Virtual Advent Calendar, again!

So, remember when, about two years ago, I did a virtual advent calendar? (Check the archives if the answer is “no.”) Well, I’ve decided to do it again, only this time, more in calendar form. Check it out right here, and enjoy….

So, what do you want for Christmas?

Picking out Christmas presents is hard work for everyone. (Excepting possibly my mother, who has a deep seated knack for it. She can spot the perfect thing in a catalog from 10 yards, order it with her eyes shut, and have it stashed away by the end of November.) For all us ordinary mortals, may I suggest fredflare? The under $25 section is totally genius.

Superpowers

I want superpowers. I want them more than anything. I’ve been waiting faithfully, ever since I first saw the X Men cartoons with Anne Marie, my friend who watched all the TV shows I wasn’t allowed to watch when I was little, for my powers to arrive, one way or another. The only flaw with X Men powers was that it was rapidly becoming clear that I was too old not to have felt the first stirrings of my (I was sure) most awesome powers. If I was going to be super, I needed a new set mythology, one in which the hero comes into her own later, and maybe doesn’t have to be mutated by a mysterious force, cause that all sounded very unpleasant.

For a while, Harry Potter was perfect–Harry didn’t know he was magical! Maybe I didn’t either! But that didn’t last long. Pretty soon after I discovered Harry, I turned 11, the magical age for wizards in his world, and no one came to take me away to Hogwarts. I held out until high school, hoping, secretly, that maybe it was different in the US? Maybe since we didn’t Hoover or (apparently) know about the philosopher’s stone, we didn’t start magical training until later? But no. I had to abandon my Hogwartsian dreams. I would have made an excellent Hogwarts student, too. I even know the song, man. And I like wands! And magic! And potions! And I’d study reeeeaaally hard and never cheat on my essays by writing bigger so that they come out longer. But no, no, I got the skinny envelope from Hogwarts and headed, instead, to suburban high school, which–let me tell you–is nothing like Harry Potter and everything like Napoleon Dynamite, only not as funny and sometimes more awkward.

So from there, I had to find a new outlet for my superpower aspirations. Clearly, mutation is not going to hack it. At 19, I think I’m too old for any innate (but not supernatural) powers to be surfacing. Short of some sort of Alex Mack nuclear spill, what I’m left with is Charmed. If you’re not familiar with the WB show (now cancelled, which is probably a good thing. 8 years of it was kiiind of getting to be too much.), it’s centered around three sisters who live in San Francisco (sound familiar? A and I are sisters, and we sort of live in San Francisco. If only we had a secret third sister….) who, when their grandmother dies, discover that they’re the world’s most powerful, bad ass, butt kicking witches. They go around the world blowing up demons and fighting evil. And they have powers. The oldest one can move things with her mind (including herself), the middle sister can freeze time and blow shit up, and and the youngest sees the future, levitates, and beats demons up with super-mega-kung-fu.

I would loooove to be able to move things with my mind, freezing time would be pretty sweet, blowing things up would be awesome, and seeing the future and levitating aren’t shabby either. So, when A and I meet our secret sister and release out megapowers, I’m hoping for something pretty freaking sweet. If you (all two or possibly three of you) could have one superpower, what would it be?

Gangster Burger

At the end of last year, a bunch of us decided to eat dinner out on the oval, a big oval (shocking, I know) patch of grass in front of the stanford campus. We all went into Palo Alto, grabbed takeout, and settled ourselves in for a night of picnicking, frisbee, and word games. (Yes, we are HUGE, ENORMOUS nerds. We’re ok with that.) Because I’ve been laughably lazy about downloading and updating, the photographic evidence of the evening is only just now appearing over at flickr, but you should check it out, along with Halloween, baking, and dance parties. Enjoy!