I guess the only thing I am 100%, without question, grateful for is my kitten, Ginny. She really has illuminated my life just by her presence and unique personality. It's a blessing to be able to watch her grow up to be an adult cat, and I can't imagine my life without her now.

MOVIE MARATHON:

Mystery Science Theater:

Night of the BloodBeast (TD host segments
Puma Man
Gamera vs. Zigra
Attack of the the[sic] Eye Creatures
It Conquered the World
Santa Claus
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

Non-MST movies:

The Santa Clause
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Why Thanksgiving? Shouldn't Americans, as well as everybody else on Earth, be thankful every day of their lives instead of just for one day? And I really can't believe that the Pilgrims and Indians sat down together in a happy storybook kind of way and ate the first Thanksgiving dinner together...the latter probably gave the former a portion of their food and said, "Okay, fine. We won't let you starve even though you invaded our land. We'll leave it on the doorstep. G'bye!"

I have a view of next door's swimming pool outside my bedroom window. In mid-September they drained and re-painted it, but since then I haven't seen them do anything with it. Now it's a drab soup of rainwater and leaves, and it looks as if the bottom is semi-frozen. My grandmother talked to the neighbor a few weeks ago, asking why he hasn't drained it again yet, and he said that some water has to be left in to prevent the cement from cracking. But still, I'm wondering why they don't use a Loop-Loc cover; the pool is half-full now and by next month the damn thing will be overflowing with melted snow. Ick. But I suppose they know best....

Turkey countdown: Four days, but I still don't care. At least there's an early dismissal on Wednesday. I'm trying to think of things that I normally don't do on Thanksgiving so I can break the monotony of it all. I've never really watched the Macy's parade or any of the TV specials, so maybe I'll give that a try this year. My traditional
Mystery Science Theater 3000 marathon (including all the old Comedy Central bumpers!)will have to be scaled back a little bit, but since I know most of the episodes by heart, it won't matter. I don't intend to go shopping on Black Friday, mostly because of the traffic and the fact that I've long since grown out of the holiday avarice that most children posess (although I do miss looking at the Toys R Us ads with hope and wonder in my eyes.), as well as I'll be too tired to do anything.

Wait a minute. I can't believe I'm talking about Christmas and Thanksgiving AGAIN! The older I get, the faster time seems to go by, and I'm trying to get used to it. It seems like only yesterday it was 2002! And my journal entries from last Christmas are still on the current page. Wow. Soon I'll be middle-aged, then grey-haired, then dead. I wonder how many Christmases I have left.

No longer in southeast Minnesota. The only thing I miss is Minneapolis. I'm back in Chicago where I belong. The moving process was tedious but cathartic. We found a house at the last minute, and we only had five weeks to pack up the whole house. We panicked, and ended up labeling 3/4 of the boxes "TO BASEMENT." This house is smaller than the last, you see, and we were afraid of how much our posessions would clutter up the main level.

Things are getting organized here, but a lot of our stuff is still in the basement.It's very odd to walk down the stairs and see the things that surround my life crammed into just one basement in neat boxes. (And mind you, I'm not from a pack-rat family. We really really downgraded on house size. On a sidenote, I discovered just how many towels and dishes one can accumulate in 52 years of marriage, which is A LOT of damn towels!)

People who have read my journal before will notice that I was begging for a cat last year. Well, I finally got one. First name Ginevra, middle name Morrissey. Ginevra is the official name but we call her Ginny for short. (this name came from the Harry Potter books.) The 'Morrissey' is...for obvious reasons, plus her birthday is nine days after his. (Close enough; the perfect excuse.) She's such a little darling, almost five months old.

As I grow older, holidays seem more depressing and I don't get excited and happy as I used to. Today I had to be reminded that Thanksgiving is eight days away! And I'm not getting overly excited about Christmas either. My excitement over presents is gone, which is a good thing, I suppose. I shouldn't be contributing to the world's avarice quotient. But also gone is my eagerness for parties and big dinners and togetherness, which I always used to look forward to. The only thing left intact is my love of holiday movies, I can't NOT watch "It's a Wonderful Life," "A Christmas Story," or "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" this year. But I can look forward to eating Jello (which I never do) next Thursday. Nobody eats it in my family except me, and I take special pleasure in the fact that my grandma's making a special order just for me even though she does special things for me every day of the year, and she's got ten other people to cook for. Grandmothers are wonderful things.

Yes, I am still alive.

According to my records, I started writing in this Moz-solo journal a year ago yesterday during my first semester exams. One year later, it's finals time again and I've been beating myself senseless with information...60% of which will probably not see the light of another day inside my brain after Thursday afternoon. I got my new schedule for the next semester that'll start on Tuesday, and for once I'm not dissapointed with it. Nearly every day I have three hours or more of open time to screw around, doodle, and most importantly, study. It's almost 9 PM and I still have a few more pages of notes to go over. back to the salt mines....

I sat on my ass again today in front of the TV. I got sick of watching DVDs so I watched cartoons instead; something I haven't done in quite some time. I've got school tomorrow, which isn't fair because every other school I know of is still on vacation until Monday. It's not fair, but then again, a ton of other crap isn't fair either.

New Year Resolutions are bullshit in my opinion, but my grandmother said that I may as well think of a few to kill some time. So, here it goes.

I resolve to...

My life is picking up but things still aren't perfect. It probably will NEVER be perfect, but I am slowly starting to accept that. I have to put every single issue I have with life aside and concentrate on the stuff that will affect me very soon. I've got the SAT to register for, school records to transfer, stuff to pack, grades to keep up with... I've been going through this heavy bout of depression for a few years now and I'm doing a good job of pushing it out of the way (with help, of course) so I can function again. For the first time in a long time, I have things to look forward to, my favorite of which is the fact that we're moving. I can't believe that after seven years of living in this crazyass town I'm finally gonna go back "home." For years I've been saying that I'll never miss Rochester when I leave and I'll just block it from memory, but now I realize I can't do that. But I think living here has made me a better person. I've learned how to deal with other peoples' stupid crap, share the roads and highways with lunatics, and I've done other personal-growth stuff. Living here hasn't been a 100% perfect experience, but seven years IS quite a large chunk of my short life. As much as I don't want to admit it, my experiences here are now a part of me. Maybe that's not so bad.

This evening I am sitting in my room with the blinds tightly closed and the only light I'm recieving is from the television. I'm wrapped up in the huge Swiss-dotted blanket I've had for fourteen years that's so tattered it'll probably fall to pieces the next time it's put in the washing machine. My television is a small 1986 Panasonic without any video jacks so I have to connect my DVD player through the VCR and a video stabilizer so the picture stays normal and doesn't do that Macrovision fade-in-fade-out thing. Widescreen movies look a little crappy because the screen is small but it doesn't matter. I'm holding a movie marathon in my bedroom because I'm bored and lonely. So far this evening I have revisited childhood favorites such as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King as well as watching the Lilo and Stitch DVD I got for Christmas. I'm taking a break from Spider-Man right now and when that's done I'll probably watch Attack of the Clones before bedtime. The world is quiet around here in the basement and it's just how I like it.