...Christmas is here...

So this is Christmas.

I do believe it's raining outside. When the weather channel said a 30% chance of precipitation, this is not the kind I had in mind. I'm not sure how Santa feels about it either.

I'm back home in TO for a couple of weeks now. I arrived early on Monday morning and was lucky to get a ride to the Halifax airport around 5am from a friend and also have my parents pick me up at Pearson. Since I've been home, my week has been a bit of a whirlwind, but an enjoyable one at that. I don't like staying at home for too long so I've been breaking up my time with my parents with visits out of town, friends, some Christmas shopping and a couple of hot dates. :) I'm already ready for the Christmas craziness to be over - it just equals a lot of fighting and tension in my house - and I'm looking forward to traveling to London, ON to catch up with some friends for a few days.

I've missed my 'peeps' (don't worry, I winced too) while I've been away and it has been fantastic to see everyone! Thanks for making the time to get together within the hustle and bustle of the holidays. If I haven't had a chance to see you, know that I've been thinking about you and wishing I could be in multiple places at once. Sometimes there just don't seem to be enough hours in the day, and it's difficult to try to satisfy the expectations of family as well as friends around the holidays.

I have to get back to wrapping presents, playing some piano, and making mango salsa for tomorrow's dinner. Yay for Christmas dinner...and by 'yay' I really mean, 'bah humbug.'

I'll try to be more cheery next time.

Maybe.

...there must be something in the air...

There must be something about this time of year that makes people behave differently than they normally do. I'm not sure what it is, but there's definitely something. Perhaps it's exam pressures, maybe it's the change in the weather, it could be the stresses of Christmas shopping, or the lack of caffeine at 2pm because you slept in, missed the bus, and didn't have time to brew a mug yourself...I'm not saying that that happened to me...it didn't...but it could have. On account of the fact that I drink coffee now. (Don't worry, I'm disappointed in myself too.) People are different at this time of year. Sometimes it's a good different, sometimes it's not.

Take for instance this afternoon. I was working my first shift at the Grad House (it's the Graduate Student Pub on campus) and it just so happened that two ornery men decided to give me a hard time over miniscule matters. First of all, one of those tree-hugging-Kashi-eating-organic-food-loving-Latin-America-touring-hippies gave me a hard time over fifteen cents. He was convinced he was a Graduate student, except he's confused. Actually, probably just an idiot and ignorant to boot. Grad students get a 10% discount at the Grad House, but this guy doesn't qualify because he's in his "foundation" year at King's College, which, incidentally is strictly an undergraduate university, thus, clearly he's not a post-graduate student. Clearly. He seemed to have trouble grasping the concept of "graduate." And he calls himself a King's student...I thought they were supposed to be smart.

Guy number two was a real winner, let me tell you. One of the policies of the Grad House is not to tolerate outside products (Timmy's, Second Cup, hot dogs from the crazy vendor down the street) inside the pub. Fair enough. It's not like you would go pick up a bucket of chicken from KFC (personally, I'd never do that) and then go sit down and eat it in Swiss Chalet...As a brand new employee it was my priviledge to go and lay the smack-down on this guy about his illegal coffee...let's just say he wasn't so receptive. Actually he was rude. And argumentative. Hey, it's not my fault that he's now banned from the premises. He's the one who couldn't part with his coffee (granted they do come in those attractive stripped paper cups during the festive season so I can see how this would complicate the issue). A fairly eventful first shift, I suppose.

Of course, this difference in people is not always negative. Sometimes the season can put people in a different frame of mind, making them say and do things that they wouldn't if it were any other month. The season can make people kinder, more generous, gentler. It's easy to romanticize this time of year - I suppose winter is somewhat romatic, what with all those chestnuts, and the roasting of them over open fires. And the mistletoe. (apparently I'm to grind it up and slip it into someone's drink??) One year my family had mistletoe above our front door. I don't think anyone noticed. I think that December has the potential to be a pretty notstalgic month; I find it that way. Everyone remembers Christmases-past, even Scrooge. The question is, what's your favourite Christmas-past memory? Some might be able to answer this more readily than others.

Whatever the effect, whether positive or negative, I'm convinced that this time of year causes people to act differently. Sometimes, almost recklessly.

Anyone up for some good, reckless fun?

Yeah, me neither.

...snow, marriage, babies and being old...

Tonight it snowed. I almost didn't believe it at first, but sure enough when I left the church this evening there were a few white flakes falling (and no they weren't dandruff). I think it's finally turned cold here - apparently right now it's minus 1, I suppose that's good snowing weather.

I've been trying to think of something interesting and amusing to write for you all to read, but sadly it seems like my life is just completely uneventful. In fact, my days are monotonously the same...I wake up, make some tea (or coffee...I know, only since grad school!) and then work on some sort of a paper...writing a paper, marking a paper, reading some well-known (except to me) academic's paper. What a waste of trees.

So I was talking to my friend who lives in England the other day (I'll keep all of you guessing who it was!...very few of you will actually know him) and he told me about some "trouble" that he was having with a woman he'd been working with. Apparently she's "really into marriage and having lots of sex and babies, and thinks that 27 is old." Of course he asked me if I thought 27 was old (yes, positively ancient) and if all women were crazy about marriage and babies (it's possible, but I think I may have missed out on that gene). He then told me I was a "bairn"...silly wanna-be Brit. (ok...maybe he's like half British...but it's like saying I'm Australian...and by that logic I'd be more Aussie than he is Brit since him Mum's Canadian)

Anyway, we then had a conversation about men, women and the problems between them (yes, it was a long talk). I tried to convince him that not all women want to get married and have babies by 27...I'm not sure that he was swayed. He also asked me if I felt more pressure to get married from the Church and my Christian friends and such. (do you feel more pressure??) An interesting question. I told him that I'd never been very good at following the 'dating trends' of the Church and that I never hopped on that whole "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" wagon. It may have worked for some, but I don't think it fit with my personality; it wasn't who I was and who I am. I'm more the "I Gave Dating A Chance" kind of girl. A lot of the time I think that conservative members of the Church look down on that ideology and it's that view that spawns what I think is the perceived pressure from Church-folks to get hitched and in a hurry. What's the rush? Now, I'm not saying that if you've found the person you want to spend the rest of your life with already and you happen to be 27 or younger, there's anything wrong with that. On the contrary, that's fantastic and maybe I'm a little bit jealous.

But what I think is wrong is the feeling of wanting or needing to get married in order to avoid dating...which can lead to individuals marrying the wrong person or rushing into marriage. I think it's possible that people buy into that idea and end up in marriages that aren't necessarily what they should be. Is it really better to be married than to be single and to have a boyfriend/girlfriend or to be dating in general? I'm not necessarily convinced that it is...I guess it has a lot to do with the kind of dating/marriage relationship. At any rate, I don't think that 27 is old, and it's hard to think of myself being married in 2.5 years and being old by that time to boot! (although I do realise that my brain cells will stop regenerating when I hit 25...I have 5 more good months!) There is also the worry of desperation - the idea that if you're not married by 27 you're drying up and had better catch the next car to speed on down the highway. The fact is, the highway's still going to be up and running in the many years to come and it's not like they've stopped making cars. There will still be lots of quality manufactured cars...er, men...at 30...or 35...40. Won't there? Won't there??

I think my friend is being pursued by the marriage-crazed woman he worked with and he's not sure that marriage is really in the cards for him as of yet (I think he just turned 26, in case you were wondering and I'm pretty sure he's an eligible bachelor if you're interested - except don't ask him about marriage, I think it's a sensitive subject). He's worried that she's placing all of her ideals on him and that she might be making him into something that he's not...and I think that's a problem. I also think the fact that she's pursuing him is a problem...but that's a whole other blog...Lucky for me, I don't have to worry about any marriage-crazed men madly pursuing me.

*phew*

For a moment there I was worried...