In my industry, I get one full mandatory vacation every year, so I wanted to make the most out of it.  This is why I’m trying to get out of my industry, to get more vacations.  Anyhow, I wanted to summarize what’s happened in it so that I can look back and say “see you had fun, so get back to work and quit whining.”

December 19 – Some friends came over to for a tea party.  I served them tea and we had a round table discussion about why people go bald and whether people are more likely to commit suicide if they live in Winnipeg than other places in Canada.  I later sent them all an email saying “‘I’m sending you this because I believe that your life will be greatly enhanced by my findings.”

December 21- Went through another round of looking at old photos.  I discovered new things about my family life through a *gypsy*.

December 22 – Went over to Catherine’s to help her learn Eyes on Me and inspire obsession with the microscope.

December 23 – went out for dinner at A Taste of Vietnam.  I’m pretty sure the food of Vietnam looks more like what they showed on the Vietnam special of Top Gear than this.

December 24 – Family gathering at my cousin’s.   Nathan and I made cottage pie.  Our cottage pie is much better than some other cottage pies because our recipe came from thefoodnetwork.ca.  My mom tried to direct one cousin to drink more water and asked if another one was wearing enough layers to go out later that night.  And I was like “SHEESH you’re not everyone’s mother!!!!”  Anyway it was nice seeing relatives now that everyone’s *grown up* LOL.  My family saved time lining up for Boxing Day shopping by doing it on Christmas Eve.  We bought stuff from futureshop.ca.  My parents have finally cracked about buying stuff online.  My mom bought a computer which made her soooooooooooo happy because the one she’s currently using is 9 years old.

December 25 & 26 – Watched a lot of TV.  Make It or Break It and Richard Hammond’s Engineering Connections.  Spent a lot of energy analyzing MIOBI, the American mindset, and comparing it to the British.  Don’t think anyone really wants to read my social commentary, but it’s something that I have a lot of in storage.

December 27 – pot luck at church.  Was really lazy making salad so all I did was make salad dressing, put it in a bottle, and get a box of mixed greens.  Didn’t even bother combining the two together, but that’s a good idea because otherwise the greens start to rot and slime and that’s gross.  Watched the 75 minute Top Gear Bolivia special with Nathan TWICE.  The first time, we were being entertained, and the second time, we watched it to google so I could search up the places they went to and the insects they mentioned.  I do NOT want to go to Bolivia now, not that I ever really had that desire.  We got REALLY creeped out by watching a video of botflies eating through a live person’s back.  Nathan wanted to watch it so that he could creep me out and I clicked on the link because curiosity kills me every time and it doesn’t stop me.  I later creeped him back out when he was plucking his eyebrows by saying that stretched skin reminds me of what it looks like when a botfly is about to come out.

December 28 – went over to Catherine’s again and got really fascinated by her microscope.  The most interesting thing we looked at was bloodworms.  Pictures should be up later.  Also was entertained for hours by the Vietnamese karaoke website.

Today – dinner later with some people I haven’t seen in years.

Life’s alright.  2009 has been good to me.

I didn’t have to tutor on Saturday.  I tried to switch her to a morning time that day but as it turns out, teenagers don’t wake up in the morning.  They get this deer in headlights look whenever you mention the word “morning.”  As a late sleeper, when I say “morning,” I mean after 10:00.  And even that’s not good enough for some people!

While playing Taboo, one of the words I couldn’t say was “sleep.”  To get around that, what I wanted to say was “kip.”   Except nobody understood that.  If more people understood British slang, Taboo would be much easier.

Nathan and I are rubbish at putting up a Christmas tree.  We started two days ago but still haven’t finished.  The lights are a hassle year after year as the 20+ year old bulbs inevitably break and the lights are connected in series so when one bulb doesn’t work, the whole thing doesn’t work.  I had a strong flash back of last year when I was putting up the lights, and harassed Nathan with question after question about electricity because I couldn’t figure it out myself.  Edit: we finished.

Hanging out with my science cohort last night was quite interesting.  While eating chicken wings that somebody brought, someone brought up how they were going to sacrifice eat a turkey that they were raising in urban Vancouver and the rest of us wouldn’t stop asking questions about how one goes about doing this.  The hostess also had a really funny story about the nightmare of TOCing elementary school.  We also stopped the game of Cranium we were playing so we could discuss why negative numbers multiplied together became positive numbers.  It was a very heated discussion.

I feel, not strangely, at home with a bunch of nerds.

Nobody cares, but…On Friday night, I learned that Amanda Knox and Raffale Sollecito were convicted of murder in that Italian case from 2 years ago.  I always thought Amanda had some part in it, though I question if she actually murdered her roommate.  The biggest tip off for me was her inappropriate emotions.  If you’re wrongly accused of murder (or anything), how would you feel?  I would be flippin’ mad.  She never showed any of that in her court appearances.  Some argue that maybe over the two years, her anger dissipated because she was weary of it all.  Maybe she was angry while behind bars and the media didn’t get wind of that.  However, she was never reported to be angry, but family reported that she tried to remain positive.  After the guilty verdict, her dad showed anger, but all she did was cry out of sadness and “disappointment.”  If it had been me, I would have been seething with rage and disgust.  Yeeeeessssss, many people think she’s innocent and have good points to argue there, but we’re not the jury so whatever.