I grew up in western Massachusetts, confounding everyone in private school and college who assume that everyone in Massachusetts has an accent. You can tell I'm not from California, partly because of how I constantly make fun of it, partly because I constantly bitch about not liking the weather or the landscape, and partly because I resist referring to the period from November through April as "winter", when all it does is rain, and the temperature only rarely strays below 40F.

Massachusetts must have been glad to see me, because the night I got here, the temperature dropped to single digits and it snowed six or seven inches. That little snap has broken and today went back up to a balmy 25F, though it's 7F as I write this.

I'm enjoying it, though, and hanging out with the family, chilling in my parents' almost-completely-remodeled house, which is now, for lack of a better word, swank. My brother and his girlfriend made me a nice huge vegetarian dinner. I have my plane tickets to Seattle, and reservations at a hostel a block away from Pike Place Market (though the last night I'll be spending in some hotel). New Year's Eve looks like I will make it nutty and busy but fun, and then I have a few days to recover, then I'm in Seattle, then a few more days, and then I start my new job, which I am so very much looking forward to.