I suppose you all want to hear about my Christmas. Let's sum up where I was before Christmas.
I was in a depressed state, and allowed another comic book fan's comments on aesthetics to irritate me. reference removed by request The two events led to me feeling remarkably bitter about comic books and the comic book community, to the point where I was finding absolutely no joy in my main hobby. I've generally had few problems being a female fan in a male-dominated field, but every once in awhile I learn just how far the industry has to go before it's much more than a shelter for juvenile men with no social skills. Usually I categorize such comments as unfair... an old stereotype that needs to be broken. During the last couple of weeks I've been in the middle of the stereotype, and I've been wondering how any woman can enjoy the comics community with people like the above-mentioned retailer a vocal part of it.
So with that hanging over me, I've been forcing myself to remember what I like about comic books, reviewing my favorite books of the year and re-reading good comics from years past. I've also avoided almost all comic book related blogs for awhile, just to keep from dwelling on stupid things. Inspired by Sean Collins, I re-read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I also read Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle for the first time. The lack of blog arguments and the reading of good fiction alleviated a lot of the depression, but not all of it.
I worked retail Christmas Eve, six hours of pure insanity. It wasn't too bad, but I do wonder about people who come into a store at noon on Christmas Eve and ask for help finding a present for an 8-year-old boy with a limit of $20. C'mon folks, get some better planning!
After my shift was done, I headed over to hubby-Eric's family for the traditional meal of clam chowder. The pugs were delighted at the visitors, and were underfoot waiting for crumbs to drop all during the meal. The clam chowder, made from local geoduck (pronounced gooey-duck) was splendid. I only wish I'd been able to eat more of it!
Before the meal, Eric's dad offered to give me his old laptop computer. It's an Inspiron 7500. While it doesn't have everything I wanted in a laptop, I never expected to get everything I wanted anyway. He gave me the computer, the system installation disks for Windows XP and Office 2000, and a printer. While I don't much need the printer, my hubby can use it.
After the meal, presents were exchanged. Except we'd all agreed that there would be no presents this year. So only one person got presents. The one person who most wanted to give presents. Me. Turns out that hubby had ordered a present for me after getting his job in Marysville, but before he learned about the strike. The gift he got me is something I have wanted almost as long as I can remember. I'm always been a Mariners fan, and when I was little I wanted a Mariners jersey. I knew how much the things cost though (I must've asked as some point) and so I knew it would never happen. Later on, as an adult, I looked into getting one, and found that now you can get customized jerseys with your name and number on them. I wanted one, but again, too much cash. But hubby knew. And so I now own a Mariners home jersey with my last name and the number "27". Very, very cool.
I also got a book on how to break into the comic book business from Eric's mom. It's not one I'd seen before, and it has some interesting stuff about the industry in it, including lots of commentary from pros.
And so we went home to relax and wait for Santa to finish his rounds. I was eager to investigate my new computer, and so I tried to plug it into the network with the current installation on it. Didn't work. So I tried to format the hard drive... but forgot to exit Windows first. Finally I got out of Windows and typed the magic words: "format c:". It was amazingly therapeutic. In fact, I immediately wanted to do the same to my desktop computer. I resisted the urge, as there is still some software I need on it. After the format was complete, I tried to get the computer to boot up from the DVD-Rom drive, but I couldn't get into the BIOS to reset the boot for some reason. I finally figured out the problem, which was just that Dell has a screen that hides the boot-up information, and I was hitting the key too late because I was waiting for the brief moment when that information was showing. duh. After I figured that out, the battery was almost out of juice, and it was late, so I tried to get to sleep.
But it's impossible to sleep when there is an interesting problem to be solved, and a born troubleshooter like me can't sleep when there's a laptop sitting around waiting to have software installed on it. I confessed my sleeplessness to hubby, who said, "Go play, then! You know you want to!" And off I went. I put the laptop into its plugged in dock so I wouldn't be on batteries, and booted up from the XP disk. No problem. That might have been the easiest installation I've ever done. And when I plugged the network cable in, the network showed. I pulled up Internet Exploder and visited my blog... and realized that it was well past midnight and I had to get up on Christmas morning to visit my family.
And so to bed, but OOOOHH how nice it felt to deal with problems that could be solved. Wipe the drive and start over. It was enough to cheer the soul. I really should go into computer repair. Those days I spent volunteering with seniors at the senior center teaching them how to use their e-mail were pure bliss. I could do that for a living.
Anyway, I digress. Christmas is the day for family, and I was determined to see all my nieces and nephews that I could possibly see. We got to my parent's house about 11 am and waited for the traditional breakfast of orange biscuits. I got to see all my sibs who live in the area and their children, but it was spread out over a few hours. The gift giving was also spread out. I got a Hershey chocolate bar and a book from one of my older sisters, who said she hoped they would bring me a little happiness (I guess she's been reading my blog). My little sister got me a DVD of Jim Henson's The Storyteller, which is a bit delayed but my sister knows what I like. Another sister got us a box of Mango Frangos (Frangos are a tradition in this neck of the woods, and the mango was a new twist that turned out to be really good). I didn't really expect much, but what we got was a lot, and it was wonderful to hang out with the family.
I showed off my Mariners jersey, and my nephew reacted very oddly to it. His mother, my oldest sister, laughed and explained that he'd been sneaking downstairs to watch something on TV, but being careful and not telling anyone about it. As his parents figured out he was hiding something, they got worried, and wondered just what he was watching. Eventually they caught him in the act. He was watching baseball. Despite being in a family with no baseball fans, he'd learned to like the game, and was sneaking off to watch baseball so the rest of the family wouldn't be annoyed by it. As soon as we heard this little tale Lisa, Eric, and I agreed that we will definitely be taking our nephew to a baseball game this summer. He seemed pleased with the promise. His sisters seemed amused.
After five hours with my family, we went back to Eric's family's house to see the other side of his family, including his grandmother Helen who used to work in the Marysville School District. Grandma's krumkaker almost made for a meal by itself, and we talked very little about the problems in the district.
Eventually I got back home and immediately went back to the laptop. Poor Eric was neglected for a couple of days there while I played. Windows XP is not as bad as I was expecting. If my favorite programs work with it, there's a very good chance I'll attempt to upgrade my desktop to it.
Boxing Day was a day of running errands. The biggest errand was to get our cars' emission tests done so we can renew the licenses. Then I took all the money in my computer fund and bought an ethernet cable for my laptop's dock. I actually needed a bit more than was in the fund, but my dad gave me a little cash for Christmas which paid for the emission tests and everything left over on the ethernet cable.
I'm still numb. I'm feeling oddly disconnected, like Christmas was just a good dream, and I'm going to wake up to my normal horrid life any second now. I'm somewhere between floating and shock. It may not quite make up for the crap from earlier, nor for the sight of colorful confetti in a shredding truck, but it certainly helps.
