So, I failed to get stuff uploaded here over the break and wound up disappearing into the terrifying realm known as "real life" for a while. The main reason for this has been family. During my winter break I devoted all my time to my usual Christmas traditions; eating/cooking yummy Vietnamese food, trying/failing to understand how the Vietnamese lunar calendar works, watching horror movies with my big brothers and trying to explain to my friends that "No, I am not Vietnamese and have never lived in Vietnam. My sister-in-law is from there." I don't know why, but after every Christmas I have at least one friend who thinks I must be Vietnamese just because we've adopted a little of the culture into our family traditions.

Another family development is that, after a series of events, my mom has been given partial custody of my 6 year old cousin. So, I guess that effectively makes me a partial big sister to her now. Which is fine with me. I've always liked the idea of having a baby sister cousin... sort of arrangement...? Actually, in a lot of ways it feels more like being her partial-partial mommy/guardian thingy...

In other news, it looks like I've become quite popular in my absence! Hello, new watchers~! I'll try to be more interesting soon, I promise!

Random Thought: By the way, cultural historians will tell you some weird stuff. Interesting and useful stuff, but definitely weird. I've been told that one historian apparently speculated writing a book about how football's rise in popularity correlated with the decline of the lynching phenomenon. (Football quenches people's thirst for violence?) I don't totally get it, but the fellow in question is a respectable historian who has over 30 years of experience so I'm inclined to believe there is some legit basis for his proposal, but... Weird. Weird stuff, guys. Very weird stuff. Historians are strange and often times cynical people, but cultural historians are particularly odd. Can't live without them, though! I can't begin to explain to people how amazingly useful it is to have a cultural historian break down how/why the world was seen in a totally different way in the past compared to how we see it today. So much more makes sense after they explain the morals and ideologies of decades past... (Most of the time.)