Christmas comes to 2nd Street (sort of).

Check it: I've been reading other blogs, and man, they do Christmas BIG. Like, really, really big.

Because I want to keep up, and because I want to be A Blogger, here are my Christmas decorations.

See?

Yesterday, I slapped some Christmas lights up on my window. I got a little tree from Michael's craft store ($3.67 is just the right price for a Christmas tree when you're trying to ride out the last five days until PAYDAY). Then, because I was feeling Christmas, I blew off cleaning my apartment, doing dishes, or prepping for my final week of classes, to go see A Christmas Carol. In 3-D.

It was so fun to sit there with dorky 3-D glasses sliding down my nose (a nose that rejects the premise that it should hold any glasses up near the bridge. It says the tip of the nose is where glasses belong, so I am forever pushing them up, up, up), to watch a story that I nearly know by heart. It was even better to be passing candy and popcorn between friends who, on account of the glasses, kept misjudging the actual location of the snacks, and reached out to grab the air right next to the Sour Patch Kids I was offering. Ha!

But, sweet J, it is cold here in Moscow. Driving home from the Winco, where I was buying candy for my students to celebrate our last day of class tomorrow!!, I drove by the bank reader board that announced current temperature was 9 degrees! And, in a few weeks, I will be complaining--I will be WHINING--about the winter weather, but right now, the cold is just giving me all kinds of awesome excuses. Today, I didn't get out of my pajamas until 2pm on account of the cold--(too cold to be sliding on cold jeans!). I didn't go to the gym--too cold to sweat! And I didn't take a shower--way, way too cold to get out of the shower. I didn't accomplish anything on my to-do list, and I ate a whole, whole lot of macaroni and cheese (it's a little harder to explain how those two things are excused by cold weather, but it feels to me like they are).

On account of the cold, I had to make my laptop an actual lap topper, because a laptop is like the best space heater on the planet (except my actual space heater, which is really the best space heater on the planet), which meant lots of Hulu episodes, lots of reading crafty blogs (wowza, there are some crafty, crafty people out there--I'm trying not to let them make me feel too bad about myself), and a little bit of random googling. At one point, I landed on IMDB--one of the best time-sucks out there--and found out that the woman who plays the girlfriend of Matt Damon's character in his upcoming moving Invictus is only one year older than me. In my brain, I actually formed this sentence: "So, that means there's a chance for me!" What? Nevermind the complete lack of logic in that statement. It is just a sad (sad!) reminder that I've been waiting for Matt Damon for twelve years.

It also means I probably ought to get off the internet. And maybe go outside.