Hello, my old friends; it's been too long.
A lot has happened to me in the past year: my mom got a new job in Nevada; I took two semesters of graduate school at the University of Minnesota to earn a certificate in environmental education; one of my brothers returned from a year in China, while another spent a month in Namibia (leaving me as the only person in the family who has never been outside the U.S.); and I built and wore the largest and most elaborate Halloween costume I think most of the people I met that season had ever seen. It was a year filled with frustrations, regrets, and bouts of depression (some of them rather severe). One of those regrets was that I did not spend more time on the GOF; that I have neglected my beloved forum to the point that I have virtually slid into obscurity. I felt that the least I could do was drop in to say hello on Christmas Day.
This was a very atypical Christmas for me. For one, the whole family convened at my mom's new house in Nevada; the first Christmas I think I've ever spent outside my hometown. The change in scenery permitted us to do something we have never been able to do in Minnesota: open our presents outside.
Instead of the aluminum Christmas tree and decorations we usually dig out of the garage every year, we had a four-foot high tabletop tree with no decorations apart from pinecones (which we also moved outside along with the presents). One of my Christmas gifts was my first new cell phone in nearly nine years (and my second cell phone overall).
The phone was accompanied by a card depicting a
Tyrannosaurus attempting to place a star on top of a Christmas tree, inside which my parents had written, "If you can find 10 things wrong with this picture, you can keep this phone."
And at dinnertime, for the first time ever, I ate dates stuffed with cream cheese (a traditional Christmas dinner treat from my mother's side of the family, which I had never heard about before).
I'm not sure what else I can say for now, other than that I've missed you all, and wish you a very happy holiday season.
