visions of sugarplums

Winter break is about to start! My classes are over and I feel like it's time for me to transition into being a real adult. Time to crank out my research and prepare for entering the working world! Okay this will be a long transition, more than a year. That's okay. I need to look at the end goal in order to even start running down the field. But first... the holidays!

The weather in Massachusetts is wacky, to say the least, and in two days I'll be back in San Diego where the weather is nothing but predictable. I have no major plans for San Diego, but it will be the first time James spends Christmas with my family. Hmmm...! I feel like this is a big deal but I'm not sure what else to think about it. Christmas tradition for me involves meeting a lot of my parents' neighbors and making awkward, polite conversation about what I do in Boston, eating lots of home-baked cookies, going to church on Christmas eve and hearing the same verses read that I hear every year (although the church we go to these days has a really nice brass quintet), eating tasty appetizers with the extended family on xmas day, walking around the neighborhood to see the ridiculous light displays (my parents' 'hood goes overboard), and inevitably fighting over the car with my siblings. Some highs and lows, obviously. My favorite parts are: cooking for my parents, singing in church (the only time I sing at the top of my lungs in a public place filled with strangers), hanging out with the kitty cat Sushi, picking fruit from the backyard, and sleeping in till 10 without guilt. Nothing is more comfortable than my bed at home - it's like some kind of magical time-warp cashmere cloud that sucks away any conceivable jet lag and knocks me out for 10 hours nightly. Or that's what it seems like, anyway.