Ninja: Recovered

I was home for the holidays and survived. There were many opportunities for death and insanity this week, but somehow, I careened past the path of utter destruction and have made it safely back to my newer home. What were some of those pearls of peril?

1. Downhill skiing for the first time in my life. Really, it was more like me trying in vain to stay off my ass for more than two minutes, but hey, cross country has always been more my style. Or more accurately: I'm a wuss. Perhaps I will return to the hills yet this season. And maybe I'll run into my two instructors whose summative age would make them my peer.

2. A mouse who won't die. I set up traps, complete with a decoy granola bar in a box next to a peanut butter laden trap, but the thing just won't kill itself. Stupid smart mouse. I think our mouse has a strong sense of mortality, much like myself (except that my danger senses are overcome by peanut butter and chocolately goodness any day).

3. My parents' living room stuffed to the brim with wrapped boxes, three generations, and three dogs (one, the size of a rat, and two that were surprisingly not overweight by some strange miracle). I'm perplexed that we escaped that torture room with only a spilled beer casualty. Oh yeah, and it'll be bigger next year with Jennifer expecting her first little one sometime next summer. ::sigh:: What's with the profusion of procreation? That is one fad I'll be happy to avoid...for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, LONG time.

4. The emotionally gripping meeting of my ancient computer with my trendy laptop. I think my 1999 Compaq sabotaged my stripping of its files due to jealousy of my new younger and much slimmer companion. It decided that a pen drive is WAY too complicated to open and forced me to send files by email instead (after a frustrating ordeal trying to rearrange my dad's cables that WERE fine the last time I fixed them). Of course, that meant that I only sent about six mp3 files due to the escruciatingly slow process of uploading the files into email. On the bright side: "Ninja of the Night" has returned! Try looking for it online sometime...NOT THERE anymore, so thank god for an old evil computer that still has some good in it; I knew it to be true. Now if only I could find defeatyou.com. ::sigh:: Some things just remain lost.

5. Hauling all of our shit up to the third floor. I tell you, after Christmas shopping did not help our cause. My car was full, although I'm certain we could have stuffed more in if we put everything into those vacuum airtight storage bags that seem so handy in those 2am infomercials. Next time everything on my list will be smaller than my head and I will only bring what I am wearing. If it means sleeping naked and wearing a t-shirt and jeans to mass, so be it.