fear my spoiled-rotteness. On top of my father flying across the country and spending two weeeks doing heavy manual labor ripping down wall coverings and installing new flooring....on top of my mother flying across the country to help me pack up a huge apartment and move it all....on top of mom buying me a washing machine and countless constructions materials.....

I am now the exuberant owner of a shiny new imac. Oh yeah, you read that right. my mother bought me a frackin COMPUTER for xmas in addition to the massive spoilery already noted above. It's good beinging an only child of indulgent and aging parents? Apparently she's been feeling guilty for years about steering me towards purchasing the Dell that crapped out in october (a guilt compounded when she herself asquired a macbook two years later, and worsened after Dell repeatedly canceled my orders for replacement hard drives, leaving me computer-less for over a month). So she has assuaged all her totally misplaced maternal guilt by buying me the most shinyily awesome computer i've ever spend merely five minutes setting up. Holy crappola, i spent more than seven HOURS re-setting up the Dell after installing the replacement hard drive and it STILL won't play nice with my wireless router or dvds. But the imac? Straight out of the box, it does everything. I stand amazed. And spoiled. And overwhelmingly in debt to my parents. Again. Forever.

{{{smonster}}}} Seriously, don't read his emails during the next three day. Set your email to filter anything from him (or his friends) into a folder that you can look at when you are ready and won't see collecting until then. Everyone needs a cooling off period...you already set the parameters, so you get to uphold them.

This. Hugs and more hugs, smonster.

And Erin, that's awesome! Don't feel guilty. Many of us are in debt (again, forever) to our loved ones.

Twilight books: these are possibly the silliest books I've ever read, and I cannot put them down.

The place where my tooth had been hasn't been hurting for the past few days, but it's starting to hurt again. Weird. I also have a tiny cut on the tip of my tongue, which is slowly driving me nuts.

I'm trying to figure out Chanukah presents for my family. So far, I haven't come up with much. My mom wants the Susan Boyle CD, so I'm getting her that, plus something else, and I haven't figured out what the something else is. Maybe some Beatles CDs for my dad. No clue what to get for my sister. Everything on her wish list is obviously stuff that she wishes our parents would get her, and it's all several times what I'm planning to spend.

OK, my family is ridiculous. My mother's wish list includes lobsters: [link] My dad's includes Tom Seaver's locker at Shea, for $41,000: [link] My sister, at least, just added some magazine subscriptions to her list, and I might get her those.

I'm reading a few pages of New Moon, then a few pages of The Sexual Politics of Meat, and so on. I don't think either book was meant to be read like this.

You know how some books come out under different titles in different countries? "The Sexual Politics of Meat" sounds like "New Moon" published in werewolf country.

You know how some books come out under different titles in different countries? "The Sexual Politics of Meat" sounds like "New Moon" published in werewolf country.

Ha! I haven't really gotten to the werewolf part yet -- I just got past the Oh! So tragic! pages where nothing happened from October through January . (The Sexual Politics of Meat is actually about how consumption of meat is linked to oppression of women. I'm not really far enough into it yet to determine how much I agree with the premise -- so far, I'm just on the first chapter, where the author is saying that, culturally, meat is coded as masculine food and vegetables as feminine food. So I'm mostly at, "Yes, tell me something I couldn't figure out by watching commercials for Hungry Man and Lean Cuisine." She's got a bunch of examples I hadn't thought of, but nothing yet that's gotten me beyond, "Yes, and...?" But I am just on the first chapter.)

Hil's dad dreams big.

The Sexual Politics of Meat is actually about how consumption of meat is linked to oppression of women.

Hmpf. She'll take my steak and bacon when she pries it out of my cold dead delicate feminine hands. The only use I have for Lean Cuisine is to feed it to pigs to make pork out of it.

If anything, I'd think eating vegetables would be part of the oppression of women, because we're supposed to be thin and cook healthy for our menfolk, who'd be eating solid animal fat if not for our nurturing and civilizing influence. But maybe I should wait until at least one of us has actually read the whole book before I start discussing it.

erin_o, that is awesome! What a great shiny gift to go with your new house!

ooo, erin! shiny imac! I envy. Every time I say I want one, my sister tells me how much she hates her Mac and talks me out of it. (No, I don't know why she hates it.)