!

We made Snickerdoodles. It made me happy.

I'm not exactly looking forward to Christmas. But oh well.

Well, I've finished my finals. Even the dreaded french final. And yes, it sucked. But I don't know how I could have studied any more for it, short of drilling every form of every possible verb for a week, and I just didn't have a week. Even so, I think I had a greater grasp of everything than on the midterm, so perhaps I've done better. I'm shooting for an overall B in the class. If I get that, I will be happy. And I think I have A's in everything else, soooo....good.

But ugh, the one strength I had in the class was taking a sentence and substituting prenoms, and on the final, out of nowhere, we had to answer the questions and put THOSE in that form. I hate how he does that...drills us on one thing and pulls out a whole new form on the test. At least I half expected it this time. And it's not as bad as the other Jill in the class:

Me and Jarred: And this sucked about the test, and this, and this...
Jill: I'm so happy! What did you all think about the test?
Me: We were just saying how we thought it sucked that instead of just taking the sentences and substituting le et la et y, etc, we had to answer the questions first.
Jill (thunderstruck): We had to answer them first?!

That's an ouch.

Also did not help that in the middle of my test my cold did that freaky rearing-its-ugly-head thing. I was sitting there just fine, sucking on a candy cane, and then suddenly I was fighting the urge to sneeze, my eyes were watering, and my nose was running all around the block and back. And of course, we couldn't leave the class to blow our noses or anything, because it was the rule that if you left the class during the test, even for an emergency, the test was over for you. So I'm sure I looked like I was having some sort of fit or something. My nose is all in pain now from my frantic furtive rubbing.

Okie, off to the packing/ preparing room for checkout.

Ahhhhhhhh, finals. Ahhhhh, brain. Ahhhhhhhhh, lack of packing. Ahhhhhh, fridge. Ahhhhhhhhh, french. Ahhhhhhhh, hungry.

This sucks. I have my French final at 8 tomorrow morning. Also, I leave tomorrow for Tennessee.

Saw Pirates of the Caribbean finally this past weekend. Was quite good, but I kind of wish I hadn't heard ten million people quoting the best lines ten million times. Instead of being amused, I was just sort of like, "ah, that's where that was from." Sort of like when I finally saw The Godfather, though I would suppose The Godfather is on some way-high cinematic scale above Pirates.

Still don't know officially if I have good radio news or not...

Back to the studying. A big sigh is heaved.

Added Anjali to links, finally.

I am "done done done" with RCC class. There isn't even a final in there. Woooo.

I had three papers to do. One is done, I'm about to begin the next, and then there's the big scary Dr. Crozier paper. Of course, these other two are due tomorrow. I suppose I had better get on it.

Yesterday I bought myself a box of chocolate-covered cherries (my weakness) and there was still nearly half the box left, but unfortunetely all the ants in my room found the box, so I had to throw it out. You know what this means....

I have to buy another box.

My room is reeeeeeeaaaaallly messy. I have papers to write, shopping to do, finals to study for, fridge to defrost, and then I leave on Friday. I'm ready for the break, but I don't know if I'm ready to leave. If only I could drag Greg with me.

I performed in five concerts this weekend, and got paid for two of them. I am a tired cookie.

Boring, boring, boring.

I can't remember the last time I slept in my own bed on a Friday night. Weird.

Hehehe, Highlander 3 is on HBO2. Like I was just saying, that movie isn't even worth being on an HBO channel. I think the only thing that movie was good for was a near-porno scene , which I recall being like "Wooooooo" when I was thirteen.

Michelle showed me a picture of the wedding dress she's considering. It's preeettttty. Very elf-ish in my opinion. I think I'm still in shock about all this.

Hehe, and Michelle, on AIM, just made The Quote of the Day: "yeah. I though it would be good for all 4 of you. Plus the top and skirt are seprate. Which will work well for those blessed in the bust area."

Oooh, and now that I see Michelle has posted the good news, I can say congratulations! Michelle has a *SPARKLY*. I will be happy if someone other than Michelle catches this reference.

Blogger is being stupid, so this is a test. In other news, the title of the new NIN album is reported to be "Bleedthrough." Okie, angsty.

Last night was crazy, with one "meeting" after another. Still, it was a rather good night. I hung out with Casey and Cherie at the annual Christmas party, had some eggnog, etc. It was definitely on its way to making up for the way I was stranded earlier yesterday. When I got back to the house, however, I had to go to an emergency meeting. Someone smashed a window with a tin trashcan night before last. The guy who's room it was was sleeping, and when he got up he had all these shards of glass sticking out of his neck and ear and stuff. The meeting was semi-productive, and then I had another meeting (gotta love these meetings that begin after eleven) and then I was just falling asleep when....the fire alarm went off. Seems there was an electical malfunction with the heating and it triggered the alarm. At any rate, have I ever mentioned how much I adore standing outside in the cold and on brick in bare feet and pajamas? No? Exactly. And of course the lovely fire department was fashionably late, which is particularly detestable because the alarm had actually gone off for a reason. If that had been a real fire the house would have burned to the ground by the time they arrived. And now I'm sleepy and cranky. Ugh.

I am unbelievably frustrated and depressed right now. I have no reason. It wasn't like a was extremely "up" earlier, but there has been a definite crashing. And I felt it instantly. It's a tough thing to describe, the crashing. The best I've ever been able to come up with is sliding into straight gray. Then, mere seconds later, anger swells up, followed quickly by my shame and frustration at feeling this once again. My reason attempts to smother the anger, sadness, whatever, but it always rears back. And this entire process takes maybe seconds, and repeats extremely fast, so to the outside eye I am simply a bundle of rage. Well, no, to maybe a few outside eyes. The rest don't even see the difference, and I can handle conversations, laugh, and maybe the smile doesn't quite reach my eyes, but beyond that, it's all...fine. The suspicion in my head isn't whispers. It's outraged internal screaming. Obviously, my hormones are working as they normally do. I wasn't as careful with the chocolate this time (holidays), and in fact ate quite a lot of it today (present on my door), so that may be one factor.

Two hours later, I am feeling slightly better, though still definitely not "up." I'm at a total loss as to what to do to fix this. I don't want to pretend to be fine, which probably only shoves problems further under the rug, but neither do I want to dwell. I want to talk to only one person, and that one person is the most likely one to antagonize me. I feel lonely.