Things I did this weekend -

1. Celebrated Hannuka with the family.
2. Watched "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," an 80's high school movie which popularized the word "dude" and is fun and interesting to watch. I'm not sure I caught all of the pop culture references, since the movie came out in 1981 and I was just one year old.
3. Went to Harvard's Berkman Center's "Votes, Bits, & Bytes" blogging and politics conference for a few hours. It was really cool to see some of the bloggers I read and read about regularly in person. Throughout the place, the air was abuzz with wild, fascinating conversation. Walking around, you could hear people talking about science and technology, politics, world events...you name it. There were voices from all over the world and from all types of interests.
However, in each of the large discussions I went to, I felt a bit put-out by the extremely techno-utopian bent of the discussions. With a sort of religious fervor, the bloggers discussed how to have a greater effect on the real world with our internet successes, viral messages in the blogging world, and creating a bloggers' support group in which we all agree to help each other however we can. The problem I see in that last point is a lack of focus - since we have divergent interests and projects, we ought to seek others who share our individual interests instead of trying to create a broad, bloggers' group.
4. Attended an awesome Christmas house party in which our hostess went to the trouble of making an elaborate and well decorated drink menu, and had plenty of excellent food and conversation. We played truth or dare Jenga (what ever happened to innocent, original Jenga?) and I had to answer my most embarassing moment...but I'll leave that off of here. tee-hee.
5. There was a Christmas Parade in the North End on Sunday, with the Wilmington High School band playing "Hot Hot Hot," horse-drawn carriages, old-style automobiles, mascots of all kinds, free candy, and Santa in a fire truck. The kids there were so happy - it must be magical to experience that as a child.
6. Ocean's 12 with some buds at the Boston Common Loews. I probably would have had a better grip of it if I'd seen Ocean's 11.
7. Played "X-Men: Legends" with many of the same friends. The game is really cool - the gameplay kind of reminds me of Gauntlet, but it has a great story. One of my favorite games of all time was Secret of Mana, which similarly had a great story and leveling scheme and was a multi-player adventure game. This genre seriously needs to get some more titles - do you know any good ones?
8. Went to sleep. That was refreshing.
9. Woke up at 6:45 to run up and down a hill 25 times with my roommate. That...was not fun. But I feel good now. Not like expunging the contents of my stomach onto the keyboard. Yeah.