It already started. Without warning, I found the apartment filled with Christmas ornaments and, most notably, a Christmas tree, or seasonal monochromatic ornamented cone-shaped display, if you prefer to call it that.

It was put up on Sunday morning by my mother and my sister. As in previous years, I missed the chance to help out, this time because I slept in, something that will continue to happen until January (at least).

Comparing the current tree with the one from last year, little seems to have changed. Once again, it is placed in the balcony so the dogs won’t get to it and see it as a colorful toilet. The presents will probably be placed in my nephew’s playpen, just like the last time.

Unlike last year, where I settled for a full shot of the tree, I’ve got close-ups!

To “decorate” the base of it, the strange-eyed bunch returns, arranged in a slightly different way, so as to not bore the camera.

In other news, I’ve continued to delete things from the computer’s hard drive. In one week, I got rid of nearly 10 GB of various things, most of which are animated short films and Blender-related videos that I’ve downloaded over the years. They’re all nice to watch, but they have no use just sitting on the hard drive gathering e-dust.

As much as I like watching Chris Landreth’s Oscar-winning short, Ryan (about Ryan Larkin’s short-lived success as an animator), student work from Gobelins and Supinfocom and old Blender Conference videos, among various other things, the space can be better used, and I’d like to hoard as little as possible, both in the computer and outside of it. I’m watching them all before pressing Delete, in case I learn something new or become inspired. The latter hasn’t happened yet, but here’s hoping …

Aside from the above, nothing much is going on. I cleaned up a bit more last week, asked a classmate to let me know of any free (or cheap) conference or talk that might give me a few of the remaining hours for college, and I’ve taken up drinking a mug of green tea every day, to see if that does anything for my lousy health. There seems to be a bit of improvement from last week, but I don’t know whether it’s the tea or not.

Outside my personal life, this country isn’t getting any better. Changes have been made in the Constitution to benefit those with deep pockets at the expense of those with no pockets, women still have no say on whether they want to keep an unwanted pregnancy –while those who voted to keep this can afford to get abortions performed elsewhere–, the definition of marriage was changed to a union strictly between a man and a woman, destroying the possibility of marriage equality in the near future. Too much influence from the church. To top all that, public access to rivers and beaches might become restricted. Something about the right of private property.

People have been protesting the changes (especially that last one about the beaches), and the motto Esa no es mi Constitución (lit. “That’s not my Constitution”) has been turning up everywhere, from graffiti to stickers. The protesting has died down in the last couple of weeks, though, and the popular news of the week is the murder of Miky Bretón, creator and producer of what was possibly the only drama show currently on Dominican television, Relatos (“Tales”), and probably one of the longest-running. It didn’t follow a set storyline, but instead presented various short stories about crime, rape, drug abuse and things like that, taking place here. Sure, I didn’t watch it, but the man was trying. Bleak future for scripted television here, when the ones who make it happen get, you know … murdered.

Yikes, this post became depressing. The above two paragraphs are nothing like the ones before. I better stop now, before it turns into something that’s just as sad as the local headline news. I should stop bothering to read those.

To end this on a better note, uh … Santa says hi.