Christmastime at the Miller House(s)

I've been back in the Snellville/Stone Mountain area for a few days now, and already my trip home has been quite the experience.

First of all, I'd like to point out that while I don't enjoy the very commercialized aspects of this holiday (i.e. the shopping frenzies, the commercials for Christmas sales on tv, the Christmas music on 94.9 FM starting in October, etc), I do enjoy putting up the few Christmas decorations we have and putting up the Christmas tree. That being said, let me say that I'm pretty much the only one in my family who does. My mom gets into in once I do, but otherwise, I'm all alone in that respect.

So on Sunday, my mom and I brought the decorations down from the attic and I put them around the house. I tried to hide the box containing all of our contruction paper stockings, wreaths, and Santas from elementary school, but my mom has a radar for that sort of thing. I'm surprised she still keeps some of it. Nevertheless, she found the box under some other boxes (it wasn't placed there unintentionally, mind you) and displayed said decorations prominently in the kitchen. Now when people come visit, they can look at my artwork and see that I couldn't write my name in a straight line at age 5. I'm doing better now, you'll be happy to know.

Our next task? Find a Christmas tree a week before Christmas. This was a harder task than we previously anticipated, but we did eventually find one. I don't think you could call it a "tree" exactly...it's shorter than I am (I'm 5' 7") and looks more like a Christmas bush. Or maybe we could call it a "fun-sized tree." My brother (who's about 6' 4") said it best -- "If it were a fish, we would have thrown it back." Too true.

I've done a few other things since coming back...I went to the dentist and had a strange woman clean my teeth and tell me that I just need to floss more. Of this fact I'm well aware; what I wasn't aware of was how easily my dental hygenist could carry on a one-sided conversation with me about the importance of flossing and how an electric toothbrush is so much better than a regular one. "Why am I telling you this?" she'd say, and without looking for a response, she'd immediately finish, "I'll tell you why..." Honestly, I didn't really need to be in the room for her to talk. She just kept going and going...eventually she made a note on her records not to cover teeth whitening with me the next time I come since she'd told me everything there is to know about the subject in a span of 30 minutes.

I also saw the movie "The Holiday" with a few friends. Good movie--a chick flick, yes, but still good. I was surprised to see Jack Black in it, and not as one-half of Tenacious D but playing a man who composes the music for movies for a living. What a cool job! It was a tad long, but worth seeing.

Finally, my brother came home last night, which is awesome. We jammed to Journey this morning (by the way, search YouTube for their "Separate Ways" video because it's terribly entertaining) and then went to a nearby park to play frisbee and walk around. After tossing it around for a while, we took a short walk on one of the trails and came back to find his Duke frisbee and the light jacket I was wearing gone. What? In a small park in Gwinnett County? Apparantly so. They were sitting by a picnic table on the ground, but someone decided to take them anyway. LAME.

And so, for the rest of my holiday, I will be writing soon while travelling between my dad's house, my mom's house, my dad's girlfriend's house (awkward), and my high school friends' houses. Hope everyone has a great holiday!