Bah!

All the decorations are up this week. The giant tree in Union Square. The six-story wall of neon wreaths at Macy's. On my walk to work I pass this hideous affront to good taste involving fuschia baubles and purple tinsel trees, which sort of typifies Christmas in California in my mind. There's even a sad little tree in the lobby of our building, which smells nice and pinesol fresh now, but is already losing its needles and will be nothing but a tindery fire hazard by Christmas. And holiday music has been prematurely belting out of every store for the last month... if I never hear Mariah Carey screech "All I Want For Christmas" again, it'll be too soon.

For all the years I've lived in California, I still haven't adjusted to the holidays in a temperate clime. It seems fundamentally wrong to have Christmas lights and palm trees simultaneously in my field of vision. I don't miss the snow, necessarily, but I do sort of miss the winter chill. And despite the newspaper's proclamation that the winter was upon us as temperatures "plummeted" into the low 50's, it's just not the same. Okay, okay, my wuss ass did turn on my heat, but give me a break: my building has no insulation, and the wind whistles through the crooked gaps in my window frames (I swear I see more cracks every week... I won't be the least bit surprised when the room off the kitchen shears off completely and, when trying to take out the trash I step out my door into empty space and plunge three stories to my untimely crumpled demise).

I'm also annoyed that I have three holiday parties to attend on the same weekend that my two Must See movies of the year open. Yargh.

I sound like a Scrooge, I know. I'll get over it.