Christmas Traditions

It's time for a Christmas-themed KITTENPAUSE.

So being confined to a tiny apartment is just no fun. I realize I should probably be working on Goldwater and my poster and REU applications, and the various and sundry things I have to do, but motivation level is low and that's my excuse.

I'm done with Siah and the first semester from Hell! Surprisingly (at least for me), ObLab was not the worst part about this semester, and the one class that I quite enjoyed going to, was actually my worst grade (take "worst" with a grain of salt, I'm a perfectionist).

I thought I'd share some of my Christmas traditions and maybe other people can share their Christmas/whatever holiday you celebrate traditions.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is the traditional Polish Wigilia. We have home-made pierogie (cheese and sauerkraut, yum!), mushroom soup, fish, mashed potatoes, and other stuff I'm probably forgetting. Usually my family hosts, because we rotate holidays among the family at large, but not always (for instance, this year there just isn't the room). Sometimes we have traditional pierniekes - polish anise cut-out cookies, though those aren't specific to Wigilia. We also do Oplatek (Oh-pwah-tek) which is a sharing of the Christmas wafer during which you wish every other individual good things for the new year (in our household, it's usually "health, wealth, and happiness"). This is also the time my family exchanges gifts with my Dad's parents and siblings.

Christmas Day

Wake up really, obnoxiously early because you're soooooo excited for presents! Wait at the door to the parents' room until they finally come out, and Dad sets up the video camera so we can open presents. Open everything possible, go to Mass, come back for some of Grandpa's Polish sausage, scrambled eggs, and rye toast.

Around 3 o'clock it's time to go to "The Estate," the house in the city where my great aunts and uncles live, and where my Dad's father grew up. Here we have a Christmas dinner, also generally Polish food, and open more presents! But you get a number and you have to wait until your number is up to open them. Also I generally get deigned "Santa's Helper" and have to run the gifts to everyone.

So that's what I do for the two days of Christmas. There's also the tradition of watching Rudolph, A Christmas Story, and The Santa Clause while eating Boy Scout caramel popcorn, which happens over the duration of the Christmas season, but hasn't started here yet...

What does anyone else do? Favorite gift ever? Christmas decorating with carols and dancing? Percy the Puny Poinsettia singing?

all right, you go have a very Merry Christmas with your family!

KITTENPLAY

Fail.

Kittenpause!

I'm back from the deceased! And by that I mean I've finally gotten around to posting something again. Yay for finals and interesting ways of procrastinating!

My thermo teacher is still evil, by the way. We had our last test before the final that's on Saturday. I made two silly mistakes but hopefully he doesn't take too much off for it.

okay so I came up with three ideas to talk about:

1. Improbability of the moon and the Universe in general
The moon, our moon, is precisely the right size and at the right distance to allow total eclipses. What is the significance of this? Does it imply that life needs total eclipses? Does it imply that the moon didn't form naturally? IS THE MOON ACTUALLY A SPONGE (obviously not).

2. The weirdness of the internet culture. Just in general, but in specific the fact that you can know pretty much anything about another person and they can have no clue you exist. This was always weird with movie stars and such, but now even more "average" people are becoming well known, and that's kind of skivvy. I mean, for all I know, you all have figured out every last detail about me - where I go to school, how old I am, my favorite place to read... and I mean you've learned this about me not from seeing me face to face, but just from what I like to call "facebook-stalking" - you make friends with someone and then look at all their pictures and try to figure out what kind of a person they are... whether to decide if you want to be "real" friends with that person or you have a more nefarious purpose in mind... Just in general, it's weird how much someone can know about you without you ever knowing anything about them.

3. Stargate - SG-1 - About a month or so ago (maybe 3 weeks? not sure...) I started watching SG-1 on Hulu because Stargate Universe just came out and I wanted to get more background for the series. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with SG-1. I'm in season 3 now, and the plots seem to be better thought out, moving away from cultural encounters to scientific adventures... it's on Hulu if you want to join me in my adventure. It's going down March 5 I think, and there are a ton of seasons, so get started as soon as you're done with finals!

Okay. Good luck on finals. Enjoy life.

SG-1 current episode: 3.13

kittenPLAY!