I can’t decide who I have more disdain for: the people flaunting their holiday displays on the 4th of January, or the people who go out and take them down on the 26th of December. All of these people are much higher on the social food chain than the people who don’t bother to take down their lights at all.

I can’t really remember the last time I took a picture with a film camera, but I’m pretty sure it was almost a decade ago. I remember ordering doubles just in case I wanted to give one away. Now, we take photos with our phones, press a button to make them look like aging film, and then publish them millions of times over by pressing another button.

I’m using the term “button” loosely, because these buttons are really just pictures of buttons on magical touch screens.

As a small child, I thought that the old pictures in the photo album were red and yellow because my parents were either a) incapable of properly using a flash while taking photos indoors prior to 1985 or b) covering the lens with their clumsy fingers.

I have yet to actually disprove these theories developed in my 7 year old brain, but there did seem to be a sufficient alternate explanation available when I learned about the chemistry of film development in college part I.

In honor of the nostalgia for the holidays as they did not occur, I used internet magic to transform my shiny brand new phone photos into “vintage” artwork specifically to distract everyone from my poor writing and not-that-interesting-life. I suspect that this obsession with all things vintage will continue to speed up the inherent style recycling that made it into a few notable opinion pieces in 2011 (that would be, the ancient past, shortly after the great dinosaur extinction of the early aughts).

I really wonder what the story is on this choice of home holiday décor?

Not only did I have to go back to work this week, but also winter finally came to Boston. We’re still lacking in the snow department (no complaints here), but the temperature dropped from the 40s into the single digits in 24 hours. Brrrr.

Prior to these events, I celebrated New Year’s Eve with some good friends at their apartment, and then managed to wake up at a reasonable hour on the 1st to go ride my bike, my first “fun” (rather than “transportation”) ride in MA since 2010, and my first ride of 2012.

My garden gnome, Chomsky, has been missing since the move. Luckily, because I got off my lazy ass and rode for the New Year, I was able to find him hiding in my cycling shoe, and I returned him to his rightful place.

I was expecting it to be cold and wore an appropriate number of layers. It was predicted to be colder than any of my recentish winterish rides in College Town, but apparently I was more acclimated to the cold than I thought. By the time I got to Lexington, I had removed all the appropriate-to-remove layers, but I was still swimming in my own personal sauna. This was despite being on a bike path populated by people who felt it was necessary to stop directly in the middle of the path to exchange post-holiday pleasantries with each other.  Minute Man passers-by were then treated to a strange contortionist show as I removed an overly ambitious base layer from under my jersey in my best impression of “changing time at middle school gym class.” Probably not my finest moment, but I really don’t have too many of those. I’d happily do it again, if it meant that the current cold had receded.

The arctic weather hit halfway through Tuesday. I was warm enough in the morning that I forgot a hat or balaclava on the way to work, and on the way home, I was trying to curse, but my frozen face couldn’t form the right shapes and the old dude I passed on Mass Ave* may have heard “Uck-uck-uck-ahd-daddit!”

Right now, I’m hiding in my house as much as possible (I used cold weather as an excuse to work from home before noon on Wednesday, just to stay in my fleece PJs for a few more hours). It is supposed to start warming up again, and I’m hoping to be somewhat thawed by the time that happens.

I’m counting down the days until Husband Dan gets here for many reasons, but right now because he is a much more efficient space heater than any option I currently have. Moving to Massachusetts in the winter is stupid, and moving so without my best friend along for the entire ride is much stupider.

Chomsky has no use for the propaganda of the holidays, and if you were to ask, he would share how thrilled he is that they are over. He will also criticize most of your beliefs and bitch about the media and government, so you probably should just politely ask him about the weather or keep your mouth shut.

* I’m pretty sure that old dude was high as a kite or drunk as a skunk. He had no tell-tale kite string or white stripe for me to accurately diagnose. He was making his own unintelligible sounds, so I’m not too worried about the impression I made.