The holidays were a nonstop chain of excursions and now that I'm finally home and have the time to write about them, my memory's fuzzy. On Christmas day I hightailed it to Atlanta, where my mother was visiting my sister and brother-in-law. The four of us had dinner together and Mom surprised no one by having a few drinks and letting the nasty comments fly. I felt so bad for my sister having to take it all and smooth everything over. This is actually the first time my mom and brother-in-law have been together in several years, since the time they had a massive falling-out in the car (while Jess and I were in the backseat no less). We spent the rest of Christmas day relaxing and the next morning drove Mom to the airport. By the time Jess and I got home, Dad and my stepmom had arrived from Asheville.

We braved the chaos of the mall to have a gigantic lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. I'd never eaten there before and it was amazing, especially since I didn't have to worry about the insane prices. The next day we mainly watched movies, including the new Woody Allen flick (I fell alseep) and Confidence (not bad). In the evening I drove back to Athens, but I missed the exit for 316 and ended up driving all the way to Commerce. I stopped to take a shit and then headed back to Athens. The normally 50-minute trip ended up being close to 2 hours. I spent the night at Matt's and on Saturday morning came home to get some fresh clothes, pausing briefly to get a $150 speeding ticket. Then it was off to Asheville for three days to stay with Bec and Monica!

It happened that two of their other friends came to visit the same time I did, so the house of four roommates had three guests in addition to their pets-- Vicious, a very talkative, very sassy kitten and Mocha, Monica's 10-year-old Pekanese with no bladder control and only one eye. Suffice to say, the house was quite full! There was always something going on in every room and someone was always coming or going. I distinctly remember wandering around the house at 2am and noticing that every light was on in every room. It was quite a change from my own place, where it's just me and Roommate and we both do our thing and keep to ourselves. If my place is a retirement home, staying at Bec and Monica's was like vacationing in Vegas. I've never had that kind of living situation before and it was fun to experience it for a while, though I did have to duck away a couple times just to get some alone time. The highlights included playing a ruthless match of Pictionary until 1 in the morning; giving Karaoke Revolution a shot and discovering just how utterly and hilariously tone-deaf I am; and a stumbling-around-drunk Stephen gashing his forehead open at 3am another morning.

On Tuesday I scored an appointment at the cancer clinic to have my tests run, which reminds me that I need to call and find out the results at some point. It was a rather anticlimatic way to end the trip, getting poked and prodded and then having to make the three-hour drive home. A few hours after I got in, Shelia came in from Atlanta to spend the night! She even brought me some delicious home cookin but she didn't take back her friends' tupperware and I feel really bad about it. On Wednesday we puttered around for most of the morning, went to the Jackson Street Bookstore and had lunch at Five Star. Not a bad way to introduce someone to Athens, although I'm still worried that I was a lousy host and her trip here was boring. I managed to subject her to half an hour of Glitter before she had to head back to Atlanta for New Years. Since Matt was sick we played it low and got dinner and saw The Last Samurai. It blew us both away. I'll admit that it has some serious problems, but I'm still pretty sure that it's my favorite movie of 2003 (tied with X2). (Tonight we finally saw Cold Mountain, which was just as sweepingly dramatic and tragic but not quite as beautiful or emotionally exhausting.)

That is a much-pared-down version of the entire holiday. It was a rockin' trip, but I'm very glad that it's over.