How quickly these days' record leave my head. Or maybe it just doesn't matter as much as I think it does. Here I'll try my best, very quickly.

Christmas day itself was rather subdued, compared to previous years. We got started around 9 a.m. I think; dad had set the Christmas music blowing high and mighty in the family room. I ran out of presents first, a first; mom last, also a first.

The most memorable thing for me was a scavenger hunt mother put together for me. This is common place in my family, when a gift is rather large and it's important to add suspense and some to-do around the thing. Sort of like wrapping it in gift paper 10 times in a row. Father was completely stumped, though mom and me think exactly alike, which she had banked on. "Ride a fine horse to Banbury Cross"; that was clearly my old stuffed horse downstairs (the one mom managed to get a picture of me riding, at age four, when she discovered me surrendipitously in my room, with a cowboy hat on and nothing else, bouncing up and down on the bed. Where was this spirit when I was in college!) "Do you hear what I hear" took me a second try; I immediately heard buzzing in the overhead lights, but I got to the piano fast enough. "Roses are red" completely bypassed a step in the chain; there were apparently roses in my mother's room with another hint, but I bypassed it ("Violets are Blue") for the African Violets in my sister's room. Sugar is sweet was immediate, the sugar in the kitchen. "How dry are you?" completely stumped me. I looked in every booze cubby hole, I looked for the dehumidifier. It was frustrating me for a long time, and my parents got a little impatient with my inability to get it.

When the thought finally came, I was sure I had it. "Ohhhhh" in wonder and frustration. It was in the dryer outside. That got me a new pair of noise cancelling headphones.

I got dad a new monitor for christmas, and showed him how his netflix account came with free online rentals. We had not gone through 2 minutes of this when he found out that he could watch the first episode of Dr. Who Season 2 (the recent series on BBC) and I lost him for an hour. Dad also got a Harvard wine opener, 6 dvds of 1970s Dr. Who, and I'm not sure what else.

Mom got from me Poison by Dior. She had wanted an Eau du Cologne of it. Apparently this was made at one point. Father and I could not find it. I settled for getting her the Eau du Toilette from a Lord and Taylor on 5th (which I spied while having my Christmas walk through Manhattan, that I figured I needed to take after seeing or reading something, I don't remember, which led me to a small about.com walking tour of major window displays from macy's on 34th up to bloomingdales).

My sister sent a copy of http://www.books-by-isbn.com/0-7165/0716529629-Gender-and-Power-in-Irish-History-Maryann-Valiulis-0-7165-2962-9.html to my parents. "Ugh" my mother said, while my father chuckled. Dad made some comment about how he had thought Harvard had made him an educated man, but his wife and daughter would make sure of it. Mom made some offhand comment suggesting there were more than enough pages to use one a night in place of a sleeping aid.

Angela called later extremely anxious to know about the reaction to the book. While initially attempting to cover the fact that it had been less than ecstatically received, she cut out (her phone has been having trouble), and I realized something was up. I was able to get everybody into the family room, where we discovered with much surprise and happiness that, in that book that hadn't even been opened but rather cast aside underneath the christmas tree, a substantial portion of my sister's doctoral thesis had been published. Mother grabbed the phone when Angela called back, waving the book around her head like an ancient warrior might have hooted and hollered with a sword around a newly captured harem in a burning conquered city.

There were other presents. I don't remember them and it's not important.

On most Christmas days, I would have set about playing with all my toys. I just unpacked them from the suitcase, most still in their store wrapping. I'll get to it with time. Stephen King suggests audio books, which I realized with my new Creative mp3 player may be possible in the morning walk to work. Etc. I'll be getting a new monitor, mostly like the one I got my father (when Evan was here last he exclaimed "it's so small! It's so big and clunky!") My current version is an Envision, one of the earliest lcd panels, purchased before I went to college.

I do remember spending about 4 hours Christmas night attempting to get A Christmas Story to play in iTunes. No dice. I ended up showing my parents "how we do things in college" by hooking up my laptop and playing it bootleg over youtube.

Friday I was supposed to fly home. I hastily drove over to see George (he reminds me a smidge of Ed now, talking about clients, completely one with his father Al, with part time people underneath him now and traveling around the country). Everything apple, of course. It was stunning how much he and his father reminded me, physically, of Steve Jobs, right down to the almost unhealthy weight loss.

I spent just a moment in Governor's Park before rushing back and getting packed by mother, something that just can't be avoided.

We got to the airport to discover that my flight was arriving at 3:15 pm and taking off at 2:00 pm. I overheard a delta representative quite perplexed that it was "on time again". Shortly afterwards they broadcast that the flight was cancelled. As I joined with everyone flocking to the delta counter, I got an automated call from delta.com informing me that I was "protected" on a flight leaving the next day at 5:40. In the morning.

So I got what I had really wanted, an extra day with my family, and the warmest day of the vacation, 75 degrees and 94% humidity.

One of the first things I did was go up to the park. I can't describe to you the liberation of spirit there. Of course it was warm and you could smell all the flowers blooming out of season in the neighborhood, as a sort of precursor to the park itself. But I got up there, and there were the heavens with a mixture of great majestic black clouds and blue sky. The sun was initially hidden, but broke out from behind the great cloud obscuring it; you could see it happen. The sun came rushing up over the trees and that great grassy hill and just swept past me and there I was bathed in light, all alone, in my grassy park.

When I was very little I had a dream, the first in a rare but unmistakable vein of dreams, which I would call closer to visions. I know it must have been before I was 4, because I remember being very proud and secretive about it in preschool (and afterwards). I don't remember what all happened. I do know that I was talking with God. All I remember is the end of the dream, looking on heaven, which was manifest in that vision as a great grassy field with sunlight (or perhaps it was God) pouring down on it. A great angel swept into my vision, blocking out view (I do not believe it was part of the original, but my memory, possibly constructed, has it as a great robed angel with a huge horn, like you might see on a christmas card, just sweeping in like a bad flash animation), and a voice booming out "Go and bring Peace to the World," after which I woke up.

It was stunning how much the park reminded me of that vision, as that sunlight came racing up and past me.

Afterwards I went for a walk in the woods in ecstasy, surrounded by the green, smelling it in, seeing the sun peaking through the canopy here and there. I thought to myself how fucked I was in New York and how much I wished I could come back and live in a place like this, how much I missed it, how much I needed it, like a recently caught fish in an ice chest on a boat needs the sea.

I spoiled my time the rest of the day, not spending enough of it with my parents. I remember checking stats for work, and sending off a long email to sam. We didn't play parchesi, or any other board game. Dad and I watched some of his Dr. Who, but I didn't really get to interface with my mother. There was another round of packing and getting ready and logistics doing.

4 hours of sleep, one of those iconic early morning rides in the nighttime darkness where everyone is too tired to be sleepy and you feel fine but every 5th word is mispronounced and you go to pour orange juice in your cereal. I slept through most of the airplane rides, and some of the airports, with the exception of a shoe shining experience I wrote a small journal about.

I spent most of the day back in new york with Tom and Jas. Sushi and then video games back at their place. I think Tom and I keep expecting something meaningful to come out of hanging out; it's happened before. It was pretty awesome that last time we got drunk at Chidozi's housewarming party, we managed to find and open topics we had somehow never gotten around to previously, and if I dare say it, link in a weird form of fraternity. I half think that's why Jas kept trying to get me to drink, and made my screwdriver with only a hint of juice. At any rate I stayed a little too long waiting for something that never came and got home around 2 after a slow subway ride making all local stops.

Today I slept in, wasted a surprising amount of time online researching I don't know what (a look in my history reminds me that I spent about an hour writing an email to djpretzel attempting to make a really well formed email because he's extremely busy and important in his own off radar social circle and I need help finding the keywords on google that will find me more music that sound like what he put together in one of his songs). I went to pottery where i couldn't get the clay to center. I read more of On Writing and realized I needed to be doing a lot more reading and writing and throwing myself in front of the train by circulating childish attempts at short stories. I considered joining a Gotham Writers workshop. I spent some time figuring out how to get my virtual machine to run ubuntu (apparently I left it not booting a long time ago, and forgot the trick to make it work. I now remember it being turning off hardware acceleration and the lan adapter, which was only necessary after I upgraded ubuntu; but researching the problem anew produced the altogether better solution in a little known forum of a grub boot flag or two that worked much better) and installing festival, so I might have a chance of making my own audio books.

I'll be buying audio books from amazon. I did get festival installed, but we're not much farther along than Stephen Hawking, despite 20 years. That's not true; but the better text to speech costs money anyway, and if I'm going to pay for it, I'd rather have one trained in acting and presentation and giving each character his own accent.

I don't know what I'm going to do. Tomorrow I go back to work. I've likened my job to trying to get through the front door with grocery bags on each arm, that awkward situation where you can sort of prop your weight in weird ways and trembling sort of get the keys out, slowly fumble for the right one, jerkingly try to put it in the hole about 10 times, struggle to turn it...20 degrees...5 degrees...a bit more....etc. I can't ever open up my stride and get going. I must be careful what I wish for; if my projects were reduced in importance and scope I would get given drudge work, which is clear enough and easy enough to do, but absolutely soul sucking and disheartening (and even that tends to be more tiptoing through the code base and worrying about accidentally colliding with somebody else pushing a build, than just crafting something beautiful from scratch as fast as you can code).

I remember what happened Christmas day. I went outside and raked the front yard. Dad discovered this just as I was finishing, and rushed out to help (it's sort of the same thing as dad never letting me pay for dinner; he and his own father got in a shouting match one night over who would pay the bill that is a well known and often told story in my family). Dad can hardly bend over any more for the pain it causes him in his back and hips. So there I was, tired from having done the whole yard already, nonetheless, trying to rush to finish (unspoken) before dad could do himself any injustice, and my father rushing faster and faster trying to limit how much I could get done.

The great thing about a lawn, after you're done, is that you can just sit there drinking your lemonade or your water and enjoy it. You know you're done. You know it looks good. And you come out later, and the next day, and its still done.

I was really jealous about Reuben Kee, when I saw the announcement on ocremix and the reminder about his site. Here's a dude that was no older than me, over a year dead, and here he has this fantastic collection of awesome things just sitting there, like a raked lawn. I spend months pouring all my talent and mind and energy into work, and here I am on the brink of my project getting thrown away entirely, all of my work just completely lost. And it's not just politics; technically and really, it's not clear that we even made a dent in the problem we set out to solve. It's just like factoring. All that time spent, and it might have been time spent - one man pushing against a house sized boulder - wasted. The worst part is you can't even tell.

If I ever teach beginning programming again, I have a small speech I'm going to make. It goes like this:

"You can tell those who aren't cut out for programming. They'll come into the computer room, they'll sit down. They'll review their notes, they'll code. They'll inevitably hit a block. They'll frown, they'll scowl. They'll shake their head. They'll think some more. They'll frown some more. They'll tinker on the keyboard. They'll do this for hours. Then they snap. They'll shout and pound the desk. They'll scream, they'll forswear programming forever. They'll stand up, break down in tears, and run out of the room.

You can tell those who are true programmers, too. They'll come into the computer room, they'll sit down. They'll review their notes, they'll code. They'll inevitably hit a block. They'll frown, they'll scowl. They'll shake their head. They'll think some more. They'll frown some more. They'll tinker on the keyboard. They'll do this for hours. Then they snap. They'll shout and pound the desk. They'll scream, they'll forswear programming forever. They'll stand up, break down in tears, and run out of the room.

And every time, after a little while, they come back."

Tenacity? Masochism? Stupidity? Insanity?

I just wish I could make some progress. I can't go up to anybody any more and think to myself, "I'm a somebody", that confidence that impresses a few and pisses off the rest, that which my social life is based on. I feel like a once-was somebody-in-the-making, a pot that went through the kiln and came out with an s-crack, and I'm fixing to get put aside. "I'd throw it in the shard bucket, but I put so much effort into it...maybe one day I'll fix it" - and then it's on the shelf covered in dust and obscurity.

Why can't I beat this?