speculations in the dark.

happy mid-winter holidays, everyone.

it's back to being dark and cold, as it is every winter, hemispheres notwithstanding. i've never heard what the earliest british settlers in australia thought of christmas in high summer. i wonder if there was a movement to celebrate it in june. considering the original birth it celebrates probably originally happened in march or april, it wouldn't have been any less accurate.

i am rambling, yes.

i don't normally make new year's resolutions, eschewing the practise as a feel-good activity with little meaning behind it. january first is an artificial date anyway, and our western european numbering of years is equally meaningless. i mean, we all saw what attention the cosmos paid to the misnumbered anno domini 2000.

however, the solar-calendar year does provide benchmarks, however artificial, for janus-like hindsight and forward-looking speculation. this past year was a tumultuous one, and the upcoming year looks equally eventful. most prominently, i am dangling in painful indecision, having applied to graduate school just before the holidays, therefore delaying the acceptance decision while everyone uses their time for much more amusing activities.

also this year, i discovered the amazing cost economy of cooking an entire chicken. i must do this more often. when divided on a meal for meal basis, it is cheap. we like cheap.

oh yeah, and we had an election. i did vote. i've become distressingly civic-minded. i'll be running for office next. or not. maybe after i've graduated. assuming i'm even accepted. see how this is consuming my mind? i don't like uncertainty.

i'm ok with change, however. school, government, job (oh yeah, my job changed), provided it's not drastically abrupt, i can deal. what remains to be seen, of course, is whether there will be any change at the government level. i'm not engaging in much speculation about that, preferring my jaded, cynical, gen x stance. the man is an excellent speaker and a consummate politician. but government has been made into an industry and has a fair amount of self-preservation tendencies.

speaking of government, i mostly got money for christmas/hannukah gifts. i think i will buy clothes and books.