I have only recently returned to my apartment, and my internet-based mainstays, on account of the recent holiday season, my lack of a laptop computer, and because I am too cheap to add data service to my cellular plan. As a result, I have only recently been affectionately reunited with Tess, my lovingly constructed desktop computer that doubles as a repository for my life in a crude imitation of a cortical stack. The consequence is that a number of rather interesting things have occurred over the holiday weeks on which I have been unable to comment.
The biggest problem with college as it relates to holidays is its close proximity to finals week. Any Christmas-related tasks left undone prior to that special time remains so until its conclusion, and must be addressed in the few remaining days between my last test and the 25th. This situation has, over the past several years, caused me to miss out on a lot of the fun associated with the holiday season. My mom and brother have their own priorities as well, so our family Christmases have been decidedly less festive since I went to UMBC.
Through an interesting alignment of a lack in motivation on the part of my brother and I, and the superfluous furniture in our living room, this year was the first in which we didn’t have a tree. However, we made up for our lack of internal festivities with a copious light display outside. With that many lux, who would have guessed at our treeless interior?
To make this all possible, Mom had an outdoor electric outlet installed, which saved her the tackiness of running an extension cord out through the front door, her strategy in years past. The work did a number on the outward-facing wall of my basement room, and since we don’t have the paint color of my former sanctuary there are two very large spackled squares in that space.
Among other things, I also managed to join a research laboratory at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, which means I finally have a job that is related to my field of interest. It also means I have to actually wake up in the mornings, and in order to do so must go to bed at a decent hour.