happy new year

Blame it on the wine, the holiday, the hour, but this is probably going to be an uncharacteristically sappy post.

This year, sick of disappointing New Year’s Eves and with no promise of anything different, I decided that rather than trying for something great and wishing I’d aimed for a regular Friday night, I aimed even lower and opted for an evening in with my cats and a bottle of wine. Ultimately it was probably a good thing as I appear to have come down with a cold and probably wouldn’t have been up for a party anyway, and I’m not gonna say it was the best New Year’s I’ve ever had, but I can’t think of a better one.

Around 7:30, though, I started to panic. “I can’t spend New Year’s alone!” I thought. I felt guilty, although I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t wishing for something better to do, but staying home felt like I was breaking the rules. I pulled out my journal.

I wonder how many times you have thought to yourself, “If we had been together at midnight, we would be together now.”
I wonder where you are now, tonight, where you will be when midnight comes again.

The thing is that, as I mentioned before, the New Year is the one holiday that I actually think is worth celebrating. I’m not religious, so Christmas, Easter, Yom Kippur, Kwanzaa, none of them mean a whole lot. A new year, though — that’s something to get excited about. That’s a holiday I can get behind. But how do you celebrate everything that it can represent? I don’t have a problem with the getting drunk and kissing someone thing (and really, maybe if I’d always had someone satisfactory to kiss I wouldn’t have been so disappointed in past years), but it certainly doesn’t seem adequate.

So I wrote a list of things I look forward to doing in the next year (not resolutions, exactly, but things I genuinely look forward to doing), watched Dick Clark, and wrote in my journal.

Here are some of the things I look forward to in 2006, in no particular order:

  • blog regularly
  • take fun pictures
  • spend lots of time with Jancey
  • wear white sweaters
  • obsess over some cute boys
  • read a bunch of Shakespeare
  • vote against Rick Santorum
  • be a bridesmaid in Tammy’s wedding
  • have writing sessions with Ross
  • eat a lot of baby spinach
  • talk to the little girl upstairs
  • buy shoes to wear with the brown stripey pants
  • take Spanish
  • think about how weird it is that I don’t mind the cats’ stinky breath
  • listen to my iPod
  • try new restaurants
  • play Boggle with my dad
  • read The Secret Life of Bees
  • drink wine (or whatever) with Connor and Pete and Gabe (and Steve, until he leaves)
  • work on Contrast
  • keep my apartment mostly clean
  • write a novel
  • drink coffee with brown sugar
  • be here now
  • and so many more…

    • It’s gonna be a good year for me. I hope for you too.

    pesce mediterranean bistro

    I can’t believe I didn’t blog this place before.

    Sometime over the summer (I think — it’s been a while), Snow and I had dinner at Pesce Mediterranean Bistro, which is tragically and criminally without a website. Snow is one of my favorite dining partners, because we both enjoy sampling as much of the menu as possible, and have similar (but not identical) tastes. Pesce’s extensive selection fit our style well, and that summer evening we constructed a meal entirely of appetizers and maybe a salad. Our server, Lenny, was not only accomodating but encouraging of this strategy, and helped us decide when we weren’t sure what we should order next. Everything we tried was delectable. Everything, and especially the seafood, was phenomenally fresh, and the flavor pairings — which came in both the traditional and innovative varieties — were well matched. It was one of the top dining experiences of my life.

    Earlier this week, Snow and I made plans to have lunch together today. We exchanged several emails and had a long serious conversation about where to dine. There were many good suggestions made. We kept saying, “If we could know that Lenny would be our server, we’d go back to Pesce.” Finally we called Pesce and ascertained that Lenny was working, and that he could wait on us. And we were off.

    Pesce’s lunch menu doesn’t have the extensive selection of appetizers the dinner menu does, but we were able to construct a wonderful shared meal anyway. We started with soup ($3 for a cup, $5 for a bowl) — some kind of lobster bisque for Snow, and a smoked butternut squash with goat cheese and toasted pumpkin seeds soup for me. Mine had more cream and less squash than I expected, but the taste still met my high expectations.

    After the soup, we shared a baby spinach salad with crumbled blue cheese, candied walnuts, and some kind of vinaigrette ($6, I think). Lenny recommended it, and we were once again glad we took his advice. It was a little heavy on the dressing, but somehow, I didn’t mind because the flavors worked so well together. And I have been known to send back salads with too much dressing.

    Our original plan had been to share a pasta dish and an entree, for maximum sampling pleasure, but about halfway through the linguine with clams, mussels, scallop, shrimp, and salmon ($9), I knew that there was no way I could enjoy another course. I ended up giving Snow part of mine, so full was I. The pasta also came with a cream sauce I could have done without (maybe a lighter version of it would have been better), but I was just as impressed with the flavor and succulence of the seafood as I was over the summer, and I was sorry to realize that I was growing full.

    Not too full, though, for the dessert Lenny recommended. Unfortunately, after we’d ordered it, he came back to say that cheesecake he’d raved about was gone, and he wasn’t sure if the stuff that replaced it was as good. So, he said, just in case, this piece was on the house. I don’t know what the cheesecake he’d had tasted like, but what he gave us was very good. Not exceptional, but very good. Even better, though, were the blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries that accompanied it. Berries like that are hard to find in the summer; to have them in December was beyond my wildest dreams.

    You should try it. Here are the details:

    Pesce Mediterranean Bistro is on Eisenhower Blvd. I have no idea what their hours are, but they’re open for lunch and dinner. Our meal (2 soups, a salad, a pasta dish) was $22.26 and plenty large enough to feed both of us (even though I’d had only a piece of toast for breakfast and Snow’s not a small guy). It’s more expensive at dinner, of course, but still very reasonable. The atmosphere is casual but nice. Everyone’s extraordinarily friendly. And oh yeah, they have a bar, and a nice wine selection.

    Lenny’s there Thursday nights, and…I forget what he said about the rest of the weekend. But I imagine the food’s great even when he’s not there.

    catching up

    *sigh*

    I’d been without power for about 20 hours, but my upstairs neighbors, who had power in some rooms, were kind enough to run me an extension cord so I could power those things which I deemed to be most important. That, of course, meant my computer (except this morning when it meant my coffee grinder), and I was nearly finished with a longish post when suddenly my lights turned on and the computer turned off. So, of course, I lost the post. But the power seems to now be restored to the entire house, and I think they’re done messing with the fuse box, so with any luck I will be able to make it through this post without losing it. I don’t have the energy/patience to recreate it in its entirety, though, so you’re going to get the abridged version.

    I’ve posted pictures of my family decorating my grandmother’s Christmas tree, and some older pictures of one of my cats.

    I had an excellent Christmas. I hope you did, too. My immediate family tried some new approaches this year, designed to minimize consumerism and maximize recipient satisfaction, which worked out well. My best gift was that my mother cleaned and repaired my favorite winter coat, which was in need of both. Well, that and the iPod Nano I got from my aunt, who wasn’t bound by the same restrictions as the immediate family. Really, though, I genuinely wanted everything I got, which is a great feeling, and there’s been none of that post-Christmas “Crap, what do I do with this?” dread. Also, I asked for mechanical pencil lead and earplugs, both of which I ran out of a couple of weeks before Christmas. Waiting for them made me enjoy receiving them so much that they might also be near the top of the list of favorite gifts. Perhaps instant gratification really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

    Moving on….

    On Friday I went with Biff and some others to see chesterattic play the Abbey Bar at ABC, which was a good time. Matt, one of the Abbey bartenders, should be visited often and tipped well.

    I should probably disclose that chesterattic’s drummer is of my circle of friends, but the music, which they describe as “NuJazz”, was really good, and I don’t think I’m being biased. I feel like I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz lately, but it’s really just been two events at McDaniel and Friday night. But that’s three more jazz events than normal, and it’s kind of growing on me. That doesn’t mean that I can begin to describe chesterattic in any meaningful way, so if you’re curious you should just check them out for yourself.

    In addition to hearing the band, I met Fred Otteson, who plays bass for the group (and is the father of drummer and friend Erik Otteson) and writes a Dillsburg blog for PennLive. It’s not entirely Dillsburg, but it is Dillsburg-centric, and is miraculously interesting, given its focus.

    I also ran into several friends who I haven’t seen in years, and had a chance to do a little bit of catching up with them. That was better than any music could ever be.

    …

    I think there was even more in the original post, but I don’t remember what it was, and I’m sure you’ve heard enough. Oh! I just remembered. Just this: the new year is one of the few holidays I really feel motivated to celebrate, but I don’t think I have ever, in my life, or at least not since earliest adolescence, had a really good New Year’s Eve, or at least not one worthy of the year I hope to have. What’s up with that?

    kitzmiller verdict

    Issued today in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District:

    For the reasons that follow, we hold that the ID Policy is unconstitutional pursuant to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

    I haven’t read the whole opinion yet (it’s 139 pages long!), but here’s CNN’s take on it, and here’s a link to download the opinion yourself.

    thinking about shameless promotion

    I recently spent a large number of hours adapting CubeCart for use with The Circle School’s website. If you’re looking for a shopping cart program and don’t mind doing some tweaking, I highly recommend CubeCart. It’s not as out-of-the-box pretty as some of the other cart programs, but it’s extremely easy to customize, both functionally and aesthetically.

    But that’s not the shameless promotion I’m getting at. This is:

    Thinking About The Circle School, by James Rietmulder, is now available for order. It’s written specifically about The Circle School, but it’s also a really interesting look at some of the philosophical questions about the future of education. I might be biased, but I highly recommend it if you’re at all interested in education in the 21st century.

    iraqi elections

    I have to go study for my last (yay!) final, but…

    “Ballot boxes are a victory of democracy over dictatorship,” Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari told reporters as he cast his vote behind the blast walls of Baghdad’s fortress-like Green Zone. “The real triumph is that people are casting ballots — whoever they choose — and that they’ve chosen voting over bombs.”

    There were some problems (who runs out of ballots???), but even if the Iraqis elect a government I would completely disagree with, I think it’s definitely a good sign that they’re voting.

    ick ew yuck scary

    Last night some guy got shot and (presumably) carjacked where I normally park a few times a week.

    I’m not usually parked there after dark (deliberately), but I was planning to turn onto Union St from PA Ave at 9 PM last night when I realized that a stretch of yellow tape and a plethora of police cars were impeding my ability to do so. I assumed it was some drug thing, as it’s a druggy kind of area, and now, terrible as it may sound, I hope it was some drug thing. I’d much rather believe that than think that it was random.

    airplane shooting

    This is now all over the headlines, but a man was shot and killed on an American Airlines plane in Miami.

    There aren’t many details yet, but here’s the WashingtonPost.com article about it.

    There are reports that the man was bipolar and hadn’t taken his medication. It’s unknown if he was actually any kind of threat. I obviously don’t know any more than anyone else, but either way it’s sad.