The'yre gathering around to hear a story, roasting chestnuts on a fire

I'm a little disappointed with the way my christmas gifts turned out. Well, I did order the Star Trek dvds that I wanted to get for my dad. I think he deserves something really nice and I wanted to go all out so I got him the entire first season set of the original star trek episodes. It's 8 disks and looks incredible. I can't wait to see his reaction when he opens it on saturday. My mom's gift didn't work out as well as I had hoped. My family went to disneyland the other day and they make the 3D crystals in the World of Disney store. So my brother and I had it all planned out that we would sneak off to "ride alice in wonderland and peter pan" while my parents ate dinner, but we really went to get the crystal. Turns out it was $90 and we only had $40 on us and it wouldve taken 4 hours, so we deserted the plan. Then matt and I drove to Northridge mall because he thought they did it there. After scouring the mall for a good 2 hours and not finding any store that did it, we gave up. I found a crystal with a 3d palm tree etched into it, so we decided to get that and do the portrait one for her birthday in February. But I'm sad that I couldn't get it together in time.

Yesterday was a barrel of laughs. First, I went to the dentist. I've been dreading this, but my tooth has been hurting for 6 months and so i figured it was about time to suck it up and go. I was worried they were gonna give me a lecture about having my tongue pierced, but I put in a clear barbel and they didn't say anything. The dentist came in, took one look at the Xray, and said "yep, you definitely need a root canal." Nooooooooooo. I mean, I knew it was coming because he mentioned 6 months ago i might need one if it kept hurting, but hearing those words was not fun. So on January 5th at 11 am you can find me at the dentists getting a root canal.

Last evening, my brother, his girlfriend, my dad, Adrianne, and I went to the Walt Disney Concert Hall to see a Latin Christmas concert that my dad got tickets to through the sound engineers group he belongs to. I've always passed the concert hall on my way to MOCA or Chinatown, but this was my first time seeing the inside. It was very big and the architecture was fabulous. Our seats were at the very top of the concert hall which was horrible for me because I am very scared of heights. I'm a lot like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo. The seating was extremely angular and steep and I kept picturing myself tripping, falling over the rail, and plummeting down 100 feet or so. I wondered if I could turn my program into a paper airplane and sail it all the way to the stage. The concert was laughable. I expected traditional latin christmas music, but this featured two bands: a punk rock latin band and then a latin band featuring two old school rappers. They did a rap rendition of a song about Santa Clause that was so bad that I almost plugged my ears with my fingers. There was nothing christmas about the concert; they just played what they would normally play at a concert, except that they threw in Silent Night. But we did have fun and I enjoyed being in the concert hall once I adjusted to the height and the fact that I wasn't going to simultaneously trip, flip acrobatically over two rows of people and a safety rail and fall to my death with latin music playing in the background.

I'll report tomorrow on the fate of my hair. Either I'll be crying because I look like the ronald mcdonald clown, or I will be happy. We'll see.