burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

walking out into the snow swirling in your face

watching it fall in the light of the lamppost

White sparkling beautiful.

Everyone seems to be listing what they got. I'm not going to list, just gonna state that i love getting things i actually asked for, and this Christmas made me quite happy in that regard. And okay, i will list, because i like talking about how much i adore my family. I got an Amy Grant album, a Catie Curtis album, the Buffy Watcher's Guide (both volumes), What Would Buffy Do?: The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide, and Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God, Jesus & the Bible (Millennium Edition: updated and revised).

Christmas wasn't painful, but i've been writing up my rant for ages, so eventually it will get posted. Along with talk about all the books and DVDs that have been my life this Break. Thank God there is actual social interaction in my future, as there is only so much that even i can take. (I am reminded of this everytime i'm home for an extended break, and everytime i leave for a break i forget that even i can only take so much time alone with stories and no real interaction with people.)

I've been skimming the flist. The home computer is in the middle of everything and i share its usage with other people, so my usage while home is minimal.

I still have to finish my two Secret Santa fics, but they're not due until New Years, so i'm not allowing myself to feel guilty. (And i haven't looked for mine either, including Secret Slasha -- and i actually finished my assignment for that one early.)

Oh, and speaking of fic: flamingnik created the pike_fic for Christopher Pike fanfic. I loved Christopher Pike's stuff when i was younger and suspect i would still quite enjoy my old favorites, but i totally don't remember even my favorites well enough to fic.

P.S. From sophia_helix:

A small public service announcement, although the gossipy seventh-grader in me kind of hates to give this up.

When you're reading on a filter? And you click a link to someone's site off your friendlist? That person, when checking their site stats, can totally see what your filter is called, because that's what the referring link is called. And sometimes your filter names are amusing.

Now, I've never discovered myself to be on anything other than a sort of secondary reading filter (nothing I haven't assumed before), but I was talking to, er, a friend-who-shall-remain-nameless, who had some filter names that were personally amusing but definitely not for public consumption, and I realized that, alas, I'd probably better pass the info along.

So, you know, calling reading filters "fucking annoying" and "slightly less than fucking annoying" is probably not a good idea, unless you never clink on any links. *g*

1 Peter 2.1-3: "Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation -- if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good."
-sk8eeyore, thinking about Advent

is it ever going to really snow?

... and am i going to regret typing this on the day it does?

omg i am so nostalgic for winter, like, real winter, with snow and biting winds and scarves and mittens and rosy cheeks and sledding and hot cocoa and crackling fires and stamping snow off boots in the front hall and ... sigh.

-starbuckle, December 3 and 4

Leaving the house to go to work i heard someone saying it was snowing out and lo, it was. Flakes just beginning to fall. And they have continued to fall so the ground is well-coated.

Also: There was grilled cheese for lunch.

Three things are too wonderful for me;
     four I do not understand:
the way of an eagle in the sky,
     the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
     and the way of a man with a girl.
-Proverbs 30:18-19

There needs to be slashfic including that.

CatieCurtis.com gives you her tours via PollStar which doesn't give you ticket info. JMG? That's a frellin' big venue for her. Iron Horse is much more her style.

Final Self-Defense class we were asked to "Bring in a representation of what helps you feel strong and/or safe." Representations included Ani DiFranco, Dar Williams, Destiny's Child, Christina Aguilera, Tool, Debussy, Manet, Barbara Kingsolver, Maya Angelou, the Grand Canyon, field hockey, family. Yeah Smith.

In the name of right and justice and personal integrity he challenges the very world order of which he is a part. From his dung heap he can demand an answer from the Creator of the universe. Is this what the Greeks called hubris, the intolerable insolence of a man who would make himself God's equal? Or is it the profoundest kind of religious faith, ranging far beyond the little shibboleths with which most men identify religion, a sublime confidence that to ask ultimate questions of God is not to turn away from him but to draw nearer to him?
-from "Wisdom in Revolt: Job" in The Way of Wisdom in the Old Testament by R. B. Y. Scott (New York: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 136-164. (141)