The new year....

People don't keep new year's resolutions. Well, okay, some of us do, but most of us fail anywhere from a day to six months into our resolutions. We don't write every day or exercise regularly or whatever it is we've promised ourselves we'll do in the coming year.

But we still keep making resolutions. We still keep thinking that's going to  change, that this year will be the year we finally write a novel or lose 20 pounds or save our pennies long enough so that we get to take that dream vacation to Argentina.

Why do we do it? Why do we keep resolving to learn new languages, climb mountains, and watch less television?

Hope. Faith. Habit. Because we're all crazy, doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. Maybe we know we'll probably fail, but if we don't try, we'll most definitely fail.

Are you making resolutions this year? Why?

Christmas!

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and happy Friday to those who don't.

I don't actually believe in the religious aspect of the celebration, but in modern America, well, for better or worse, that belief isn't exactly required to celebrate.

I like the presents and the food and visiting the extended family who we don't see all that often. I like the time off of school and the decorations and the music and the shopping. I like Christmas, the non-religious aspect of it.

Every year, we celebrate for a few days: first, usually on the 23rd, we visit one set of grandparents, a great aunt, and an uncle plus family (his wife and kids) in a city about two and a half hours a way. We have Christmas dinner, exchange gifts, and stay the night. We go home Christmas eve, and don't have any set plans; sometimes we open a present, but no set plans. On Christmas day, we go visit the other set of grandparents, and an aunt plus family (fiance and kids and my cousin's girlfriend), in a city about forty minutes away. We have Christmas dinner and exchange gifts, again, and often play some kind of game (Apples to Apples this year). Finally, my other aunt plus family (husband and kids) get into town on the 26th, and there is yet another big dinner and a smaller exchange of gifts.

This year, I got mostly practical gifts, just things I needed, from people who understand my need to live out of a suitcase while in school--a case for my laptop, a planner for 2010, a new messenger bag purse, one of my favorite miquelrius m8 notebooks, and a bunch of consumable packaged food that they don't actually have (or is not easy to find) in Germany (because I have stuff there I'll need to take back in June, so I have more luggage allowance than I can actually use in January with things I'll need to take back in June). Plus a few things that I don't need and won't even have room for in my suitcase, from people unable to appreciate life out of a couple of suitcases. It wasn't a big Christmas--gift aren't usually big and expensive in my family. I know it frustrated me as a kid, when all my friends got fancy electronics, and I never did. But, I got over it, mostly.

In other news, I am pretty sure Kwanzaa is a made-up holiday that no one I know has ever celebrated.

Happy Hanukkah/Christmas/Friday!

Dinner Conversation With My Family

We were snowed in this afternoon, and I got my mother to watch Across The Universe with me. This may have been a mistake for a couple of reasons. One, she asks lots and lots of questions while watching movies. Two, she is usually unable to recognize any of the characters and asks who they are every time they're on screen. Three, she makes comments: "I can't believe those kids are doing that!" "This could never happen!" etc. And, four, this conversation.

We sat down to dinner, and she was talking about the movie, telling my dad about it. He'd never seen it, but after she tried to explain it for a minute, he said, "So, like Tommy?"

"Yes!" she said. "A lot like that."

"What's that?" I asked. Because that move was made more than fifteen years before I was even born, and I've never seen it.

"It's a movie. Like that one. But with The Who, not the Beatles," my dad explains.

"Who's Tommy?"

"He's a deaf and blind kid who plays pinball. He never loses. He's a pinball ninja."

"Um, how is that possible? You can't play pinball if you're deaf AND blind, and everybody loses sometimes."

"Not Tommy. He always gets a replay. He's a pinball wizard. He plays by feel."

"...."

"It's true!"

"Does he have some kind of supernatural power?"

"No, he's just REALLY good at pinball."

"You can't play pinball by feel. It's not possible."

"That's what you think! Anyway, it's a movie. You watch movies with impossible things. Like VAMPIRES. Those are ridiculous."

"Even a fictional universe has to have rules and logic. And from what you're telling me, there is no logical reason why Tommy is a pinbal wizard. Ninja. WHATEVER."

"It's a great movie."

Yeah, that's my family.

Public Transportation!

Yeah, this topic totally deserves an exclamation point.

I think public transportation is awesome. I can't drive, but even if I could, public transportation is just way more awesome. It's cheap, you can do other things while on the way (as opposed to while driving, reading while driving is frowned upon generally), it's better for the environment, and, well, it's awesome. Plus you are less likely to die, I think.

Sadly, in America, we apparently do not believe in public transportation.

Okay, big cities have buses and trams and trains and subways, but almost anyone who doesn't live in a big city is just out of luck. Sorry.

That's not the case in Germany, or most of Europe, where even the tiniest towns are connected to the world by public transportation. I get get anywhere I want to go in Bremen on public transportation, no problem. It's awesome.

That's probably what I miss most about Germany: public transportation.

Plus, public transportation provides some awesome people-watching opportunities. There are some very interesting people in the world.

German public transportation is interesting in particular, because of the way you pay for it. You buy a ticket, and validate the ticket when you get on. No ticket barriers. On some buses, at some times, you have to show your ticket to the driver, but that's never the case on trains/trams/subways. There are ticket inspectors, and your likelihood of running into one varies depending on what exact transportation you're using, but it operates mostly on the honor system. You pay a fine or go to jail if you're caught without a ticket, but most Germans would never think of not buying a ticket.

My German friend says that's because you're supposed to buy a ticket, and it would be really embarrassing to get caught without one. Most Americans would stand more by my logic, that if you ride public transportation regularly, the expected amount in fines you'd have to pay, adds up to less than if you bought a ticket every time.

Luckily, this isn't an issue for us in Bremen, because we all have semester tickets for students.

But it's an interesting cultural observation, I think, that an honor system like this actually works. (It's not just Germany, but also a lot of the rest of Northern Europe.)

Just, food for thought.

Somebody famous once said....

I'm too lazy to look up who, but somebody famous, Albert Einstein maybe, once said that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

In that case, a large chunk of the population is certifiably insane.

Nobody's life is easy. Okay, I wouldn't mind swapping with, say, JK Rowling--writing talent and gazillions of dollars?? who wouldn't want that?--but even our idols, who ever they may be, have gone through some really hard stuff, at some point. They've screwed up, they've been screwed, and they've had days when the world seemed out to get them.

But even when the world sucks, we keep on living, we keep on hoping, and we keep on dreaming.

We look at tomorrow and say, it's going to be better then. It'll all work out.

And then it doesn't, some of the time, but we keep hoping.

We keep hoping that we'll win the lottery, or find true love, or write a New York Times bestseller. It doesn't work out, but we keep buying lottery tickets, going on sketchy internet dates, and sitting in coffee shops pounding out words on our keyboards.

And you know, that's what keeps us sane. As crazy as it might be sometimes, it's hope that keeps us sane, and keeps us going. Keeps us living.

So we keep on doing the same things, and hoping for different--better--results. And if that makes us crazy, then so be it.