katie! wait till my eyes are open

holy cow, where did all these presents come from?

there’s a big ham under the tree this christmas

i’m in austin with the fam. katie’s back from her first semester at ohio university, matthew’s back from his fifth at texas a&m, and I from my eleventh at unc.

the weather is warm. the air windy. scarf i brought: completely unnecessary!

the coming week holds shopping. unwrapping. lord of the rings. trying not to eat too much.

and now for me… getting some sleep.

the rabbit ambulance in legos by “brick artist” nathan sawaya, inspired by september 25th’s cartoon in achewood about which I’ve blogged previously on several occasions.

from progressive, reminding me to renew my car insurance. for the car i own that i don’t drive because it doesn’t drive.

what do you do with a car that doesn’t drive? some people have suggested donating it, and then some people seem to think not. i remember an ad on the spine of the yellow pages about some guy that will buy *any* car. i think i may try him first. otherwise i’m calling some auto-wrecking place.

i think i have car on the brain. this is me looking at my previous post (as well as this one). i wondered today whether having melanie’s car over the break affected me in any way. i went grocery shopping and went to the mall. both instances spending money i might not otherwise have spent. (ie: reason not to have a car) but i also went to caffe driade which is essentially inaccessible sans car.

i think it just made me feel different. slightly freer in a time when i’m still not entirely free (read: grad school). freer in a time when it feels luxurious acting free.

it still feels unusual to use my cellphone outside of chapel hill proper. the kind of unusual one might feel when unexpectedly discovering an open wireless signal at a small airport. so like an obnoxious, prototypical business traveler, i chatted on the phone with my brother while i waited at the gate.

when i visited washington dc over fall break, i left my cellphone at home. on purpose. irrationally and miserly fearing the threat of exhorbitant roaming charges. i had not realized till then how my social coagulating behavior has become so entirely facilitated by the cellphone. thus i was kinda miserable in dc, unable to contact people, unable to be reached, unable to partake in spontaneous decentralized gathering.

i used to think that i’d no longer have private moments if i got a cellphone. i’d no longer be able to be out of reach, a feeling i sometimes i revel in. thankfully calling a cellphone involves a certain social risk, burdening the caller and interrupting the receiver with concurrent communicative demands that are greater, say, than the asynchrony of email. or blogging. or sending letters.

i got an actual letter in the mail today. my name and address handwritten on the front, the return address unfamiliar. it stopped me in my tracks. who sends letters anymore? besides my grandmother? it was an invitation.