I'm trying to not feel a general dissatisfaction with everything right now, but it's not easy. I've found myself able to get caught up in a couple of things these past few days... things that are able to distract me for a few minutes here and there, but for the most part I'm walking around in a dense fog, completely oblivious to any opportunities that might exist to shake me out of this mindset.

Some of my minor distractions:

Office Xmas party on Saturday night: About three hours after arriving to the party I looked up and realized that there were six of us standing on one side of the room by ourselves, right next to the bar, with a half-empty handle of Russian Vodka at arms length. The six of us that were anchored to this position for God knows how long were all current or former students of Northeastern University. The MIT and Harvard grads were standing around the grand piano watching the owner of the company's son bounce back and forth between Christmas carols and classical compositions. A few of them had poured some wine and were a bit red in the face, but it was nothing compared to the beet red in our glorified screwdriver drunk eyes. Go NU, eh? After the party ended, a few of us headed downtown to An Tain where a fellow employee was hosting a children's toy drive. Drinks are cheap at An Tain and the only price of admission to get into the bar was a children's toy. Julie and I tried to pick something up at a CVS before heading into the bar.. but it was closed. Luckily my friend running the event let us in without the toy, as long as I promised to bring him one on Monday...

FAO Schwartz: ... which brings me to my next distraction. Toy shopping for a gift at FAO Schwartz the following day. It sure sounded like a great idea at the time.. but once the snow came it kinda soured everything and ruined what could've been a good time. John, Jules, and I made the best of it by eating about $50 worth of Jelly Belly's and then settling on a Lego toy for the charity. The fact that we drove over there, parked on a snowbank, and rushed home to beat the remainder snow instead of taking a bundled up winter walk with hot chocolate kinda killed the whole idea.

Terminator 3: Awful. Embarassing. I just deleted a 200 word rant on why I didn't like this movie...

And do you know why I deleted it? Because I realized the whole thing was just an excuse to write circles around the fact that I really have found nothing to distract myself from being upset. Because every time I try to trail off down a new idea path my eyes shoot over to the unopened pile of packages sitting on my desk. The boxes that contain items that were purchased with a recipient in mind and now have no owner other than the brown cardboard and bubble-wrap surrounding them.

Apologies for delving into the meta-fiction today... I didn't set out to write in the way I did but that's just sorta how it played out.