Christmas, Friends, and Mutant Space Monkeys

So...Christmas season is almost at an end...and I don't really care. It's weird. I used to get so super excited about Christmas (and everything Christmas; the music, the festivities, the traditions). Now, it's sort of a meh/okay sort of time for me...and I really have no idea why. It just doesn't excite me at all. I mean, sure, it's nice to be around family and friends, and that is exciting, but just the entire "Christmas-ness" of Christmas almost bores me. I'm hoping that perhaps it's just me reacting negatively to all of the "fluff" that our culture has surreptitiously strewn about the holiday itself, and not me beginning to just dislike Christmas itself....
Strangely, I don't have quite the same problem with Easter. Perhaps that's because it still has a certain amount of piety and at least an attempt at holiness associated with it, whereas Christmas has simply become a marketing and economy fixing scheme?

On an entirely different note, I've been spending a lot of time with friends during the last week or so, which has been wonderful. I enjoy being busy a bit too much, perhaps. As long as I get enough sleep, I can just go and go and go without needing a day to myself for quite a while. But more specifically than just hanging out, we've been playing a lot of really enjoyable (and somewhat nerdy) games. I finally won my first Settlers of Catan game, which was exciting. And the other day, one of my friends brought a gigantic game called Twilight Imperium. Fun game. Long game. It took us about 4.5 hours to read through the rule-book, and another 4.5 hours to play through half of the game. Despite what you may think, however, it was a ton of fun, and I enjoyed it thoroughly (see picture), though Dan's looking a little worse for wear...

Last thought. Really.

I am so sick of politics. I know I've probably said this a hundred times before...but really. When it gets to the point that I don't even care about who is running the country, it's bad. On second thought, maybe I'm just in a really apathetic mood.....though aside from politics and Christmas I don't feel like it. But yeah. And I'm sick of people saying how good/bad/full of mutant space monkeys the next four years are going to be. Really. First off, Bush hasn't exactly been the Saviour of the Free Market that any of us hoped (especially in these last few months)...so we can't really say with any certainty that we want someone like him (I know for one I don't). And there's nothing to say that Obama is going to be as good or bad as people say he is. At the very least, he will be entertaining. To be honest, aside from FDR, presidents really are rarely able to get done what they want to get done while in office. Sure, they may get one or two things done, but 99% of their election "goals" will be left unfinished for any number of reasons. Follow that with the fact that almost certainly the 1-2 things they get done with be undone by their successor and it really becomes hard to care. But perhaps this is me just sick of politics.