New Year’s Eve Is Overrated
Where will you be when the ball drops tonight? A black tie party downtown? The Peach drop at Underground? A small party with close friends? or will you already be in bed? Wherever you are at midnight, remember one thing – New Year’s Eve is overrated.
Every year we are trained that New Year’s Eve is supposed to be some magical evening where all your friends gather to celebrate and party until the clock strikes midnight where everyone then takes hold of the one they love and engages in that special New Year’s Eve kiss.
Here’s how a single’s New Year’s Eve really goes: All your friends are scattered between various bowl games and other out of town attractions, so you end up gathering whoever is in town to go to some party or location where you don’t really know anyone other than the people you came with. Midnight comes and you get to look awkwardly across the room at all the other people in drunken make-out sessions while you try not to get beer spilled on you. Finally, on the way home, you get stuck in traffic – at 2am.
That’s a fairly accurate description my New Year’s Eve for about the last five years. Change the places, and the people and it’s right on. In the world of singleness, New Year’s Eve is pretty high on list of holidays that suck. Right up there next to Valentine’s Day.
However you ring in the new year – I wish you an evening with friends, and the one you love. If that doesn’t pan out for you tonight; just remember you’ve got 365 days to get ready for next year.
Cheers.
Stealing Christmas
Until this year, my family hadn’t spent Christmas in Atlanta in probably a decade. Sometime after John and I went to college, my parents stopped getting a Christmas tree because it wasn’t worth the hassle if we weren’t going to be in town. The trend continued this year as well until about 4pm on Dec 24th.
John and I were returning home from some last minute shopping when John decided we had to have a tree. We pull up to a lot that had been selling trees, but the gate was closed and it looked empty. Then we see one guy moving trees around by himself, so John jumps the gate and negotiates a deal with this one guy who may or may not be with the Christmas tree sellers. We then tie the tree to the top of the car and go home.
The whole thing felt shady, and I’m not convinced that the guy was with the tree company. It wouldn’t surprise me if we both stole Christmas trees, with the difference being the other guy made $50 while doing it.
12/25
Merry Christmas everyone!
Art Tour
Yesterday through friends of my parents, I was able to tour the house of an art collector in Atlanta. This gentleman owned sculptures by my brother’s former employer, as well as other original works by notable artists.
Everything there was fantastic, but my favorite work was by an artist named Andrew Saftel. Below are three examples of his work. They are all acrylic and mixed media on wood panel. Amazing stuff.
I Hate My Car
I loved my Volvo when I first got it in 2003. It was great. Less then a year after I bought it, the transmission had to be replaced (it’s a 2000 year model), and ever since then it’s been all downhill.
It makes all kinds of unexplainable noises, all of which are apparently non-detrimental to the operation of the vehicle, but make me feel like a complete moron while trying to explain and re-enact them to my mechanic.
A while back, the driver’s window started making these horrific noises, so I asked them to take a look at it. Turns out the noise originated from inside the door. So while it could be fixed – it would cost however much labor was used dis-assembling the door. I elected to deal with the noise.
A couple of weeks ago, the lock on the driver’s door also started making horrific noises. Eventually the clicker quit working for the driver’s door (though the rest of them still open just fine). Now I have to stick the key in the door each time I lock and unlock it – and it still makes the horrible noise.
Today I took it in for an oil change and asked them to look at the door lock. They took the door apart, and it turns out it can’t be fixed without replacing a $200 part. While the door was in pieces, I was able to have them fix the window noise.
Moral of the story – I essentially spent $57 to fix a noisy window, and I still can’t unlock my car without sticking the key in the door and hearing it’s obscene reply. I hate my car.
One Dark Suit
I was packing to leave Athens last Friday, and I really had no idea what to bring home to wear. You never know what you’re going to need. I haven’t had to wear a suit in months, and I didn;’t have a reason to bring one home, but I did.
Over the weekend, a Fraternity brother’s Mother died. I’ll be headed down for the funeral tomorrow, and I’m glad I’ve got the appropriate dress.
Your Best Interest
One thing that many women do not know about guys is that when we give each other advice, we don’t always have the other guy’s best interest in mind. In fact, we generally tell other guys whatever will give us the most entertainment value. There are many examples, but the best ones usually follows along the same lines….
You should always ask the girl out. Regardless.
Death by Presentations
4:20p Jay’s “Grandpa’s Roach Kill” presentation is almost over… He’s proposing to start a cockroach exterminating company based on a roach poison his grandfather invented. I still think their slogan should be “Grandpa’s Roach Kill – Kill’s ‘em Dead”. That’s a whole lot funnier if you know Jay.. He’s a little country… Anyways…
Almost free!!!! Then I make a B-Line out of Athens!
2:05pm – Our presentation went very well, the judges seemed to like it a lot, and we didn’t get many hard hitting questions. Much better than last time when we were in the wrong place at the wrong time receiving the brunt end of a 15 minute grammar lecture by one judge. It was intended for all of the teams, but we just got lucky to hear the rant during our presentation…
While we were preparing our presentation, one of the other groups, After-A-Cruise, apparently got torn a new one. Their business plan is to create an online community for people who go on cruises. A way to keep in touch with all the cool people you meet on cruises… We’ve been working on these things for several months now, but looking at the most basic question: “have you contacted the cruise lines yet?” The answer is …..no. My thought is that if After-A-Cruise fails, then they could easily go on to form After-A-Flight, or even as someone else suggested, After-A-One-Night-Stand.
Mark is about to start his presentation for an Atlanta Charter School. I saw his presentation a month ago and it was great… hoping to see them raise the bar.
10:04am Staybattlin.com is now in the middle of their presentation which is proposing an online community for hip hop. The presenter is a white male in his 20′s, presenting on the next big thing in the hip hop community to three industry judges who are white males aged roughly 50 – 85.
The crazy thing is that I really like the idea, and these guys have done a great job. I don’t see how they are going to make any money though… Check out their website, it’s cool
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