Project continued

Project 365 is hard! Here's what I've posted for December so far. Unfortunately, there are lots of holes. I'll try to do better next month.

December photos

Watering hole redux

I haven't been to the watering hole in ages. I finally went back tonight so that I can get back into my Tuesday night habit. The best news? I reluctantly tried the queso and it was good! It wasn't the old recipe, but it was very good and the chips were better than before. Looks like I have something to look forward to again!

My sexy name

I know it's kinda lame, but I couldn't resist.

Get Your Sexy Name

Happy Holidays!

So, I decided to take Brett up on his offer to keep our holiday plans. Why should my holidays suck because he's unsure of what he wants? I didn't have him go to my parents' Christmas party. I figured that would require too many explanations in a couple of weeks. Aside from that, everything is still on. We're going to midnight Mass tomorrow night (his idea, surprisingly), he will be cooking breakfast Christmas morning (my idea -- I hope it's good!), we'll exchange gifts, we'll go out on New Year's Eve, and then we'll go to the Laser Spectacular Featuring the Music of Pink Floyd the first week in January. I think we'll probably go out for steak with the gift certificate his mother sent sometime in the next two weeks.

And after that? I don't know. He says he wants to continue dating, just more casually than we have been. I still don't know if that's true or if he just doesn't want to be the bad guy. I also don't know if that's what I want. I've never been good at casual dating. I think I would need to be seeing other people in order to keep from being too serious about Brett, but it's not like I have a lot of (acceptable) prospects. It's certain that sex is out. That's only part of a serious relationship for me.

Sometimes I think it would work just talking on the phone a few times a week and seeing each other less than that. Sometimes I think it's impossible to go backwards. Sometimes I think we could just be friends, but then I realize I would (will) be so jealous if (when) he finds a girl he wants to commit to.

I don't know. What I do know is that I'm going to enjoy these next two weeks. He's being his usual sweet self, so I feel confident that I've made the right choice. It's not like I'm dragging out a miserable break-up. It's more like our relationship is a terminal cancer patient who decided to live it up before the end. Wait, that's too morbid. How about this? It's like our relationship is a person who got a fantastic offer for a job in a new city and decided to paint his hometown red before the move.

Yesterday's news

Some random thoughts and commentary about yesterday's news:

1. I don't know if I can trust what Brett says. He feels inordinate guilt about so many things. When he says he wants to keep our plans for Christmas and after, I don't know if he really means that or if he's just saying that because he feels bad.

2. This whole thing started two weeks ago. I thought it was settled, but apparently it was not. That kind of makes me mad. At that time, I asked him if he wanted to dial things back a notch. He said he didn't know how to do that. We decided to keep things as they are. Yesterday he said, you guessed it, he wants to dial things back a notch.

3. I haven't decided if I still want to exchange Christmas gifts. What I got him is easily returnable. I want to know what he got me. So, curiosity might decide that one for me. But I gave considerable thought to his gift. If he got me crap, I'm going to be pissed!

4. I wish I could get back the $40 I just spent over the weekend filling my contraception prescription.

5. I really want to be with him the way things were. That's why I'm not letting myself make any decisions just yet. I'm prone to forsake common sense for emotions, and I think that would be a mistake.

6. The "I don't want a serious relationship, but I want to be with you" thing is the same thing I got from Brian. I carried on with him for a year. I've always had in the back of my mind that things with Brett would turn out the same way because we started out with the same kind of intensity. It is different in that Brett is a kinder person than Brian, he has been more honest about his feelings, and we've had more of a real relationship in these three months. I don't know if those differences are enough to make the outcome any different.

7. I cared a lot about Brian, but I didn't love him. I love Brett. I know it.

8. What if I were to get back together with him and he decides in a couple of months that he doesn't want to be with me at all? He says he loves me, but he's not "head over heels." Yesterday's letter said "something feels amiss" and he has a "nagging feeling." At what point would we know that that is not going to change?

9. Not wanting to be serious yet is one thing. Not knowing if I'm whom he wants to get serious with is something else entirely. I think after three months he would know. I think you either feel it or you don't.

10. I was looking forward to our developing a good sex life. We had some stumbles and I was hopeful that we would overcome them.

11. It was all I could do not to call him last night and ask him to come over. He called tonight in response to the message I left him on my myspace page. He asked a couple of times to see me tonight. I said no. I'm proud of myself for that.

12. Chicken-fried chicken is not as good as chicken-fried steak.

13. The problems we are having are in his head. I was fine with the way things were. The only thing we lacked was the girlfriend/boyfriend label and I didn't need that. Not yet, anyway. He wrote, "I'm not able to be what I should be at this time." I don't know what he "should be." I was fine with what he was.

14. I told him that I will call him tomorrow night. What the heck am I going to say?

It's over!

School is finally done! I took two paralegal classes this semester and ended up hating it. The classes are super easy. The homework is mostly busy work, e.g., copy page 319, write one sentence about each of the subdivisions in Chapter 4, write the definitions of 20 bold terms from each chapter. The final exam in my Introduction to Paralegalism class was this: "Open your book to Chapter 5. Flip through the chapter and write no more than 3 sentences on the one thing you think is the boldest statement in that chapter."

I had three major projects which I think gave me the clearest picture of the nature of the profession. The first two were to do case briefs on any case of our choosing. The third was to do an interoffice memo on one of the issues from the case we briefed. These weren't too hard to do. I just know that I don't enjoy research and writing. Ironically I am good at both, I just hate hate hate them. I can't imagine spending more than 40 (probably more than 60) hours per week doing research and writing it up.

So, I'm done with the paralegal studies. I'm proud of myself for continuing to be diligent in my studies even after I decided I wasn't going to pursue it. For some reason, it was still important to me to get As in the classes. Who knows? Maybe I'll get hit on the head and decide to start again.

Movie Saturday

Brett (no one will object if I use his real name from now on, right?) and I saw two movies yesterday.

Thumbs up: For Your Consideration
This was the first Christopher Guest movie I've seen, though I've been interested in the last few he's done. The ensemble was on several Sunday news/entertainment shows last weekend. They are all great actors, and the movie was hilarious.

Thumbs halfway: Syriana
I didn't hate this movie, but I didn't love it either. It was very well acted and the story was good, but it seemed overly complex. I did like the fact that the writers didn't neatly tie up the various plot lines; they let the viewers use their brains. I know that sounds contradictory. I guess I wanted to have to think, but not that much.