Doesn't really feel like Christmas

Here's what I did on Christmas Day 2013.

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I knew (or thought I knew) I had skyping to do at 7 a.m. so after spring out of my blanket at 6:45 I assembled some silken tofu, fresh veggies, and microwave brown rice into something like a cross between a casserole and a stew and waited for a phone call or a message requesting a phone call or anything. Instead I turned down a friend's translation request, thinking I was busy, and then moooostly killed time for two hours. No, I did do a bit of work. I did.

But I also talked to a friend about how I (or I guess maybe lots of us) have forgotten how to live with other people. Having roommates means you sacrifice privacy for interaction, but that interaction is something people are supposed to be able to do, I think. We should cook together and eat together and watch old movies and discuss the books we read and co-exist in the same space at least some of the time. Living alone is great, but it's great because it's lazy. I guess that is how I've been feeling lately. I want to cop out and say I require that laziness to do all the rest of the things I do, but I bet I don't really. If I could live with a bf, I could live with a roommate, and we all know I'm proactive when it comes to guys.

Anyhow, then I went to work.

I was in a pretty unfestive mood, to be honest. Some guy was breathing audibly into a mask behind me on the train. So audible I could swear I felt it on the back of my neck. Too biological. I was horrified. If you have a cold so bad you can't breathe to yourself, you really really really really really really (etc.) need to stay home. I thought about how I wanted to stay at home and read the Xmas presents from my dad instead of go input data. I didn't wonder what I would have for lunch so much as mourn the fact that my favorite place is closed for the holidays. (They deserve a break, it's not that…) I got mad at everyone on the planet for all the usual reasons like walking to slow. And I got mad at myself for all the usual reasons like forgetting to bring my book. Who forgets their book?! A true lunch break (as opposed to a solo branch meeting of the Association of People Who Work Their Other Job On Their Lunch Break) without a book to read is actually pretty painful. I mainly resorted to switching between my two Twitter accounts, FB, and email. Yeah, painful. Lunch itself was pretty sad, too. A place that has twice been too busy for me to even get in to proved to have lackluster taco rice. Ho ho hum.

Oh right, it's Christmas. I have to say my boss spread more holiday cheer than I expected (anyone to spread?) Besides the mini tree perched precariously (on what, I haven't ever actually looked…maybe a PC tower?) over our desk island that has gradually sprouted more and more decorations over the month, he passed out holiday Snicker bites and M&Ms today. Someone else had a huge box of mikan, too. Kind of made a haul in terms of snacks.

And in terms of data input, thanks to listener-sponsored public radio. I put WBGO in my headphones and immediately felt 1,000x better about my entire life.

And you can count on them to play the same classic tracks I listened to on jazz NPR as a kid at Christmas. That is what I really want at Christmas, nostalgia, lol. There's no way to get back what you had, but you can get the right feels if the right music plays, or the right cookies show up in a box from your mom (the 29th, says the post office).

So somehow it became 6:00 and a few minutes later I had to decide what to eat for dinner. I tried a curry place I had eyed a while back while wandering the maze near Mita station, but in the end it wasn't really worth the trouble to cross to the other side of Tamachi station. Not bad, but not noteworthy. The combination of ingredients was fun, though: bacon, scrambled egg, cabbage, eggplant, and green pepper.

After that I got a little sweet potato cake. I hadn't gotten suckered into one in a while, and X-mas seems as good a time as any. But it's true, I should be saving up sugar consumption for the 12-type strong battalion of cookies coming my way.

I had thought about where I could go to like…see people or whatever, but in the end I decided that I would rather do what I wanted to do in the morning: read a book. So I came home, did the dishes from breakfast, and read. I meant to go to bed around 10 or 10:30 and was on track until I decided to write a blog post, but I dunno. If I don't write down any of this stuff I won't be able to look back at the posts because there won't be any.

Tonight was really nice because of the most part, I was able to just read and read and read without wondering what was happening on my phone. That must mean I was relaxed. It's a shame to be relaxed all alone like that — certainly it would be more fun with someone else — but I'd like to try to spend more time NOT actively avoiding my phone (because that is just as stressful and fake) but just genuinely not needing to know or care what is going on with it (and the Internet).

Tomorrow I am actually skyping with my family, then working, and finally having dinner with a friend I have never met outside of his returning to Japan for the holidays. We met a year ago. A whole year of knowing someone primarily through Facebook. I must be different now. Maybe he is, too.