Quiet Days

We must’ve gotten a little bit of cold fog around here last night, because this morning all the trees were coated in a beautiful layer of hoar frost, making everything look so soft and velvety. And it stayed cloudy and calm all day too, so it’s still on the trees. It’s scenes like this that make winter so pretty.
I haven’t been up to too much these last couple days, basically I’ve been a bookworm bum. I felt like a change of pace from the type of stuff I’d been reading, so I perused my parents shelves and decided to pull off Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Got through 170 pages today so far, not too bad. He’s definitely got his own unique style, it’s taken a little while to get into it. But hey, I figured I should get around to reading another “classic” (haven’t done that in awhile), especially one that’s set in Spain. 🙂 It definitely is nice being able to take some time and just sit down and read a good book, not having to really worry about anything else. I’m definitely looking forward to some of my old friends getting done with their finals and coming back to town though, so I can hang out with them. I’m not used to being done before everyone else, this is kinda odd. 🙂
My parents are finally gonna be getting rid of their current dial-up internet connection in favor of a speedy DSL hookup. It’s about time if you ask me, but their boss deciding to foot some of the bill (since my mom works at home as an off-site secretary) was the final push they needed to go for it. There’s even a chance it might get installed before I fly back to Pennsylvania. Hmmm, the possibilities of not having to spend 2-5 minutes waiting for a website to load… I hate dial-up.
We’re almost all done being decorated for Christmas around here. My dad and I got down one more tree tonight, plus a giant wreath for the outside of the house that we put the lights on and got hung up. Probably my mom and I will spend part of tomorrow decorating the last two trees. Not much time left, as Christmas is almost here! It definitely feels a lot more like Christmas here than it did at Penn State, since we didn’t have any decorations up in our apartment or anything. That, and homework and finals tend to suck any Christmas spirit right out of ya.
Happy Birthday Dad! Just thought I’d throw that out there. 🙂
And finally, some people just don’t have luck with animals, as evidenced in these three stories from The Australian‘s “World Wide Weird” section. First, a man snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef got attacked by a school of great white sharks, but managed to fend them off. I’m definitely glad I didn’t have the pleasure of encountering any sharks down there while I was going for a snorkel! Then you have the people who are just plain stupid, like the Tasmanian woman who had her finger bitten off by a lion at the Melbourne Zoo, when she tried to pick a flower from inside its enclosure. Some people… And then where would this world be without stupid criminals? If you’re feeling police after robbing a bank, where would your first choice of a hideout be? A tiger enclosure? Sounds like a plan, at least for this South African fellow, who didn’t exactly fare too well.
And Josh, I can’t guarantee that I’ll put up any pictures of your present to me. That entirely depends on what the present is. 🙂 Oh, and Zach, sorry, but a Lexus just isn’t in the cards for ya, no matter what the commercials might tell you. I don’t even think I’d be able to afford the big red bow!