School’s back in session, which means I’m seeing a lot less of my boyfriend and getting a lot more free food. I’d rather have John around, to be sure, but the food is some consolation. Did I mention that it’s free?

It’s not even the freeness that I love the most—it’s the not having to prepare it or choose it or think about it myself. I just show up at the announced time and place, and I will be fed. The food is almost always tastier and higher-quality than I would have prepared myself, but even when it’s not, who cares? I put zero effort into its creation.

Having food prepared for me comes in at the basic level of what I consider luxury. If I were ludicrously wealthy, I think I would still want to drive my own car, walk my own dog (except maybe first thing in the morning), and buy my own clothes, but I would hire a personal chef the first chance I got. (Second would be someone to do my laundry and, by extension, sort and put away all the still-clean clothes I throw on the floor.)

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I’m almost done capturing my family’s old Beta tapes in digital format. Tonight I came across one of the last of the Beta era, a fifteen-minute tape from 1991 of my brother playing soccer. He was four.

Four-year-old soccer, I have to say, is pretty great. They play six on a side, no goalies, on a quarter-size field with something like a size two ball. The games are short, probably twenty or thirty minutes, with two halves. Having to aim for the opposite goal in the second half seemed to be just at the limit of four-year-old comprehension, so I imagine the only reason to even have halves is so there’s time for the Hi-C-and-orange-wedge break.

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This past weekend we visited John’s oldest brother Michael and his adorable family. They recently moved from Florida into a huge new home outside Dallas. It’s so far outside Dallas that it’s technically part of Frisco, which appears to be made up entirely of shiny new suburbs. I’m sure it’s a real town with a real center somewhere, but the only bits we saw were miles and miles of chain restaurants, Targets, and generically-named neighborhoods.

Their house is lovely, and it’s close to Michael’s work, and they have two playgrounds and their kids’ future elementary school within walking distance, so I can’t fault them for living there. Still, the neighborhood densely packed with nearly-identical luxury houses creeped me out a little. There aren’t any trees! There aren’t tons of trees in that area to begin with, but there are more than NONE.

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I’ve been up at College Station this whole week. John has an old Xbox (kindly donated by my brother) that he’s turned into a media center, so I’ve been couch-potatoing around the whole time, properly enjoying my winter break.

John played and beat Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and I introduced him to the original Rollercoaster Tycoon, an old PC game that I loved as a kid. Man, what a great game.

You know what else is great? Project Runway. We’re halfway through Season 3 on DVD right now—it’s the only one I haven’t seen all the way through. Amazing show. John even likes it way more than he ever thought he would. Love it love it love it.

Since I got my sewing machine, I had a vague idea for months that I would MAKE people gifts for Christmas this year instead of refueling the flagging economic machine like a good little consumer. The problem with this idea is that three of the five most important people in my life are men, and another is a dog, so the intersection of things they would appreciate and things I can make by hand in my nascent craftiness is tiny.

But then in December I hit on the idea of slippers. For my dad, at least, I imagine slippers rank lower than a sandblasting attachment for his air compressor on the list of gifts he’d enjoy, but higher than a scarf or a man-purse—good enough for me!

My mom needed new slippers anyway, so I knew she’d appreciate them. I know John’s not a slipper guy, so I gave him some fancy tea, an infuser, and a teakettle instead. Plus I mended a badly-torn pair of his pajama pants, and that totally counts as a homemade gift. Sam was also exempt—the hours I would spend sewing him tiny booties by hand would far outweigh the few minutes of amusement we’d get watching him chew them off his feet.

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