Our Winter Holiday(s), in Retrospect

Since I titled my post about our Thanksgiving trip Holiday in Review, I needed something a little more catchy for this post. I know, we've been back in town for a week by now, but you know I've been busy. ;) So, here's the highlights/summary, sans pictures (they'd make the post hella longer than it already is). Hopefully I'll have pictures of things up soon!

Leaving:
As the bus that took me to meet Makal was pulling to a stop, I had the good fortune of falling backwards over my suitcase. And I mean serious feet in the air-, almost landing in some guy's lap-serious. Everyone on the bus stood up to see if I was okay, which I was. In fact, I was so amused at the situation that I was laughing, feeling like an idiot but highly impressed at my gymnastics display. I ended up with a sore neck and handful of bruises (but my ego is intact).

The train from PDX to Eugene was 2 hours late. No, 1 hour. Actually, 1 hour 30 minutes. 45 minutes, I mean. It was a long wait. We lugged our suitcases a couple blocks to get some foods, luckily missing the rain.

Day , Solstice:
'Twas Solstice on this day, and so Makal and I exchanged presents with his parents. We gave them a joint gift of the V for Vendetta DVD. Later we went down to a piercing shop and with some of the money Makal's parents gave me, I got my left tragus pierced. There were four people in the room--not including myself and the piercer--that watched me get stabbed. Luckily (oh so luckily) for me, this was my fastest healing piercing yet (compared to seven others) and is pretty much fine now. Ironically, it was also the most painful (that tragus has some thick cartilage, yo). I also picked up some gaming dice! Oooh sparklies. ;)

Later yet, we went to Corvallis with some friends, as it was someone's 21st birthday. This would have been an uneventful trip were it not for the fact that Makal, Dutch, and Bigs sang a karaoke version of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" while we were out. They got the most applause of any other karaoke-er too!

Day Two:
On our way back down to Eugene, we stopped at a head shop to look at hookahs. It's something Makal and I have wanted to get for a long time, even before we smoked one at Big's house in Corvallis. As we were looking around the hookah room, Dutch pointed to one and said it looked like an evil emperor's hookah, all black and shiny chrome that it was. I think that comment must've sold Makal on it, because that's the one we got. It's a three-hose hookah with a section to hold ice for further cooling the smoke, and it is quite lovely. :D

That night we set up the hookah at Makal's parents and had what we called Fascism Night, watching Starship troopers and V for Vendetta back to back. Those movies go together surprisingly well, given that on the outside they appear to be about alien space bugs and comic books, respectively.

Day Three:
This was our first day we'd seen my mom since Thanksgiving, and we pretty much sat around relaxing. I went through a bunch of old board games and separated out ones I wanted to keep and ones I didn't, and we watched Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest. The beginning of the movie is slow, and I felt they relied to heavily on jokes from the first movie. But once things got rolling, I think it came into its own again and left off on a good note for the second one to pick up on. We also basically ate the "holiday" dinner this day, so that we could have the ham to munch on over the next few days. Yumm. :)

When we arrived at my mom's, I wasn't feeling too good. I was pretty much okay after a shower, but still felt off. I'd really wanted to have tea but my mom's not really a warm-tea drinker. So, Makal made me open one of my presents early: it was a container of loose-leaf tea. I don't think I've gone a day without it since!

Day Four, Christmas Eve:
Again, a lot more of nothing today. We watched The Devil Wears Prada, which is as good as I was expecting it to be. I know I wasn't involved in a very high-up part of the fashion world, but it really can be as cut throat as that movie makes it out to be. It's all about who you know and what you wear. After that, we opened presents (which I'll get to in a second) and then watched Superman Returns. Also a good movie, but Makal had ideas of what could have made Lex Luther more victorious--including the obvious "make sure he's dead before you let him out of your site" thing.

So yes, presents. Oh my, presents. Perhaps not quite the bounty of last year, where I came home with things like an iPod Nano and an espresso machine. But still, quite fortuitous. My mom gave me the only thing I'd actually asked for, and many things I did not expect. I gave her an eyeglass chain (mentioned here) and we also gave her the first Post Secret book; I wrapped it in brown paper and used a mailing label for the "To:/From:" sticker, which really threw her. Cuz I'm crafty like that. :) Makal gave me my last present of the holiday: a red apron. He says that the women at the store "cooed" over such a gift. And it was a highly amusing present to open right after my mom apologized for getting me "kitchen" stuff and Makal "play" things, as she didn't want to feel like she was propegating a stereotype. ;D

Day Five, Christmas!:
When we arrived in Eugene, we had one bag full of clothes and our stuff, and another bag full of presents to give people. When we left my mom's, the second bag was *full* of stuff. In addition to the presents she gave us, we were also taking with us two board games (Monopoly and Aggravation) and a large emergency lantern (for power outages). So when Makal's parents came by to get us and head out, there was no way either bag was going to fit. We had to come back later that night to get them. :P

Once in the car, we went to Roseburg to visit Makal's grandma, whose birthday just happens to fall on the same day as Christmas (again, I'm so glad I wasn't born on a major holiday!). Before getting there, we stopped at a little convenience mart--just about the only thing open--and I was a little disturbed by how everyone seemed to know everyone in there. After arriving, Makal's dad soon fell asleep on a couch in another room, and Makal quickly passed out on a recliner in the living room by the kitchen. His mom made us all a delicious roast that seemed a very wintery meal. :)

We had fun exchanging more presents while in Roseburg. We gave his grandma a box of chocolates, which is a good present for any occasion I say. ;) We gave his dad a great wall calendar with psychadelic band concert posters (not just any trippy lines and colours, but the posters that either helped define or came as a result of the 70's art movement); for his mom we had a little reusable handwarmer and a neat vintage platter with a painted horse on it--Makal says it's from a cover of Black Beauty.

Coming Home:
Exhausted, weary, and sleep deprived, we awoke that morning with all our bags packed and our only obligation being to get on the train at time. We pretty much slept the entire ride home, as did most of the train. When we got back to the apartment, the cat's food dispenser was empty (even though we'd had a friend check in and add food just that Sunday) so we went to the store to pick up some supplies.

Makal took a nap as I cleaned and straightened up, and before too long we were entertaining people. I know, it was crazy of us to have people over after our trip, but we really wanted to have a little party with our friends! We had four people come over, and we sat around smoking hookah, drinking wine, listening to Samurai Champloo music (which is great to smoke to), and Dutch made us crab and cream cheese potstickers. Really we couldn't have asked for a better way to unwind! Soon after the couple that checked in on the cats left, the rest of us watched Tetsuo: Iron Man. Okay, not exactly a relaxing movie, but it was sure as hell captivating! We watched Sympathy for Lady Vengeance after that; while I knew that movie would have some hard-hitting scenes to it, I wasn't quite expecting some of the backstory. All in all, it was excellent, and the symbology a little easier to interpret than Tetsuo. ;D

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So, yeah, that was our trip. I've been wanting to write about it since we got back, but I seriously have not been able to force myself to sit and work on it at all. If it wasn't for the fact that I can barely breath and get dizzy easily, I know I'd be wanting to be up and doing stuff. I mean, last Thursday I wasn't feeling great, so I decided to rearrange the living room. Of course! ;D I'm pretty sure that our monster of a couch circled the room about four or five times in my quest to find *just the right* spot for it. I'm a perfectionist, so all the angles had to be perfect. The only thing left to do is move an entire wall's worth of furniture and decorations to the left about 6 inches (honest, just six inches!) to really pull everything together; I'm pretty sure Makal would get mad at me if I tried to do that while I was sick. So far I'm doing a good job of not letting the off-kilter wall bother me though. ;)