Happy holidays, all. Just a few things —
Under pressure from my roommates, I’ve finally caved and gotten a twitter. Find & follow me at https://twitter.com/#!/kevingshepherd — and while I’m not sure how much I personally will be posting, I’ll be checking and reading it often; my main incentive to get an account was to stay somewhat connected to the goings-on in Evanston, Austin, etc.
Basically I’m just trying not to fall too much out-of-touch with everyone once I’m in China. It’s different from the situation this summer because during summer, everybody scatters simultaneously, but come January it’ll just be me (and other study-abroad kids) gone. I don’t expect to get to talk to too many people due to the obnoxious time difference — although I’d be happy to be proven wrong — but I’d like to at least kinda keep up with what’s happening. So I’ll attempt to do so, 140 characters at a time.
Updates, stories, that sorta thing on my end will continue to be put here for as long as Geoff allows the domain to stay up. A lot of tweets will probably end up just directing people here, really. So if you’re already reading this, you’re pretty much set. Way to be you.

Went to 37th street last night with the Austin kiddos.

Only in Austin

Although it wasn’t quite a substitute for of Austin’s trail of lights — a huge project combining millions of Christmas lights with the city’s main park which was sadly canceled this year due to budgeting issues — it was still impressive, especially considering that it’s just a bunch of households which put up ridiculous decorations year after year. Makes me wonder what the cathedral of junk looks like this time of year. I met the guy who built it a year or two ago, and he was every inch what I expected him to be. Odd dude, but absurdly friendly. He lets strangers walk around his back yard all the time for free, after all.

I’m pretty stoked for Christmas eve tonight. It’s always a fun one in the Shepherd household, primarily due to the traditional Christmas margaritas that mom makes every year. Fresh limes and everything, mmm. Oh, and then we assemble a weird advent calendar-sorta-thing from Germany. You have to build little paper houses and tape them together and put them on various scenic paper backgrounds; every year there are some pretty heated arguments over who is hogging disproportionate or unnecessary amounts of the limited scotch tape. It’s almost needless to say at this point, but my family is odd, and I love them.

I’ve noticed that my blog writing is reverting to my rather highschoolish habit of using way more em-dashes and parenthesis than is entirely necessary. This is bad. That is all.

Merry Christmas!

Bonus: Jakob with Jesus, and a sock monkey nativity scene.

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