Everything That Didn’t Happen

On paper, this weekend had everything. Friday evening alone with Ana. Saturday a Christmas shopping run to Munich, then a class reunion party at Tobi’s place that night. Becca’s cookies on Sunday morning, followed by some film worth watching to close the whole thing out quietly. I had built a little monument of a weekend in my head, each stone placed just so.

Ana was too wrecked from studying to go anywhere. I’m slowly making my peace with the fact that her actual best friend isn’t me—it’s whatever exam is due next week. Tobi is in the middle of moving and cancelled. Becca had somewhere else to be. Sunday evening TV was a wasteland. The monument collapsed before anyone laid a foundation.

What actually happened: I went to the Christmas market in Bad Wörishofen with Sarah and Laura, which had no roasted chestnuts but an impressive density of Sarah’s ex-boyfriends. My younger cousin came by and spent most of the visit waving her phone at me, insisting I listen to her MP3 collection. Bianca dropped in briefly. There was some loose Super Smash Bros. with a few friends. I watched two documentaries—one about the end of the world, one about catastrophic municipal debt—and found them roughly equally bleak. The personal highlight of the last few days was seeing snow. That tells you everything.

In other news: the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade intro cinematic surfaced on YouTube and it’s as operatic as you’d expect. Rumors about the interface design for Mac OS X Leopard kept circulating. And some pop star got robbed. Decide for yourself which of the three is the most important development of the week.