the bread machine is extremely awesome. so far it's made seven grain bread, cheesy onion bread, and normal white bread. this weekend it'll be working on banana bread and cinnamon raisin bread and homemade jam.

i always get depressed on holidays like thanksgiving and christmas. most of the time i put my dysfunctional family life out of my mind. on those days i succumb to wishing i had a big, happy family where everyone was healthy and close and loving. this year esp. drove that point home because some of my roommates had a big gathering at the house. it consisted of all their family members (some of whom flew out from other states to attend), tons of work friends, and a bunch of close friends too. unlike my family events, copious amounts of alcohol were consumed, marijuana was smoked, and everyone laughed and hugged and ate and celebrated.

i drove to my parents' house on the eastside and dragged kirt with me. my mom ordered the meal from pcc. i found both it and the white wine pretty awful. i ate spanakopita and my homemade bread instead. no fighting occurred this year at least, and my dad didn't wear his headphones throughout the meal like in previous years. i love bringing guests because my family snipes at each other a lot less when guests are present. i dropped kirt off and went home feeling pretty glum.

when i got back, lots of people were still hanging out at the house. i took this semisad picture of myself for the 365 days project. i ate some of their pumpkin pie and drank coffee with kahlua and peppermint schnapps and started to cheer up a bit. our awesome former housemate quinn came online so we had a videochat with her via skype. my roommates are starting to get anxious about finding another roommate to fill nathan's shoes and have actually posted an ad on craigslist. i'm unhappy about this 'cause i really want davya24 to move in, but they're getting worried 'cause time's running short.

i'm sick, so it's movie time. last night was spanking the monkey (liked) and oldboy (eh.) which had surprisingly similar themes. nothing like some good ol' incest and violence to combat illness.

i've become somewhat bad with snail mail due to my schedule, so i was happy to remember to use the usps cardstore today. you can create a card online and they print it and mail it for you.

my grandma told us that she had destroyed every photo of herself that she could find dating back to her high school graduation.

i thought that was terribly sad. i don't consider her a bad-looking grandma at all. she doesn't wear hot pink nylon 80s jogging suits or weird pants with an elastic waist or tacky glitz.. she just wears normal clothes. she doesn't dye her hair... it's curly and cute.

she wouldn't allow me to take any pictures of her, either, so the only ones i have from the trip were sneaky photos.

i don't see my brother often, which is too bad. he's pretty cool and i am a lot closer to him than to my parents. this weekend i tried to help him celebrate his recent high school graduation properly.

saturday him & a friend went to zaina to enjoy smoking a hookah and getting hit on by older women in the bar. next i got them boozed/smoked up and took em to the capitol hill arts center where naha, mea and others were dj'ing.

ah, the memories. i spent my post-hs-grad at future soul festival listening to someone drop hardkiss' 'delusions of grandeur' in between sets.

my grandpa died this morning.

his last name was bell. supposedly we're distantly related to alexander graham.

i would've liked for my brother's kids to have met him. (not that my brother has kids - he's only 17. but i suspect that someday he will.)

i puked a lot this morning. but when i asked to go home from work, my manager was suspicious. i know he thought i just wanted to enjoy the sunny weather and start the party early on a friday.

i find it unthinkable to be off work and not do anything, though. so i called my mom and told her to come see the wild parrots of telegraph hill with me. this film was designed for my mom.. she's an animal freak who owns a bunch of birds. apparently it's a true story about this homeless street musician (originally from seattle, but now lives in sf) who has a flock of parrots who follow him around. it's not really my kind of movie.. i'd prefer to be watching the flaming lips documentary or born into brothels or oldboy... but i know she'll like it.

the stranger told me they were printing my letter about orpheum this week. i haven't picked up an issue yet to see if it actually made it into the paper or just online.

i got in the car this morning and a timbuk2 bag was sitting next to the passenger's seat. my brain doesn't process information very quickly in the morning, so i opened it. inside was a cubase book, audio cables, and an iriver. ohhhhh.. i realized.. this must be imonk's bag since i gave him a ride back from work last night.

i cannot resist someone else's music library. first i listened to smash tv, which i'd been curious about due to their upcoming show. i wasn't into it, but now i know. next was sten - 'leaving the frantic' which i really liked. then i discovered that sten = a lawrence alias. i liked terrestre 'secondary inspection too and then found that terrestre = murcof.

i need to drive more people around so that they leave their mp3 players in my car.

my dad bought tickets for my mom & i to the vienna choir boys show at benaroya tonight. it's not really my thing. but i'll be glad to talk to my mom; it's been a long time and she's been going through some tough shit. after that i'll bring my temporary musical friend to the lower level show and return him to his rightful owner.

my dad works as a conservation engineer at the seattle water department. among other things, he helps companies designing appliances that use less water (washing machines, toilets, etc.) he organized a program where people brought in their old, water-wasting toilets and replaced them with energy efficient toilets. this earned him the nickname "the toilet king".

today i took the day off work and we had lunch downtown. afterward i walked around and took some photos of the city which i put into a slideshow.

my parents have been nature enthusiasts since they were kids. my dad works as a water conservation engineer. my mom studied geology. they're very into wildlife, so my mom decided she'd find him a book that discussed tracking animals by their droppings. she's new to the internet, and was not prepared for what she'd find when she opened the first few search results for "scat".

buying my dad a book devoted to photographs of animal shit will definitely qualify as my best christmas present yet.