This is overwhelming. There are ten of them now! And they’re so pretty. The tiny food and tiny schoolbooks are still so cool. I think Kaya’s tiny things are the coolest. Part of me is glad I am out of the target age group for this stuff now so that I don’t hanker after it, and part of me misses it. I mean, it’s all just so perfect, with the immaculately packed lunches in the culturally significant lunch boxes, and the beautifully organized school satchels. (Satchel is a good American Girl doll word.) Totally unlike my stuff. I think I carry my lunch in saran wrap these days. But then, am also not ten years old.

This New York Times article this morning is the reason why I went to the website. The paper today was pretty good to me–an article about figure skating costumes and another about American Girl dolls. (Yes, those are all I read. I don’t know what else is going on in the world.) Finally someone over there has discovered my weird niche. Now if we could just pack it into its own section of Eileen-interest articles. Anyway, I never had Barbies, just Skipper, whom I never really felt the need to dismantle. She was pretty unprovocative. Unlike those Playmobil toys, who I figured out how to make into headless robot/aliens by taking off their heads. Man, that was fun. All sorts of opportunities open up when you take off your toys’ heads. Brain transplants, robotic nannies, even the classic decapitation. How I wish I was ten again.

But this one’s dull. Things are a little dull here. Andrew gave me a bit of a cold, I think, but I went to see The Family Stone with him anyway. It was good. Unexpectedly sad.

Tomorrow night Andrew’s girlfriend gets here, which is good because our numbers have dwindled from seven down to five right now.

I got my hairs cut today. I like it.

Also, my nail is still shiny, but starting to show signs of wear.

Checked in with Rebecca and Laurel yesterday, and meant to see Katie too, but someone food poisoned her. The former two, however, were charming.

Okay, so maybe am not totally brilliant.

According to Amazon.com’s review, “In an author’s note at the end of On Beauty, Zadie Smith writes: ‘My largest structural debt should be obvious to any E.M. Forster fan; suffice it to say he gave me a classy old frame, which I covered with new material as best I could.’” My copy doesn’t have this, which I find mysterious–maybe the American edition is diferent? But I trust that someone somewhere deems me an E.M. Forster fan. (Although in all honesty I’ve only read two of his books and for a long time I thought he was a woman. I think I would have liked him as one.)

I got Zadie Smith’s On Beauty for Christmas and so far it is obviously a redrawn Howard’s End. So far I’m okay with that, but it is a little uncanny.

Man, if only I’d gotten this for Christmas.

(I think it’s hilarious.)

I’m reading On the Ice (finally) by Gretchen Legler and am learning all sorts of nifty stuff about Antarctica, like that the ozone hole almost closes up around December and then opens back up.

A woman selling nail products sucked me in at the mall yesterday and made my thumbnail ridiculously shiny. This is a sneaky tactic– it’s still shiny, and I’m think of going back and buying the stuff.

Apparently Jonny Damon has been sold to the Yankees. And he’s cut his hair. The world is going crazy.

I went to Mass today. There were many adorable children. Merry Christmas, everyone.

It’s been a while since I’ve landed in College Station at night. I always try to pick out buildings on the way down and am always suprisingly bad at it, and recognize nothing but Rudder Tower. And that’s in the daytime. Last night we came in at around 11 so all I could see were lights. The city looked surprisingly big, and there was a sort of hill in the background, which I tried to imagine was maybe Texas Avenue where it rises (“rises”) up into the south end of College Station, but really I had absolutely no sense of direction except up and down and the sense of night things, the many small lights, going from bizarrely small to reality-sized. It was a little surreal. It’s a little weird knowing you should be recognizing things that look so other-worldly. And then I wonder if that’s the way College Station is or if it’s just the landing.

I grabbed a copy of Newsweek in the MSP airport yesterday, knowing that it would have cartoons, and that my parents only get Time now. I was having a decent time reading the very short articles, especially the weird trend-diagnostic ones called “Who’s Next,” when I got to page 86 and did a double take. If you get a chance, go see. She’s my brother’s advisor.

There were a few too many kinks in my old template that I just couldn’t fix, so I picked a new one. It’s much less original but hopefully a little less buggy. However, there is one mysterious bug that I really don’t understand (I know, it’s so weird, I’m a computer genius). Random crap appears at the bottom of the sidebar saying this: okay, I take that back, now that I’ve gone to copy it, it’s miraculously gone. But the crap at the bottom of the post in my comments page is still there (comments.phpÔø?Ôø?WÁ§æWÔø?mBINÔø?Ôø?Ôø?– it’s obviously a very important message).

My Latin final is done, which is good for you all because as Cassie (I think) made me realize, my last few posts have been pretty much “I studied some Latin today”. I think this might be giving off the wrong impression that I spend hours and hours of my life on Latin. I really don’t. It’s just good tv-watching homework.

I’m all packed and I have a plate of spaghetti to eat before I go. But I still have a couple hours.

I spent a lot of tonight with a kitty curled up in my lap. He was really cute. I watched a lot of tv and looked at too much Latin. Tomorrow at 10 (possibly earlier) I can stop thinking about it. I actually don’t think it will be hard, but I have nothing else to worry about, so I feel like I should nail it.

It’s kinda lonely here but I don’t really feel like going home. Bah.

Grace is gone and it’s all quiet. I’ve watched a lot of tv and glanced at a lot of Latin vocab. I also sorta cleaned cuz it smelled like gross in here.

I accidentally left a waiter a horrible tip this afternoon because I can’t do math under pressure. I guess he wasn’t that good so I’ll try not to feel bad about it.

PS For some reason all my archives stop halfway through the month. If anyone were to have any advice about this and they were to share it with me, it would be welcome.