Christmas at home!

after 13 hours from dallas to tokyo and 4 1/2 hours from tokyo to beijing, a night in beijing and a 3 hour flight from beijing to kunming, i am home. kate and i got back yesterday at noon, went to see rosemary play a basketball game, and then went to my mom's company christmas party... had a good long talk with zhang jin, then hung out with alison and melissa, our cousins in every sense but blood... this morning we just stayed home and had a service as a family, did our traditional advent reading and lit the candle. our tree looks like it always does - junky. :) mom refuses to throw away ornaments we made from burnt matches in middle school, paper cutouts from kindergarten; pictures of us in tiny homemade frames make a timeline of the years. kate and i have been unpacking our trunks and frantically wrapping the christmas presents, so that the office, where we've stationed ourselves, will no longer be "off-limits" and the rest of the family can check their email again.
it's a beautiful winter day here in kunming. the sky is that faded blue that i love, a mountain sky. we can see the mountains clearly against the horizon, layered against each other in shades of blue and grey. my parents make the same jokes i remember year after year - inside jokes that only our family would understand, a one-line reference to our stories. it's good, good to be home.

I have not been asleep since 10 o'clock Tuesday morning. That's a long time. The only reason my eyes are open is because my eyelids have rusted in place. It's kind of hard to breath. I have a page and a half yet to write before my essay is officially long enough for my professor to give it a look, instead of automatically assigning an F. I'm sorry, an E... I forgot, there are no F's at UF. Like there are no French fries in America, only freedom fries. As if anyone really cares. Who thinks of these things? I feel like I'm trying to squeeze just a few more drops of blood out onto the paper, but I'm about bled out. I honestly don't have anything more to say than what... I've said. Yeah. Everything has a bit of a green tint to it. But did I mention that if I survive this, I can get on a plane and sleep for 30 hours? I'm so tired I don't think I'll even notice that the seat is too small and my knees jut out into the aisle. The bumping of the drink cart against my shins will be nothing but pleasant butterflies in my dreams. I long for sleep like an addict longs for opium... And at the end of that long somnolent tunnel, there will suddenly be a babble of Chinese voices, the smell of noodles, a crowded taxi ride down new four-lane highways and - home!

Punchinello

I got two comments this week. Aren't comments great? I feel affirmed when I have comments. People, often total strangers (and it's even better then), have acknowledged my existence and approved. It's like the mini version of getting an award. It's like a Wemmick getting a star instead of a gray spot. Have you ever read that story by Max Lucado? I think it's called You Are Special... It's actually quite profound. I'll look it up, hold on... Here's the publishers' description:

"Every day the small wooden people called Wemmicks do the same thing: stick either gold stars or gray dots on one another. The pretty ones--those with smooth wood and fine paint--always get stars. The talented ones do, too. Others, though, who can do little or who have chipped paint, get ugly gray dots. Like Punchinello.
In this heartwarming children's tale from the best-selling pen of author Max Lucado, Eli the woodcarver helps Punchinello understand how special he is--no matter what other Wemmicks may think. It's a vital message for children everywhere: that regardless of how the world evaluates them, God cherishes each of them, just as they are."

Aaaaww....

Happy Christmas!

I bought a Jewel Christmas CD two years ago and finally removed it from its clear plastic wrap today. I had forgotten about it until now. Listening to Jewel sing happy songs was something of a pleasant shock, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. Though it is once again in the high 60s and too hot for a jacket in the afternoons, Derek from next door left us a Christmas present and I am now in the holiday spirit. What a cute boy - he brought us a little sprig of mistletoe and taped it over the front door.
So I know I said I was signing off for finals and all that, but after all, I'm trying to write an African Lit paper. Thus I feel compelled to follow the tradition begun in my very first blog, and procrastinate shamelessly by publishing nonsense on the web instead.
I have now been sitting still, with my hands folded across my expansive Thanksgiving stomach, for about fifteen minutes. It's not that I actually had anything to say... I just don't want to do what I'm supposed to be doing.
But isn't it strange to think about quarks? Did you know they have names like charm, beauty, truth? (Of course you did, it's only me who doesn't know these things...) I sometimes think that the most basic particle, the one we haven't found yet, is just a ring of suspended energy, linked to the next ring, and so on. And one day God will sneeze and the universe will destabilize. Evaporate.
I sneezed in the middle of chemistry class today. It was very dramatic - I had to drop my pencil and catch my face with both hands, it was that powerful. My mom sneezed when I was talking to her on the phone last night. She has a great sneeze, like a walrus who's been startled... It made me even more homesick - it's been growing in waves ever since I got our plane tickets in the mail, and that was weeks ago. My passport and visa came today. But anyway - sneezes. If you go here, http://www.subservientchicken.com/, you can make the chicken sneeze. Or riverdance, or fence. But he won't do everything. He couldn't figure out how to paint his toenails.
My stalker Indian friend has been telling me about algebraic topology. It's not very interesting, I'm afraid, at least to me, because at the end of the drawings and examples I ask him, "So what does that mean?" and he just shrugs and says, "There is no practical application." Maybe I'm being close-minded, though. I mean, at the time, was there a practical application for the Pythagorean theorem?
Well, enough babbles for the day. Pause for rueful laugh. What a waster of cybernetic space and time I am. I hope that you, dear reader (my single reader...) can come away feeling intellectually superior, at least, and so I have encouraged you.

WHEW!

oh, it's back. ohmygosh. what a relief. i thought i'd lost them all... that's a lot of thoughts to disappear at once. i felt strangely brainwashed.

oh nooooooo! where are all my posts? i've just lost a semestre's worth of journal entries! sob...