Perhaps unsurprisingly to those who know me well, things here on my Christmastime visit to Long Island are not going well. At all, really. It's good to see my brother, he's one of my favorite people in the entire world, but things in my parents' house are sort of rough right now, and every time I come back to Shoreham, NY, I get uncontrollably depressed. At least it gives me some perspective on the comparatively welcome difficulties of my life in Chicago. I almost agreed to get in a car early tomorrow morning to drive home, but I think I'm going to stick it out until my flight on Friday. But goddamn I cannot wait to get home.