So besides the land search, there’s some other information that I should mention. Yesterday I bought my tickets to Cincinnati for Christmas. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I’ll be coming in on the Greyhound at 10:25pm on Saturday the 19th, and leaving on the late train on Monday the 28th. That gives me a solid weekend and a half in town. My plan is to stay with Dad until he leaves for vacation on the 22nd, then mostly stay with Mom and the folks.

I also thought of a list of my material desires for anyone who really wants to get me a Christmas present but is totally lost for ideas.

I always feel a little weird about making a Christmas list. It’s like, “Hey, give me all this stuff!” But people buy/make each other Christmas gifts one way or another, and if you happen to want to give one to me, I feel like it’s nice if you have a general idea of the things I could use in my life. I live far away from a lot of people and that makes it hard for you to know what I’ve already got and what I wish I had, since I’m not talking about it around you all the time. I do not expect to get everything I ask for. Actually I don’t want to say I’m asking for these things. Feels like I’m making demands. It’s just a list of ideas.

• A little insulated drink bottle, like this one. What I like about this one: it’s got a loop for carrying, no plastic touches the drink (plastic-flavored coffee is gross), and it’s easy to clean the lid because it doesn’t have one of those sippy-straws. I prefer opening a lid over sipping through a plasticky hard-to-clean spout.
• Maybe an external hard drive? I dunno, I’m not really dead-set on this, but if you know of one that’s not pricey, I could back stuff up with it, and I’ve been thinking I should back stuff up, since you never know what’ll happen to a computer.

• I’ve reached a time in my life where I would actually welcome more cool T-shirts. I never thought that would happen, but here we are. Funny stuff, or ones with great designs. The truest test of whether it’s a great shirt: when you look at it, can you imagine thinking it’s funny/awesome over and over, or is it worth one chuckle and then you’re done? The internet is good at T-shirts, although I don’t actually pay that much attention to that section of the internet, so I only know of a few websites. Those ones are FullBleed, Busted Tees, and Threadless. There are others too. Or homemade ones. I wear a L.

  I put the duplicatable ones (the bottle and the hard drive) into this checkoff list [Note from 2017: no longer relevant, removed] sort of like I did last year, so you don’t have to wonder whether you’re getting something that someone else already got. If you get one of the things on the list, just type an x into the box next to it. It’s saved instantly. Anyone can edit it, and I won’t look at it.

Okay, materialism over! I’m looking forward to getting back to Ohio for family time. If that means you, I can hardly wait to see you. Let’s have some fun.