I'm home, I arrived safely, traveling was traveling (the train was only 16 minutes late! That's practically on time). I'm enjoying being home with my mother and getting to see my dad.

Today's sermon involved the phrase, "Senator Nameforgotten could hang the ten commandments in every courthouse and school in the nation - well, he couldn't, but let's just say for the sake of argument that he could - but there would still be drug dealers and murderers and ponzi schemers and capitalists."
Our new preacher amuses me. He also has a tendency to start a story and then trail off and conclude, "When I started this story I thought it was going to be more relevant and less self-indulgent, but never mind," but he still gives good sermons and is quite charismatic. There's something very personal about them. Also, there's something intensely gawky about him that reminds me of a teenage boy.

We went to Joy Tsun Lao for lunch today to celebrate my cousin Naomi's birthday, and both Naomi and her brother behaved quite well - although they were not pleased by the St. Patty's Day parade which made the drive take an hour instead of twenty minutes because we had to make this giant circle to get around it.

And then I helped in the latest installment of The Turkey Saga. I have now stuck gooey green stuff underneath a turkey's skin preparatory to stuffing and baking it. (The gooey green stuff was actually pretty nice; it was slightly warm and smelled of sage.)
The oven is still way too hot, but I think mom set it to about half what it should be and it's hopefully about right. She says that the new stove is coming on Wednesday.

There were many things that I intended to write about on here, and I don't want to write about all of them because it would take all afternoon, so I'm going to just mix and match and give you anecdotes as takes my fancy.

( Cut for rambling )

I know I've been quiet of late (at least on my own journal), but I feel like I don't have all that much to say. I've been ( reading )

In other news:
In proof of the fact that my room at dad's house is really freaking cold - I could see my breath yesterday morning. In my room. Not all the time, but if I breathed in warm air from under the covers and breathed out outside the covers, the misty little cloud was quite evident. (I decided not to check this morning - I didn't want to know.) Needless to say, this does not encourage me to get up in the mornings. Luckily there's not really anything to get up for, and if I manage to not encounter my brother in the morning before school, so much the better.

I've been house-sitting, so I have been spending a great many hours sitting around with Ghengis's paw or chin on my hand. It's very relaxing. Madison may know how to purr, but she hasn't managed the trick of making the air around her vibrate when she does. Ghengis isn't the best purrer I know, but he's certainly the best among the cats I see with any frequency. And I think Ghengis's old-cat attitude of just sit still and relax - unless, of course, he wants Food or Out, in which case everything should be done immediately - is very calming for the soul (except on the occasions when he's yelling at you and you're not sure what he wants. It was much easier to talk to that cat before he went completely deaf). Everyone should have more cat hand-holding in their lives.

My dad made pork and sauerkraut, our traditional New Year's dish - albeit a few days late. I'm very glad. While my mother did make some for when we had her family over on New Year's Day, she doesn't do it as whole-heartedly and I feel that the result is an inferior product - not that I would EVER tell her so, mind you.

New Year's (Christmas) with mom's family was good. Festivities with dad's family were ( fine )