Fantasmagorical Sight-Seeing

I’ve been on summer vacation for over a full week, and I feel as if I’ve mostly exhausted what small entertainments my hometown has to offer. But in all honesty, I haven’t been trying very hard either. My laziness overcomes me so I end up dallying about the house all day. The weather recently has also been no help–absurdly hot and miserable and muggy, it’s just not the kind that makes me want to be outside. Then being confined to the indoors, that’s also about as horrible when I can’t seem to manage a single conversation with my parents without getting worked up over something.

…

Well, it’s been about a month now since I’ve been home, and I’ll say that conditions have improved.  The weather is still bordering on intolerable, but there was something of a good rainstorm day before yesterday.  As for being bored out of my mind, I’m still not doing much with my days, but I’ve at least cleaned a few closets out (read: made huge piles of things in the hallways) to pass away the time.  This has also been a summer for books.  Over the past month I read four books, which is certainly an accomplishment as I’m more of the type to only read comic books and magazines.

At any rate, I’m midway through my summer break and for the moment I am content; though thinking back an immediate cure for my back-to-home doldrums would’ve been a swimming pool in the backyard.

Well, I got a new laptop today. It’s pretty spiffy, if I do say so myself. I even got the Pro, so my keyboard is all backlit and stuff. Right now I’m working on getting all my essential items from my old laptop onto my new, beginning with my iTunes library. I tried to do the whole fancy Migration route, but apparently it didn’t move any of my music. Luckily, there are other methods, one of which I’m utilizing with seemingly good results. Of course, being the superstitious sort that I am, I hesitate to say that everything is going fine and dandy, because that’s when all of a sudden things turn fine and ugly. Anyway, my old laptop seems a bit melancholy–however, it’s moving into the ownership of my brother, who I think will take superb care of it. He’d better, anyway, if he knows what’s good for ‘im.

It’s that fourth month already, the one with all the rain and sun showers.  My mother’s birthday is coming up in a few weeks, but more immediately in le scroll de bon anniversaire is this big ol’ shindig happening this evening.  The coolest thing is that it’s not only a birthday party, it’s also a zombie party.  Nothing says “you’ve gotten old” like festering skin hanging off your cheek, or having a few nubs, stubs, or stumps.  I think I’m gonna go the whole ‘super-chic’ zombie look, like I was the homecoming queen in 1960.  That could be a lot of fun getting made up for, especially if I could pull off looking like one of my eyes had been eaten out by a crow at some point during my slow decomposition.

Oh, I’ve gotten even more excited just thinking up ideas!

I’m not sure why it occurred to me to think of this, but January is the only month always preceded by the old year.  February, March, April, May, they’re all flanked by the current year.  Not that there’s much significance to it, I guess, just a funny little observation on the whole human activity of keeping time.  The purpose, more than anything, is a need for simplicity.  People’s minds just don’t work well enough (or aren’t trained to work well enough) to keep time without some occasional demarcation.  For instance, we could continually come up with a new name for the next month, eliminating the whole concept of years, but it would be cumbersome and difficult then to keep accurate records.

But I digress, it’s a new year.  So far it hasn’t been exceptional one way or the other, but it really isn’t fair to judge at the moment.  I’ll give the year 2 more weeks and reach my decision then.