t-minus 25 days

Ok, not really guns, but maybe that's what
makes this super awesome.

It's already December. The fifty-degree temps don't help to hone that point in (I wore just a sweatshirt today!). It's almost been six months since I moved down to Cincinnati. I think of my time in Dayton often, as I'm a nostalgic sorta person, but Cincinnati definitely feels like home now, and looking back on those days is akin to looking through a tattered scrapbook filled with yellowed and curling photographs. The memories, they feel so ancient sometimes, like I'm looking at a different place through the eyes of someone not myself. Time just keeps trucking along unabated, and already we've seen Thanksgiving come-&-go, and Christmas is right around the corner. Like, literally, it's around the corner (figuratively speaking, of course). I've been having to come up with Christmas gift ideas left-and-right, it's like I'm a little kid again, but for the life of me I can't think of anything that I specifically need. I've been putting more value on experiences than material possessions lately (which I think is a good thing), so I've been reduced to asking for Amazon and Target gift-cards, the dry humps of Christmas gift ideas. 

Christmas is in full swing downtown. Even before Thanksgiving, the Square was decked out with Christmas lights in the trees and a towering pine tree strung with lights. Once Thanksgiving passed, other places started following suit. Now there's lights everywhere, Santa Clauses ringing their bells for charity, even the homeless people have changed their cardboard signs ("Merry Christmas" instead of "God Bless", though some of them say "Happy Holidays" with a fish drawn in the corner, small so as not to offend the Jews but visible enough so as to appeal to Christians), and I think I can assume Christmas music is flooding most of the radio stations, though I wouldn't know because my radio doesn't work in the cold. I really don't know how I feel about the holiday season, I really don't. I know if I were epileptic I'd hate it, especially at night; but since I'm not, I don't know how to pinpoint my "feelings" towards the holiday season. Much of it, I'm sure, is apathy: I just don't care. I'm all about celebrating Jesus' birth, don't get me wrong, but the whole cultural Christmas atmosphere is just nauseating sometimes. And I'm not talking about "consumerist culture" or anything hip like that; I just think Santa Claus is boring and reindeer are stupid, Christmas lights usually aren't pretty but tacky, I don't think trees should be left indoors for more than two weeks, and most Christmas music is akin to having a hacksaw shoved into your ear and jacked around. It's cold, everyone's pretending to be happy, and though it seems the world stops for a day, it doesn't. Whenever the 26th comes around, I take a deep breath of relief, knowing that I have a solid 11 months before the hype starts all over again.