I've been meaning to introduce you to this little bundle of joy:







It's a sort of post-Christmas gift from Rainier and Erin. Rainier's massive amount of photography was overwhelming the poor thing, and since he had a laptop, he figured I'd put it to good use. It's a mere OS 8.6 system, and has no internet connection (since that would require networking and other such complications), but at the very least I think we'll be good friends, especially with this new flash drive to help us get started. I have yet to get my hands on a copy of Microsoft Word for macs, but supposedly Dad's working on that one.

Of all the hand-me-down electronics I've received in my lifetime, this one is by far the best. I feel like I should name it or something.

A side note: mac keyboards are very small. Hard to operate, even.

And Mark, you still owe me two dollars.

I can't remember a time when I've made any serious New Year's resolutions. And usually I'm too lazy to do "year in review" type stuff. I guess as you get older, each new year becomes just another in a long line-up. I'm so bad at telling how much I've changed (or if I've changed at all...sometimes I still feel like the same person I was at twelve), or even if the things that have happened to me are monumental in terms of my own life. I'm worse and worse at keeping up with dates and separating years in my mind. Yesterday and today and tomorrow are all the same in my mind -- it's less of a blurring together and more of just one giant day with a few naps.

I think maybe it's bad that I don't ever feel more tired or awake than any other moment that passes. It's this constant state of subdued awareness -- I'm not alert or sleepy, but somewhere in between. I feel like I've misplaced my biorhythms. It's strange. It makes me feel kind of like Edward Norton in that first half hour of Fight Club: with a lot of nice places to sit and nothing much to do, with a refrigerator full of condiments. I don't know how much of that I intend to be metaphorical.

I saw The Life Aquatic and I've been listening to Seu Jorge's cover of "Rebel Rebel." Who knew that David Bowie would sound so good in Portuguese?

So. 2004. A year that has been significantly undocumented in terms of the internet (though perhaps not as severely undocumented as 2003). Mostly I'll remember the summer, I think. New York and all that. It's so weird to watch the ball drop in Times Square after you've actually been there and you know it as a real place. But New York mostly remains in my mind as a group of amazing people that I've already lost touch with, it seems. Gabe, Adam, Mackenzie, Xan, Josh, Meagan. Our night at Dojo's. Maybe the most fun I've had ever. But before that, Pittsburgh and Niagra and Syracuse. The Warhol Museum. Fireworks over the falls. Denny's at two in the morning. And then Virginia and my first official introduction to film (may we continue to know each other for many, many years). Soft serve icecream at Hollins, and a brief brush with India through Kat. In short, a plethora of amazing people which I may never see again and which will remain a string of faceless names to everyone else. I don't even have pictures of some of them.

But also there was underwear swimming and other scandalousness. Painting atop the parking deck. Scrabble addiction. The discovery of Indian food. There has been an excessive amount of driving (mostly because my friends are still too lazy to get their licenses), and my first year that's felt truly independent. I turned seventeen. I've been carded once for a movie ticket, but then, I've been seeing R movies since I was thirteen. I got a stereo, and I think I've got LP fever (but my White Album hasn't come yet!). "Writing America" changed my life, and I wrote poems that I didn't hate.

There was an abundance of great films. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Garden State, Before Sunset, The Motorcycle Diaries. I don't even know what else.

Quakerism came and went. Carolyn and I haven't been since break started.

I'm living my first few months without Winnie. She was my first real brush with death and absence. I never realize how much I miss her.

My sister turned 21. It seems we're all getting much too old for ourselves.

And so, with 2005, second semester of Junior year begins, and it will be over before I know it. What a beautiful little niche I've created for myself. I'll desperately miss it, and I'm already aprehensive about losing it. Graduation is inevitable, and the closer it gets, the less I know where I want to go or what I want to do or whether I want anything to change. I have a while yet.

I look forward to finding out what crazy years will come out when I try to write the date. Every January, the first few weeks yield amazing results -- usually just the preceding year (02 January 2004), but sometimes I'll find a 1992 or a 1998 at the top of my page. God bless January and all its confusion. It's the nonmonth.




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