The Girl at the Rock Show

I’m starting to feel a little bit more in the Christmas spirit. I finally got around to deflating the air mattress in the second bedroom and Alan was nice enough to brave the task of getting out all the ornaments and decorations. I’ve wrapped our entire banister with red ribbon and hung the wreath on the door and another one over the fireplace. The stockings are also hung by the chimney with care, of course, and I did all the Christmas cards and sent them out on Thursday.

Honestly, I’m not keen on presents this year. There isn’t a whole lot I really want. There are maybe four things I want and one of them is actually something I need. That would be a set of fireplace tools. We don’t have any, so it makes it hard to have a fire in the fireplace, especially since we don’t even have fire gloves. The other things I want: the Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, a planner with both monthly and weekly pages with enough room on the week sections to write down my workouts, and the last Shrek movie on DVD. My desires are simple and few. And if someone wanted to get me all of Cassandra Clare’s books, I wouldn’t mind. Still, I could just get around to getting a library card and then I could read them whenever I want.  My parents asked for a couple books, so I’ll probably end up getting them. I would like to get Zach a book called "Anatomy for the Artist," because the last time I saw him he was working on figure drawing and struggling a bit. I used to have a copy, but I suppose I must have gotten rid of it at some point. Or maybe it’s somewhere in my grandmother’s attic in a box I missed.

I was watching TV the other day and a familiar song began to play. It was "Seasons of Love," from "Rent," one of my favorite musicals/rock operas (if you’ve ever seen the actual play, you’ll know that there is very little unsung dialogue, which makes it an opera). When I looked, I discovered that it was playing on a Macy’s ad. Now, this could have been acceptable. The images were ones of family and friends being together, suffused with holiday cheer. You wouldn’t have known it was an ad except for the red star Macy’s logo in the corner. Okay, a message of general happiness brought to you by Macy’s. I can accept that. Until the end of the ad when they decided to tack on a plug for a diamond jewelry collection. Then I was incensed. They took this song, which is all about measuring life in the intangibles, from a play about struggling artists rejecting material culture and turned it into a diamond ad. Nauseating. I have, however, only seen this ad twice. Perhaps they realize that it was not in the best taste.

Anyway, this weekend I’m hoping we can get a Christmas tree. They were supposed to be giving away free ones on post, but when we went to the place it was supposed to be, there was no sign of any trees at all. And I’ll probably get a couple things for the people back home in Connecticut. I want to get a gold-dipped aspen leaf pendant for Alan’s grandmother. I think she’d really like that, and they’re not too expensive. Today we’re going to the gun show. Seriously. The new guy in Alan’s office asked if we wanted to go, and in an effort to be social, that is what we’re doing. I think we’re also going to get food afterwords. This will definitely be an experience, since I’m much more rock show than gun show. When in Rome, right? On the plus side, they’ll probably have knives, and I like knives. There is something so much more personal about a knife. LOL… It’s just that you really have to mean it to hurt someone with a knife because the psychological act of stabbing is way more difficult than pulling a trigger.

Anyway, off to the gun show.

~Liz