2008 01 05

Well, that's pretty much done, thank Odin.  I mean, of course, Christmas in a Catholic country, something of a trial for those of us with a different (and, by the way, highly unappreciated here) take on the whole damn thing.  For the first twelve or fifteen days of December, a diurnal saint had to be celebrated with (1) fireworks and (2) loud soi-disant dance music.  Unfortunately, I haven't found the Mexican equivalent of earplugs yet, so have had to listen to a lot of stuff I'd rather ignore.  This is a small village surrounded by other slightly-distant small villages, and the position of the house up its hill between two of them means that I get to hear all this much more clearly than I'd actually like.  Especially the five carols over and over from the bell-tower.  Anyway, I've been thinking about the relief of not hearing all this shite every night, and here it is again, another techno drum driven three chord assault.  Oh well, it has to end sometime.  This all vaguely leads to thinking about New Year resolutions and the pointlessness thereof, and my take on the whole "new start" thing.  I like to think about the preceding year and decide what was fabulous about it, to concentrate on the good.  And that has been quite a chore this year, with one thing and another.  To the good, I'm living in a much more congenial climate, surrounded by pretty little mountains.  I'm learning a veritable cornucopia of skills I never needed living my urban life-'til-now, such as ovine herding and chicken-coop cleaning.  I've made great new friends who are kindly correcting my Spanish and helping me acclimate to the expat life.  My health is not deteriorating in leaps and bounds.  On the other hand, I haven't seen my husband/boyfriend/partner (choose desired flavour of nomenclature) in basically a year, we both have no money, and I'm learning a veritable cornucopia of skills I never needed living my urban life-'til-now.  Computer access is the lifeblood of my global existence, and all my friends around the world have been less present than I'd like because of the lack of decent, reliable internet access here.  The world's economy is being dragged into the toilet by American 'globalisation', and I don't even want to think about what damage G.W. Bush can still manage to accomplish in the last throes of his tenure in the White House.  Pres Elect Obama got there with the help of my Tribe, and has chosen a virulent homophobe to deliver the invocation at his inauguration to say thank you for our help.  

All that and six bucks will buy you coffee, but it is important to remember that life is like that, shit happens, and try to go on being a positive force for good in the world.  A small way to help is freerice.com, a lexicon game that donates twenty grains of rice to starving people for every right answer.  It's fun, simple, and makes a small difference.

Have a good New Year, everyone.