Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. It is a confusing holiday now that I am older, because on one hand my birthday is right before Christmas and I hate having a birthday. Right now I am dreading turning 25. But then I want Christmas to come and I have to turn 25 in order for that to happen. I love to cook so the last two years Christmas has given me a chance to show off my skills to my extended family. I love wrapping presents. I don’t really care about getting gifts but I love giving gifts. I love finding the perfect gift for someone. Christmas is also confusing because the last few years I rarely get to keep what I get, instead it all goes into storage for when I might someday move out. Somewhere in a storage container is my beautiful dish set, my entire knife set, a host of other cookware, a ton of books, decorating items…. all of which I only got to unwrap look at for a day and then pack away. Then of course this year Christmas is slightly blackened by the fact my last day of paid work is December 23rd and then I am jobless.
I had a really rough week last week. I ended up shredding a tire on something in the road, I never saw what it was but it left some huge chunks of metal IN my tire. Who knew run flats cost so much to replace. Then one day my mom, trying to be nice, took my pea coat to be dry cleaned. She didn’t realize however my car keys were in my pea coat. Thankfully I have a spare but I ended up being late for work and without a house key. But I had a very good weekend. Got some major christmas shopping done, decided to take a certificate class in web design in Feb, got offered a little side job for some extra cash, saw a bunch of friends in Palm Springs and listened to my favorite undergrad professors Susan Straight talk about setting, went out for Thai food, got my hands on a Boylan Black Cherry Soda. Good times. Also, last post I was talking about all the publishing successes of my friends.
December has been a good good month to UCR Palm Desert Low Residency Alumni. Two of our classmates were published in Gently Read Literature, one got an acceptance into the next issue of the Santa Monica Review, Rick Marlatt’s chap book comes out this week. Also we heard that Tiffany Hawk, who has already been published in the New York Times and appeared on Mike Huckabee’s show, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Potomac Review. Also Debbie Graber has a short story coming out in the next issue of Hobart. How cool is my school?!
In other news, I meant to post this last time and forgot. My friends at the Hipster Book Club have their Holiday Gift Guide up. Basically they have book suggestions for everyone on your list, even those hard to buy for people.
