Did you know that there’s a brewery in Gloucester, Massachusetts? I sure didn’t, and I grew up five minutes away from it. As it turns out, their Fisherman’s Brew is pretty tasty, though I’m not sure it actually “reflects the spirit and courage of the sailors of the North Atlantic fishing fleet.” Maybe it does, though - I’m not really sure what spirit and courage taste like, to be honest.

Also still enjoying that Depeche Mode album, by the way, or at least the good parts of it. A couple of the songs are crap, but the ones that aren’t are really good. Weirdly, or perhaps not so weirdly given the new DM sound, it has also put me in the mood to listen to the most recent Nine Inch Nails album - you know, the one I got tired of months ago and which left me a little soured on NIN in general. But I find I can enjoy it more if I stop thinking of it as a NIN album and just listen to it as though it were an album from another band entirely. When taken on its own without any of the NIN-related baggage, I think it’s actually pretty good. Damning with faint praise, perhaps, but that’s my take on it at the moment.

So Christmas has come and gone, though I’m still in Massachusetts soaking up the crazy North Shore wilderness (as well as a wide variety of booze). Friday afternoon, Chris and I piled into a big friendly Volvo with my brother and his girlfriend for what ought to have been about a four hour drive, but - it being 23 December, after all - it ended up taking about seven and a half hours. That’s not to say I wish we’d taken the train, because when you take the train you don’t get to listen to the 80s station on Sirius and stop at a diner in Connecticut for a burger and some truly excellent onion rings.

Christmas Eve was the usual frenzy of wrapping and cooking and decorating, and it was as fun as it always is. I managed to wrap my last present well before supper, a new record (as long as you don’t count the years I didn’t leave all my wrapping until Christmas Eve). Chris was suitably awed by our dirt roads and lack of city noise, I think.

And the day itself was lovely - we tore through all our carefully wrapped presents fairly early in the morning, and I came away with quite a pile of phat lewt. I have a satisfyingly weighty stack of books to take back to New York with me, and am once again grateful that I belong to a family of voracious readers. There were several instances of one person receiving the very same book they had given someone else moments before, but luckily no instances (that I’m aware of) of someone getting multiple copies of the same thing.

Today we’ve been in cleanup and recovery mode; I ventured out to the mall with my brother and his friend George, thinking we might see a movie, but we were too daunted by the flocks of mall teens. And the fact that everything we wanted to see was sold out didn’t help, either. But we ended up eating through sixty tons of pistachios while watching Hellboy from the comfort of our couch at home, which weren’t bad at all. I love me some demons, I tell you what.

And now I’m off for dinner - I hope you all had as nice a weekend as I did, and will talk to you soon.

Got kicked out of a bar last night for the first time in many years. Although strictly speaking it wasn’t me that got kicked out - just the fresh-faced NYU students I was with. But we all ended up leaving, so it amounts to the same thing. Ah, youth.

It’s freakishly warm here today (52 degrees) and rainy. We were told it would be cold and snowy, but I guess that’ll learn me for listening to weather reports. In any case, if I end up walking the Queensboro bridge during a transit strike I suppose I’ll be just as glad that it isn’t snowing. But perhaps I should have brought an umbrella.

It’s been very cold this week - Chris and I generally prefer cold weather to warm, but even we have been blasting the heat during the nights. I wear socks at all times, including while showering. (Okay, maybe not while showering.)

I’m aware that the New York definition of “very cold” is probably pretty wimpy compared to the North Dakotan or Canadian notion. Hell, my cousin Edith is in Antarctica right now and I certainly wouldn’t try to suggest that our cold compares to hers. But nevertheless: it’s cold.

In other news, I grabbed the new Depeche Mode album and found it to be surprisingly good. The first half is definitely stronger than the second, but on the whole it has an interesting new sound that has certain industrial and dark electronic elements that I like very much. And of course the vocals are perfection, as always.

Sorry for my absence the past couple of days - I came down with a brutal cold and didn’t do much except cough and complain all weekend. (Chris was overjoyed.) One pleasant surprise, though, was the fact that those noxious Cold-Eeze lozenges actually seem to work - I faithfully took them for the first couple days of symptoms, and sure enough my entire cold only lasted four days instead of my usual week.

Not much else is new, aside from the usual Christmas preparations (still haven’t bought train tickets) and Warcraft (still playing a lot of it). With regard to the latter, it’s now been a full year that Chris and I have been playing, although that hardly seems possible. In some ways the game has less of a hold on me than it did during those fatal first few weeks, in that I can go a few days without playing and it doesn’t feel like a big deal. But now that Chris and I are both in the same great guild and we both raid fairly frequently with them, it’s become much more of a social activity than it used to be. So while I play less than I did last December and January, it’s probably a more significant chunk of my life nonetheless. Mmm, addiction.

I tend to have at least two books going at a time - one large one I read in bed, and one smaller paperback I carry in my bag and read on the train. I just finished both of the ones I was working on, so I thought I’d mention them briefly. The train book was The Little Country, a favorite of mine from high school that I was rereading for fun. The bed book was Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel - a massive tome that took me months to get through (reading only a few pages every night) but which I liked very much. I wish the author would hurry up and write another 800-page novel, just for me.

Next up are Atonement and The Great Book of Amber. (See if you can guess which is the train book and which is the bed book - there’s only an 800 page difference between the two, after all!) I’ve only just started both of them so I don’t really have an opinion on either one yet, but they seemed promising. I’ll let you know how they turn out.

On the one hand, I’m thrilled that we didn’t have to wait until late January for our first snowfall this year, but on the other hand, I’m a little vexed that the cold weather came so quickly. I haven’t actually gotten around to digging out hats and scarves and gloves yet because, after all, it was barely a week ago that I was wearing blazers and sweatshirts instead of giant fuzzy winter coats. I did at least find my winter boots, which worked out well as it was snowing again when I left my building this morning.

I’m doing well with regard to my Christmas shopping - just a couple more things to get, mainly things which can’t be ordered online. There are, as always, a few people on my list who are notoriously difficult to shop for. But I’ll manage. I am, after all, an excellent shopper.

Anyway, I’m off to try one of those fiendish eggnog lattes my coworkers have been drinking. Will it take the place of my favored skim peppermint mocha? Doubtful, but I figure all overpriced espresso-based beverages deserve a chance.

We got our first snow of the season yesterday, or maybe Saturday night. Either way, I woke up on Sunday to see snow falling outside and a fair amount on the ground already. Our courtyard filled up pretty quickly with lopsided snowmen and kids having snowball fights. I guess this means it’s officially winter, and I think I’m okay with that - at least this year I have boots.

I am, of course, even more tired today after my excursion last night, but it’s Friday - so who cares. In a few hours I’ll be settled in at home with some wine and some TiVo and will probably fall asleep on the couch catching up on a week’s worth The Colbert Report. Which is as it should be.

Actually, speaking of falling asleep on the couch, Chris and I have been sampling a number of different beers lately in an effort to find the perfect beverage for making six hour raids less boring. Two recent contenders were both from Samuel Adams - their Hefeweizen and Winter Lager. We aren’t exactly beer snobs, obviously (given that we’re drinking Sam Adams), but we thought the Hefeweizen especially had a really nice flavor that went well with slaughtering Majordomo Executus.

And speaking of a nice flavor, as part of my ongoing effort to embrace the fact that it’s December and Christmas isn’t all that far away, I recently picked up a Kinder advent calendar. I’m of the opinion that advent calendars with chocolate are the very best kind, and advent calendars with chocolate and small toys that pose a choking threat to young children - well, you just can’t get any better than that. I think the only issue will be deciding who gets to eat what day.

Feeling really sleepy this week - I’ve been having trouble getting up in the morning and then yawning all day when I finally do. I guess I didn’t really catch up on my sleep last weekend as I usually do, so probably what I need to do is just pass out for about twelve hours. Instead, I’m going out drinking tonight. (I have never claimed to be sensible.)

I just had another yawning fit while I was writing that paragraph, by the way. I’d go downstairs for an espresso, but given that it will be followed in less than an hour by vodka, what’s the point?