today was christmas, evidently.

well, it began with opening presents and saying, "wow, cool" and trying things on and eating cinnamon rolls... and continued with lots of movie-watching, and stuff, but something was missing today.

it could be the fact that my parents didnt make the kids line up at the top of the stairs and come down together on video tape and act surprised concurrently like we have always done in the past.

it could be the fact that the sweet-ass mp3 player i got doesn't want to work with winXP. dad and i spent 2 hours trying to download winXP compatible drivers and ran around in circles. it kept downloading something that was created in 1997, according to the timestamp, by microsoft... that's not quite right. so we're going to try again tomorrow, and if that doesn't work, then we'll find someone to bitch at, because i can't return it. it was packaged in one of those eeeeevil plastic bubble packs, the kind that everyone hates and that hate everyone, and i destroyed it when i got it open, so there's no hope of... "original packaging materials." so, if i have to write the fucking drivers myself, i'm gonna get that mp3 player to work. that didn't keep me from spending a couple minutes in tears this morning though. :( stupid fucking windows.

it could be that... or it could be that by the time santa claus got to the store the other day, they were out of hershey kisses. evidently out of reese's too. so we got stockings full of werthers (not bad) and those little strawberry things (bad). NO CHOCOLATE. it was a chocolate- free christmas for me... which probably accounts for the weirdness.

when you're a kid, there's something in the air on christmas. it seems to me that it's been fading the past few years... the feeling in the weeks building up to the day diminishes year by year... by the time i'm grown up, will it be just another day? is it my age, or is it my diminishing (as if there was any left) faith that made today seem like any other day? but it is just the christians and their gods, the father and son, in whom i have lost faith... i still have faith in people, and anyway, isn't that what today has come to mean to so many of us?

oh, and i'm afraid i may have developed some sort of alcohol allergy. the thing that happened to me last week with the kahlua happened again at dinner with the wine. or maybe it's just that i'm still sick and shouldn't be drinking... but what if...?

god, this had to have been the worst christmas i have experienced. i wish i were back home, in california.