Enthusiastick Journal

Back around Christmas I and two of my three sisters were driving in our mother's car. We had just done the big extended family Christmas shindig and, stuffed full of food, were driving ourselves back from Massachusetts to Connecticut (I go back and forth a fair bit around the holidays.) The rest of the family was in other cars, because there are many of us and also a dog and so we caravan almost everywhere we go.

Being in the Mom SUV meant we didn't have any real tunes aside from her CDs and the radio, and so we settled on the latter. The radio is of course horrible, but we found songs here and there that were agreeable to all three of us, mostly in the form of pop music from the 80s. I was in the passenger seat, and since the driving conditions were less than ideal that put me firmly in charge of twisting the radio dial anytime commercials or icky bad music came on. Eventually I stumbled across one of the Snow Partrol singles, the one made most famous by the Grey's Anatomy season two finale. Its called "Chasing Cars," and if you haven't heard it then the rest of this entry may not make a whole lot of sense. Anyway, I lingered on the song long enough to determine it was near to the beginning and then sat back to listen.

"Uhhh, depressing," griped my snarky younger sister from the back seat. And at the time I just sort of shrugged the comment off, because I guess its sort of a moody-sounding song, but I like it. The song came up again this morning, on my way to work, due to the wonder and mystery of the shuffle feature on my iPod. And I actually got to thinking about it for a minute, because that's the way my brain works, and I realized that I should have spoken up and voiced my disagreement. Because while its got sort of a downbeat emo sound to it, I don't find the song depressing at all. Exactly the opposite, actually. The start of the chorus goes:

if I lay here
if I just lay here
would you lie with me and
just forget the world

And the thing is I'm pretty sure its a love song. Simple love, expressed starkly. The kind of love Paul wrote about in his first letter to the Corinthians that's such a popular reading at weddings. You know the one. The love that isn't boastful or proud? Of course, in context, its not love he's writing about at all, but rather Christian charity. But for our purposes that is very much beside the point. The point is that this song, with its slow tempo and haunting, almost mournful vocals, is actually quite uplifting if you listen to the lyrics. And I know I pay too much attention to lyrics. I know that sometimes I fall in love with a song because it has a pretty turn of phrase only to later realize that its musically awful and grows unbearable on repeated listening. And I know that reading too much into the lyrics of pop songs is a disorder you're supposed to outgrow in adolescence.

But I didn't, and I doubt I ever will. The fact of the matter is I don't want to.

I wish I could tell you that I was going somewhere with this line of thought. Or at least somewhere other than "Whee, I've got childish qualities, and I'm perversely proud of hanging onto them!" But, well, I'm not going anywhere with it. There's not a whole lot going on with me right now. Between keeping my head down at work and this unexpected bout of actual Winter weather in Boston I'm just sort of on auto pilot. I bumbled past Imbolc without a second thought, and all of a sudden its hard not to notice Valentine's Day on the horizon. And I guess in that context having a long song on my mind maybe isn't so hard to understand.

Well, I'm back from Connecticut and my (largely self-imposed) five-day exile from the internet. I don't know what it is about going home for the holidays, but somehow I can never seem to be bothered to go online at my parent's house. I could chalk it up to their maddeningly virus-prone and unreasonably slow computers, or to the fact that I enjoy my family's company and, while home, I feel have license to just hang around and watch movies and play with the dog. Its probably a combination of those things. If I missed any particularly startling developments on the internet while I was gone, please feel free to point them out to me.

I had a very good Christmas. From my perspective the whole thing happened rather suddenly. I guess I'm just used to being at home with my parents and having at least several weeks worth of build up. This year I drove to Connecticut only two days before the main event. I barely had time to get into a Christmas-y mood before it was time to prepare Christmas Eve dinner. Not that I was terribly involved this year. My family has established a tradition whereby the children cook for the parents on Christmas Eve, and I have for the most part snaked my way out of doing anything too involved by volunteering to prepare appetizers. This year I shifted those responsibilities almost entirely onto my baby sister, as I was busy wrangling some last-minute gift preparations (and accordingly running around like a chicken with its head cut off.)

Christmas wasn't too exciting gift-wise. I got a lot of clothes, which I needed and had asked for. But I didn't really get an exciting new toy for Christmas, which made me feel depressingly grown-up. Consequently I've found myself pricing new cell phones online. A new phone would be suitably gadget-like, at least enough to excite me briefly, and thus scratch that particular itch. Anyone care to weigh in on the Samsung vs. Sanyo debate? I have an LG that I've been happy with in the past, but their new phones don't seem to be comparably priced -- less bang for your buck, as it were. I'm currently thinking about a Sanyo, but mostly because I can get Sprint (yes, yes, I know I'm an idiot to continue using Sprint, that's a given) to basically buy me one for free.

After the unwrapping of presents Christmas morning my family didn't actually have to go anywhere for the first time in recent memory. Usually the grandparents are staying with us, and so we obligingly drive them to a massive family gathering. This year my grandmother wasn't feeling up to any overnight stays away from home, so the massive family gathering was held on the 26th in Needham, an easy day trip from Cape Cod where my grandparents reside. As a result my nuclear family mostly didn't even change out of their pajamas on Christmas day. We bid a sad farewell to my eldest sister and brother-in-law, who were off to visit his family, and then just lounged around and watched Love Actually, a Christmas movie even my father begrudgingly enjoys.

(Side note: serious congratulations to dippy423, the first person to really use my Love Actually inspired At Christmas You Tell The Truth pledge against me. She totally just stared me down the other night and asked me something point blank, thus necessitating that I say something I had otherwise decided against saying.)

I can hardly believe its Wednesday already; it feels like Monday, because this is my first day in the office this week. I'm psyched I only have to work three days this week, and four days next week. I'm feeling very refreshed emotionally. Distressingly I'm not doing quite as well physically; I got a lot of much-needed sleep and also a teeth-cleaning during my five day mini-break, but I also seem to have picked up a cold somewhere along the way. I blame thablueguy. Thus far its nothing too bad -- just a lot of irritating post-nasal drip and related symptoms. Here's hoping it gets better quickly, rather than progressing into something more inconvenient.