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Jan. 6th, 2013 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI'm making decent progress on posting photos from my Illinois trip. I'm getting them up on Facebook and Google Plus. I was working on putting them here, too, but I think what I really want to do is get everything from the trip posted, and then write something longer here wherein I go into more depth and write more about the trip itself, my experiences, the context of the photos, that kind of thing. So I think once I go through all the photos from the trip and post the ones I want, I'll write something more like a cohesive trip journal here, using notes I made in the notebook I kept with me and my own recollections and thoughts from my perspective now looking back.
But in the meantime, I'm still working hard at my fifty-pictures-a-day goal! But I also need to write about what I've been up to over Winter break.
While![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
danaeris was with her family in Canada for a span around Christmas, lisagems came up to Kenosha with me for Christmas with my family. It was very nice having her over for a few days and she was kind to suffer through my whole family's board game addiction. She met my extended family for the first time when we went to my grandother's/aunt and uncle's place for Christmas dinner. I've made no secret of the fact that I'm dating two people, and none of them seemed phased by meeting her, if they even though about it.
It was good seeing my grandmother again and talking with her for a while. Somewhat to my surprise, I was also more social with my aunt and other folks than I typically am. When I was younger, I was always quiet and shy around extended family. (Of course I was quiet and shy around most everyone.) I got better in recent years, and started having regular conversations with my grandfather before he died, which I'm very glad of. I'd like to get to know others better too, even though I'm not sure that I have as much in common with them.
But following up on an observation I'd made a couple days before while playing Dominion (It occurred to me as four of us sat around the table, slinging cards and chatting about random things, that if it wasn't for the fact that we were holding things like Harem and Madman instead of the ace of spaes or two of clubs, we might just as well be sitting around a friendly game of poker or something more 'mainstream'), I decided that maybe I should go sit in on a game of dominoes. In the past, it had never seemed interesting, but I realized that I should really look at it as a facilitating device for social interaction rather than an activity to engage in for its own merits.
I found that though I don't get the same intellectual satisfaction out of Dominoes as I do out of things like Pandemic or Power Grid, it still gave me a surprisingly unintimidating way to join in something social with my family. I think I'm going to try and do that more often. (I also was asked by one of my cousins to bring Pandemic again some time. I played it with him some time ago and apparently he thought it was memorable. Perhaps there's an aspiring gamer there!)
Apart from all of that, it was really nice on Christmas morning with my brothers and parents to have most of the people who are very close to me in my chosen family together for a family holiday. Though I missed having Danae around, I'm very glad that Lisa could be there.
From there, I took Lisa back home to Chicago on Christmas day. On the way, we drove through a section of housing with some amazing light displays. They were really something, and it was fun to drive around and look at them. I spent that night in Chicago, and then it was back to Kenosha. My parents' annual New Year's game party was coming up!
It typically goes from New Year's Even to New Year's Day, with board games, computer games, and a bunch of food. This year it was all board games as we didn't have many computer-game type people there. As well as my family,serinthia and todd_riverden were there, Dwarf and foreignlegion joined us, and happily, Danae was feeling up to driving up from Evanston. She'd just gotten back from Canada and I missed her terribly. We were both a little self-conscious about how snuggly and smoochy we were being, but not enough to stop. *grins* James' girlfriend was there for a span too I think, as were posicat and his girlfriend Mallory whose LJ name I forget (Sorry!). Many games were played, much food was consumed, and life was pretty awesome. I feel a bit bad about movies with Serin: she and I had planned to watch Revenge of the Sith on the morning of New Year's Eve, but I got pulled a way by a few things to help set up for the party and we didn't actually manage to finish it. But she and I are planning a movie day later this month, so we can finish that and see other stuff too.
The next big event was No-LJ-James moving into the house and housemate Phil moving into the basement, but I think I wrote about that already. That brings me mostly into the present, where I now sit in Danae's condo, writing about my vacation and editing tons of photos.
I hope I didn't miss anybody!
But in the meantime, I'm still working hard at my fifty-pictures-a-day goal! But I also need to write about what I've been up to over Winter break.
While
danaeris was with her family in Canada for a span around Christmas, lisagems came up to Kenosha with me for Christmas with my family. It was very nice having her over for a few days and she was kind to suffer through my whole family's board game addiction. She met my extended family for the first time when we went to my grandother's/aunt and uncle's place for Christmas dinner. I've made no secret of the fact that I'm dating two people, and none of them seemed phased by meeting her, if they even though about it.It was good seeing my grandmother again and talking with her for a while. Somewhat to my surprise, I was also more social with my aunt and other folks than I typically am. When I was younger, I was always quiet and shy around extended family. (Of course I was quiet and shy around most everyone.) I got better in recent years, and started having regular conversations with my grandfather before he died, which I'm very glad of. I'd like to get to know others better too, even though I'm not sure that I have as much in common with them.
But following up on an observation I'd made a couple days before while playing Dominion (It occurred to me as four of us sat around the table, slinging cards and chatting about random things, that if it wasn't for the fact that we were holding things like Harem and Madman instead of the ace of spaes or two of clubs, we might just as well be sitting around a friendly game of poker or something more 'mainstream'), I decided that maybe I should go sit in on a game of dominoes. In the past, it had never seemed interesting, but I realized that I should really look at it as a facilitating device for social interaction rather than an activity to engage in for its own merits.
I found that though I don't get the same intellectual satisfaction out of Dominoes as I do out of things like Pandemic or Power Grid, it still gave me a surprisingly unintimidating way to join in something social with my family. I think I'm going to try and do that more often. (I also was asked by one of my cousins to bring Pandemic again some time. I played it with him some time ago and apparently he thought it was memorable. Perhaps there's an aspiring gamer there!)
Apart from all of that, it was really nice on Christmas morning with my brothers and parents to have most of the people who are very close to me in my chosen family together for a family holiday. Though I missed having Danae around, I'm very glad that Lisa could be there.
From there, I took Lisa back home to Chicago on Christmas day. On the way, we drove through a section of housing with some amazing light displays. They were really something, and it was fun to drive around and look at them. I spent that night in Chicago, and then it was back to Kenosha. My parents' annual New Year's game party was coming up!
It typically goes from New Year's Even to New Year's Day, with board games, computer games, and a bunch of food. This year it was all board games as we didn't have many computer-game type people there. As well as my family,
serinthia and todd_riverden were there, Dwarf and foreignlegion joined us, and happily, Danae was feeling up to driving up from Evanston. She'd just gotten back from Canada and I missed her terribly. We were both a little self-conscious about how snuggly and smoochy we were being, but not enough to stop. *grins* James' girlfriend was there for a span too I think, as were posicat and his girlfriend Mallory whose LJ name I forget (Sorry!). Many games were played, much food was consumed, and life was pretty awesome. I feel a bit bad about movies with Serin: she and I had planned to watch Revenge of the Sith on the morning of New Year's Eve, but I got pulled a way by a few things to help set up for the party and we didn't actually manage to finish it. But she and I are planning a movie day later this month, so we can finish that and see other stuff too.The next big event was No-LJ-James moving into the house and housemate Phil moving into the basement, but I think I wrote about that already. That brings me mostly into the present, where I now sit in Danae's condo, writing about my vacation and editing tons of photos.
I hope I didn't miss anybody!
