I had a lot of roommates during my collegiate years, and to be honest, I didn't care for most of them. Monica stands out as the only one I've kept in touch with; we were friends before we became roommates, and despite my worst (best?) shenanigans, we managed to stay friends afterward.

I emailed her this past week to tell her that one of her collegiate games has stuck with me; that I've infected others with it, and it shows no sign of stopping.At some point, just about every person who attends an American college and lives on-campus discovers one beautiful, innate truth: it's really fun to mess with the heads of your drunken college friends. It takes almost no mental effort on your part, and the rewards are so great that it's sometimes even worth staying sober at the parties, just so you can be the one to tell the stories about all your friends the next day.

Several times this year I've promised friends that when I went back to Tull for the Christmas holidays, that I would take pictures. Most of them have trouble imagining a reality of a place like Tull, because few places like it still exist.

So, this year, I went home for Christmas and brought the camera.

This is where I grew up.

Behind the normalcy of every home lie the quirks, the secrets, the idiosyncracies: the small things that add personality and character (some would say oddness) to each household. Every household has its own taboos, its requirements of family members, and they're impossible to discern from the exterior behavior of the occupants.

We head for home in approximately ten hours. I have been here since one a.m. on Saturday morning, and I've come away with the same feeling that I always have when I visit here: Tull is my home in a way that no place else can ever be, but the chances of my ever living here again are very, very small.

I am thankful for kitty purrs and coconut-milk desserts and dinners with friends. I still love the feeling of driving over the I-55 bridge over the Mississippi River, and I still am secretly thrilled when Jeff approves of something that I do. I still can't remember the name of all the reindeer without singing them, and I think it's funny that this year is the first year, ever, that my father has put Christmas lights on his house.

I was thirteen on the day that my parents heard the sounds coming from the woodpile. At first, they weren't sure what they were hearing, but after a day or two, they became certain that what they were hearing was probably a kitten.