I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

I have never spent a Christmas in Anchorage; my December 25ths have always ended up with me stumbling off of a plane, fuzzy and disoriented, into the heat and smog of Southern California. This year was no different, as I impatiently waited at the pickup, still clad in my 27-degree-appropriate Alaskan clothing, weighed down with a suitcase full of books and a backpack that I haphazardly shoved some clothes into before I got onto the plane.

Already, I'm missing it. It's 50 degrees out, rather cool for California, and I'm still psyching myself out when I walk outside the door. I'm bracing myself for the teeth-chattering, bone-chilling cold to blast me in the face. Instead, there's green, manicured lawns and a sun shining through the hazy, grey clouds. I still can't get used to it.

Just hours earlier, I was sitting in an airport bar, staring dull-eyed and sniffly into a comedic-sized margarita. The thick, bubbly, blue-tinted glass was like a cauldron that I stirred with my straw, hoping to conjure a spell to fend off the departure blues. I snuggled my cats, bade farewell to my friends, had a final frappe from the coffee shop, and then came to a bar, listening to some 50-year-old man gabbing in my ear while I anxiously tried to break conversation to catch my plane (which I almost by mere moments, no lie.)

And now, California. It dipped to about 30 last night, to the chagrin of my friends I was with. But the daytime is bright, sunny, sparsely clouded and hardly like the winter I've now become accustomed to. There's chain restaurants everywhere; no delicious little microbrewery or coffee shop within a considerable radius. The streets are lined with Starbuckses and Quiznos and sit-down restaurants people actually think are good, and shiny, snowless, rust-free cars are zipping along like the total assholes that they are.

Soon enough, though, I'll be landing in Ho Chi Minh, only slightly hyperventilating at the realization of what it is that I'm doing, and Anchorage will be a season away. I won't be back until breakup, with the sun shining at long hours, having missed the most of winter, as I'll be in a nice, hot, tropical beach town and.. wait. What am I complaining about? Yeahh.. winter. I can take a break, just this one time.