feel like I'm living in the plot of this movie
Wednesday evening reunion with Frank, T, and B at the condo -- as soon as I step in the door it's like I never left. Friday night date at the Penn -- Christmas Vacation with popcorn, pepsi, swedish fish and a nerds rope; then an unexpected pleasant reunion with a friend I hadn't seen in years (due to a personal feud), went to sleep that night as happy as I'd been in some time. Saturday night, Christmas Eve at Aunt Mary's and Uncle Paul's in Ann Arbor (a tradition now, but when I was a child Christmas Eve rotated amongst the aunts) -- it felt good this year, as I was for the first time able to proudly boast of my exploits in the North, hiking, camping, teaching, writing my novel. Strange to think that only last Christmas I was lamenting the rut I was stuck in, how stressed I was between work travel and vacation plans with the girlfriend's family, how stuck I felt in my hometown again. Spent a late Christmas Eve night with Frank's cat Dika (they were out of town to Taylor's hometown for Christmas), jamming and brainstorming how I was going to cut a 20,000 word novella into a 5,000 word short story by mid-January. The cat woke me up at 5:00 a.m. on Christmas morn, and I spent dawn watching both "Scrooged" and "A Christmas Story" before venturing over to Millwood for Christmas with the fam, in dire need of coffee.
Some things really never do change. Yesterday, I joined some buddies at the bar to watch the Lions on Monday Night Football, only to be reminded of why I've never felt any sort of loyalty to my local pro team; afterwards, I'm the only one sober so I drive to bowling in Canton, talk writing with Adam's brother Brian, a songwriter from Texas in town for the holidays, watch my friends stumble drunkenly across the bowling lanes. These nights seem so much more enjoyable now that I'm detached from the scene in my Northern winter abode. Woke up today around 1:30 in the afternoon, remembering a line from "Beautiful Girls" -- "what we've been doing lately is smoking massive amounts of drugs, binging on Entemmann's and listening to old Pink Floyd cd's". Just like I left you.
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