Happy Thanksgiving!

Just a quick post to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, and to express my sincere condolences to all those who are applying to college and had to answer this question: "So how are college applications going?" 32453 per times, per relative.

Two years ago at this time, I was trying to explain what Macaulay Honors was to all my relatives. I've found the easiest way to tell someone is to say "Well, I'm applying to Hunter College, and attempting to get into the Macaulay Honors College, which is the pan-CUNY Honors College - I'd get a full scholarship and be part of both a really large school and a really small school, getting the best opportunities of both." Succinct, straightforward, and there's not much room for questions, so you can get back to what's really important - pie. God, I love pie.

I was never a big fan of Thanksgiving, but college really makes you appreciate your family cooking a huge meal, sitting down, and eating something you only had to help with, rather cooking the entire thing yourself.

But, as is always true, a break from school means I have side-projects to work on. Which isn't exactly fun, but they need to get done and its better to do them over tea at my kitchen table with my mom than at 2:30 in the morning when I get back to Brookdale.

My big jobs this quick break are to:

1. Apply to the class Dr. Petraeus is teaching. I need to write the cover letter and update my resume a bit. I might make a really intense resume post later in the semester, so keep and eye out for that.

2. Find out how many Winter Session classes Macaulay will pay for me to take. They say "one class, four credits". But my original class is three credits - I just need to verify that they'll pay for me to take an additional one credit class.

3. Spend some quality time with my friends from high school. I was a very lucky kid, I had a very tight-knit group of friends when I was in high school, and we've stayed so through our first two years of college. We're making plans to go see Disney's Frozen tomorrow, and maybe just chill out in the nearest Starbucks. I haven't seen some of them since August, so its really nice to find out that we still pick up a group dynamic really easily.

4. Have a serious talk with my little brother. He needs to understand that just because I'm not sleeping in my room every night, that doesn't mean it becomes his personal storage facility. Or, he at least needs to clear a path through his boxes to my bed so I can sleep.

5. Find a new silver tree. Growing up, the tradition was in my house that we would alternate who picked the tree, my brother or I.  We had two fake ones - a green one, and a silver one, as well as my brother's occasional request for a real one. Every year that it was my turn, I chose the silver tree. I love the way it shines and reflects the colours from the ornaments and the lights so much more than a plain green tree. Last year though, I finally admitted the silver tree had seen better days and needed to be replaced. So, I am on a mission to find a new silver tree before Christmas rolls around, and if I'm really on top of my game, I'll find it before Black Friday is over and it'll be nice and cheap. (Yes, my mother and I are Black Friday people, I actually wrote this partially in the car and partially after shopping, since we went out around 11:00 PM on Thursday.)

6. FIND ALL THE CHRISTMAS MUSIC. I love Christmas music. It's my favourite kind of music. I start listening to it in secret about 3 weeks before Thanksgiving ( I don't like Thanksgiving that much, to be quite honest.) And after we clean up from Thanksgiving dinner, I start listening to it constantly. So I need to add all the CD's I have at home to my iTunes collection, so I have it in the dorms. I'll also need to find the websites for all my favourite stations and bookmark those on my computer for some variety. 106.7 is definitely the best, so I need to see if I get it in the dorms. When they designed the building, they didn't have radio-waves or cell reception or wifi in mind, since it was 1950-something. You don't get too many radio channels because of that.


7. Laundry. I brought it all home rather than doing it before I left. So I better put in some clothes so I can take the clean stuff back with me.

So that's my Thanksgiving, and I think I'll leave you with a present to start the Christmas Season, some of the strangest Christmas Carols out there.
The traditional Italian song from my neighborhood.
A song by a kid who doesn't understand how dangerous wild animals are.
A song about how clueless children can be.
The most honest Christmas song in existence. (The quality of this video is awful but it's really funny so I'll show you this one anyways)
And this was last year's anthem, and I think I'll take it to be this year's as well.