Obligatory end-of-year entry

[grammargirl]

I find it kind of hard to get excited about New Years. Not just because it's an arbitrary date and who really cares whether you start improving yourself on January 1 or August 23rd as long as you're making some kind of effort (though all of that's true), but just because I'm still so deeply enmeshed in the academic calendar that I think of years as spanning August-April, not January-December. When I think "Okay, what noteworthy events happened in 2003?" I have to translate that to, "What happened between the beginning of Winter semester junior year and the end of Fall semester senior year?" But whatever. Arbitrary or not, it's good to step back and take stock every once in a while, and I suppose now's as good a time as any.

So, without further ado, my oh-so-deepdiscountsatori-esque interview with myself (sorry, Laurie, I totally stole some of these):

What'd you do in 2003 that you'd never done before?
Wrote 27 1/3 pages all on the same topic, for my thesis. Seriously considered going to see a boy in Florida--twice. Drove to Montreal and back in a weekend. Bought a vibrator. Got a decent grade in a class I never went to or did the reading for. Drank so much I threw up. Bought and paid for expensive gadgets myself, without going into horrendous credit card debt. Saw a dead body.

What's your favorite bad joke of 2003?
What's red, green, two shades of yellow, and has a low sodium content? A lightly salted traffic light!

What are a few songs that will always remind you of this year?
Ben Folds - Army
Tori Amos - A Sorta Fairytale
The Postal Service - Such Great Heights
The Lords of the Rhymes- Lords of the Rhymes

How about some really cool new-to-you bands?
Ben Folds, The Postal Service, Wiico, John Mayer, Badly Drawn Boy, Poe.

What's the best movie you saw this year?
I'm gonna risk losing some major indie cred here and say Pirates of the Caribbean rather than Lost in Translation. Sorry, guys. Bill Murray may be brilliant, but he just can't compete with Johnny Depp's piratey hotness.

Best book?
Hmm. Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, perhaps. Oh, and Order of the Phoenix, duh.

The silliest thing you did on a whim:
My current Rogue-esque punkrock dye job. Also, driving to Lansing at 1AM is pretty high up there.

Least amount of sleep in a 36-hour period:
An hour and a half.

Favorite culinary adventure:
Puppy chow.

Stupidest drunken exploit:
That would be a tie between the multiperson makeout fest in April, or the hookup with the random skeezy fratboy in I think late September.

Best frivolous purchase:
Molly the iPod.

Best concert:
Tori Amos and Ben Folds, front freakin' row. August 18th, Meadowbrook.

Worst day:
A tie between my grandmother's funeral on November 22nd, and the day I watched the sun set and then rise again from the same computer in the Fishbowl, December 10-11.

Best new piece of clothing:
My black cashmere blend thrift store princess coat. I'm also a big fan of my white star-studded emo belt, courtesy of mathforlovers.

Best things I did not do:
1. Actually go to Florida (probably)
2. Involve myself in the seething LJ drama happening all around me
3. Apply to grad school

Worst things I did not do:
1. *cough*Have sex*cough*
2. Visit corenrind in NY, not for want of trying
3. The 30 pages of writing for my Enlightenment class, which are now hanging menacingly over my head.

Okay, enough with the pseudointrospection. Time to feed myself and then get my arse over to Jason's all-day New Year's Eve geekfest. Oh, and sekrit message to luminosity, whoever you are: It's not the total stranger-ness that kept me from your party, but the fact that I already have plans. I'm actually kind of impressed that you'd invite total strangers from LJ-Land.

Oh yes, and dare I say it? The stupidest, lamest, most oft-repeated and completely not-funny New Year's joke ever?



I think I dare.



See you next year, kids. :)