Christmas was a nice, quiet affair at my house. Had Eric and my grandma over, ate lots of food, and then tried to stay awake while digesting everything.

I actually spent my first six hours of Christmas cleaning out my basement, which really needed the work. Manalive—some of the dust that had gathered took a few more years off of my life. At the rate the dust in my house is going, I’ll be lucky to make it to age 40. I’m just waiting for my G5 to suck in enough dust that the processors can set off a nice little fire.

After dinner, Brian and Miwa came over, suffered through a once-over by my family and Eric (as Eric noted, “we had been looking at each other all evening”), and then we made our way downstairs. There we introduced Miwa to the non-drinker’s evening in Corvallis: a heaping dose of very little going on, made slightly easier through internet stupidity (e.g. celebrity prank calls—most notably Schwarzenegger call #8) and occasional (very occasional) witticisms tossed out by someone.

Friday…I don’t remember much of what I did throughout the day. Actually, I probably didn’t do much—I’m still on a godawful 4:00am to 11:00 am sleep cycle, which kills a good portion of my day. I tried playing the Japanese dating simulation game Brian got me for Christmas, Sentimental Graffiti 2, but I found my lack of knowledge of the Japanese language to be a huge barrier to my successful completion (or even basic comprehension) of the game. From what I was able to gather online, I start out with twelve girls in love with me; my task is to somehow not piss all of them off.

In other words, it’d be easy for me if I could just speak the language. (^_^)

Mom went to visit her brothers on Friday, and we had sent home enough Christmas dinner with others so that there wasn’t enough leftovers to feed all of us (not a big deal). So my dad, sister, and I ate A&W for dinner, where Dad reminisced about summers playing tennis at OSU, followed by walking over to a nearby A&W restaurant to get quarts of root beer. I always enjoy hearing my parents talk about their youth…and, when I think about it, I fear that I won’t have too many stories about my childhood to tell my kids. Video games don’t make for interesting tales.

Last night Marin and I watched I Want to Return to That Day, the first Kimagure Orange Road movie. It felt rather unbalanced; Kyosuke caused a great deal of pain, and the movie did little to show that there was a reason for what he did. I could somehow sympathize with the characters, though; Marin wound up disliking them even more than she did during the TV show. Consequently, I watched the second KOR movie by myself, afterwards (this was also consistent with my screwed-up sleep cycle, as the movie ran quite late); it left a better taste than the first movie did, but the actual plot itself seemed rather goofy. At the end of the day, I suspect, KOR is best when it embraces its “endless summer” feel.

Now that Miwa has her gift, I can reveal my brilliance (or “sickness,” as Brian’s dad called it) to the world: my wondrous find was the autobiography of Bigfoot, In Me Own Words. You owe it to yourself to check that sucker out.

I’m going to go do something (I’m not sure what, yet); in the meantime, you can while away your days playing Avalanche.