One Last Hurrah
It's been sort of a tough decision, but the time has finally come for me to admit that my LJ days are over. One by one, my friends have disappeared from my Friends Page. Most days now, it's a pretty barren sight. And I don't really write in it anymore, either. I've been averaging about a post a month, and that's mostly as a procrastination technique or because I realize I haven't posted in several weeks. Plus, I think I'm ready to stop putting my day-to-day thoughts and deeds on the Internet for public consumption. I may return to paper chronicling, but my days of electronic journaling are coming to a close.
This is no easy passing, though. The summer after my high school graduation, all of my college years, my time abroad, the first three semesters of graduate school-these are huge life events that have been documented here, and it's a difficult task to close the book on them. Of course, I'm not closing the account, so I can always come back and review my past, and I'm probably going to go through and tag everything at some point, and some things will just be transferred to other places: my thoughts on and predictions for the Oscars, for instance, will probably become Facebook notes from now on, and I'll inevitably talk about movies I've seen and books I've read on Facebook, too. But it won't ever be the same experience that it has been. And anyone who knows me well knows that I'm shit with goodbyes. While I won't cry like a baby this time, it's still going to tug at my heartstrings a little to put the final period at the end of the final paragraph in this post.
So what to do? Well, first, let's look back at the last month, just to fill the gap between the last post and, well, the last post. It's pretty easy to sum up: Paper Season Fall 2010. The usual painful process of putting fingers to keyboard and spilling out ideas in a frenzied torrent of despair and frustration. Somehow, seventy-three pages appear in the span of a single month, and I find myself gasping for air upon resurfacing. I'm so, so grateful that this will only ever happen one more time in my life. Just one more time, man.
But it hasn't been all bad. Classes ended, after all. And I got an A+ on one of the papers and was told, for the first time, that it could become an article at some point. The best part-it's about shit. I'm not shitting you. It's about the physicality of fear in Folengo's Baldus, which is just a nice way of saying that it's about the frequency with which characters are literally scared shitless in the poem and what that means. Irony, gotta love it.
Got caught up with all of my TV shows (currently How I Met Your Mother, The Event, Chuck, Glee, Criminal Minds, Bones, Fringe, and 30 Rock). Fringe is easily the best thing on TV this season, holy shit. Everything else has been on par or better than ever. Also accidentally restarted my Netflix (long story), and as a result, I got to see the complete series of Better Off Ted, which was hilarious and was sadly, sadly canceled before its time. Other shows to watch at some point: Breaking Bad, Community, The Wire.
Saw a lot of movies, too. Black Swan was disturbing as all fuck, but it blew my mind. It's just a perfect movie. Perfect. I already loved Natalie Portman, but she was cataclysmically impressive in this film. Deserves every major award and the Oscar and possibly the Presidency. Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, and Winona Ryder were also great. As for the movie, it slips just slightly ahead of The Social Network and Inception to become, I think, for right now anyway, my favorite movie of the year. 127 Hours was super-energizing and super-horrifying and really made me grateful for everything in my life. And for my right arm. Winter's Bone was dull and didn't live up to the hype. Jennifer Lawrence, however, is fantastic. The Kids are All Right was just all right. Annette Bening, the supposed other frontrunner for the Oscar, had better not win. She's good, not great, and it would be one of those wins that I hate, where they award an overdue performer rather than the best performance of the year. Better than the America's Sweetheart-type wins (see: Sandra Bullock, Reese Witherspoon), but not by much. Honestly, Julianne Moore is better than Annette Bening in this movie. And the two kids and Mark Ruffalo outshine them both. Toy Story 3 was pretty great, frequently made me laugh, but also made me cry (that whole childhood-is-over sensation is fairly overwhelming to revisit). The Ghost Writer was a solid thriller, but nothing that I think I'll revisit any time soon. Olivia Williams was pretty awesome, though. Scott Pilgrim was a lot of fun, especially for someone who has read the comic books on which it's based. I'm still not a fan of Michael Cera, but the rest of the cast made up for it. Other films that will be seen in the coming weeks include True Grit, How to Train Your Dragon, The Secret in Their Eyes, and possibly, hopefully The Fighter and The King's Speech, too. Yay for movies!
I also made dinner TWICE for friends. The first time, I made sauce and meatballs. The meatballs were awesome, but I burnt the bottom half-inch of the sauce and made the whole thing rather smoky. Blast. But people really liked it anyway. Also made some tasty garlic bread and a salad. The second time, I made chicken parmesan, and for my first time making chicken cutlets, it went quite well, actually. I sort of like the whole cooking thing. Planning on pursuing further culinary adventures.
In spite of these tasty food ventures, I've been relatively successful with my new dieting and exercise plan that I've been undertaking since October. Nothing crazy, really, I just try to work out for forty-five minutes at least three times a week, I've cut out soda, sweets (except for chocolate chip cookies which I have never been and will never be able to resist), and late-night snacks, and I try to limit carbs to one meal a day. So far, I've lost fifteen pounds, and I'm pretty proud of myself, to be honest. Here's hoping I can stick to it.
Oh, and there was the small matter of the holidays. Shari's Hanukkah party was banging, much like last year's, and I would kill a man for good latkes, so it was an all-around win. And then at the first dinner mentioned above, we had a Secret Santa swap. I drew Shari and got her martini glasses, a cookbook, and some candy. Daniel drew me and got me the Godfather collection, which made me pretty happy. Then there was family Christmas. I got Dad a Yale hat, Mom some quilt squares she wanted, Spencer money for her trip to Australia, Tristan Toy Story 3, the godson a Yale shirt and Legos, and the rest of the cousins five-dollar gift cards to Target. Everyone seemed pleased with their gifts. As for me, I got a veritable smorgasbord of media products, haha, some of which were purchased on Amazon on Christmas day and others later at Target and Borders using money and gift cards I'd received from my parents and others: 30 Rock: Season 4, Avatar--the three-disc collector's edition Blu-ray, Bones: Season 5, The Bourne Ultimatum, Chuck: Season 3, Coraline, Diary by Chuck Palahniuk, Drood by Dan Simmons, Fargo, Fringe: Season 2, The Hangover, Inception, Moon, Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris, The Town, and True Blood: Season 2 (all these in addition to the four movies I bought the week before Christmas, Batman Begins, Let the Right One In, Risky Business, and When Harry Met Sally). Plus, I got a pair of jeans, a Mad Men wall calendar, and a $25 gift card to the new fro-yo place in New Haven. All in all, a damn great haul. And it was really great to see my parents and my puppy for the first time since May and my brother, too, though I just saw him at Thanksgiving. Oh, and of course, the usual awesome food made by my grandparents, including the delicious stuffed shrimp that I only get once a year. Really just great. New Year's Eve will be at my uncle's house, and it includes a large bonfire and plenty of booze. Which will also be plentiful on Thursday, since it's a pre-New Year's Eve tradition to hit the bar. Wooh!
Wow, this post is getting pretty epic already, perhaps because I'm avoiding the inevitable. But it has to come eventually, because that's how the inevitable works. So, I'm going to conclude with two things, one looking back, and the other looking forward. First, the annual year in review meme needs to be completed a final time. So, here goes:
JANUARY: Standing on the Precipice, One Foot Outstretched [hey, guess what? I didn't fall after all… I made it to the other side]
FEBRUARY: Not Quite the BEST DAY EVER, But Still a Damn Good One [Oscars + Lost = super-win in my book]
MARCH: Ready to Roam: The Montreal and Boston Edition [Spring Break 2010, in which my goal was essentially to go to cold places just to buck the trend, haha]
APRIL: "College" [grad school has, in many ways, been more like the stereotypical college experience than college was]
MAY: Paper Season's On Its Way Out [ah, the frustrating focus of every semester's end for the grad student in his early years]
JUNE: Going Home and Fighting Zombies: A Summer's Tale [made it back to C-Town for a brief stint and also studied Latin, which is a like a zombie because it's dead and ate my brain]
JULY: Not Much to Say, Really [based on the frequency with which I posted in the following months, this was a pretty accurate sentiment]
AUGUST: Summer, Dear, Please Don't Leave… What Can I Do to Make You Stay? [ah, the lingering moments of blissful freedom that slipped through my fingers, as they always must]
SEPTEMBER: Round Two [grad school strikes again, but I survived again… everything always gets done-it's a motto I live by]
OCTOBER: Caught in a Celluloid Jam [Glee did Rocky Horror, but the lyric also points to just how central movies and Film Studies were to my semester]
NOVEMBER: Paper Season's Here. Fuck. [see May, also thank God it's over… just one more…]
DECEMBER: One Last Hurrah [and there you go, ending the year and this LJ with a bang]
And I think it's fitting to conclude with a glimpse of the future, so I'm going to close with my New Year's resolutions for 2011 (an important year for me, since I'll be turning twenty-three, my favorite number… so I have big expectations). In no particular order, my goals for 2011 are to truly finish my first novel, to improve my spoken Italian, to no longer be single by year's end, to stick to my diet-and-exercise plan and reach my weight goal, to find an apartment, to make steps towards becoming comfortable with driving again, and to have the best year ever. If I can meet even a few of these, my life will be better for it, but I'm hoping to meet them all. I'm steeling my resolve, LJ, and I believe that when I'm really determined, I can achieve anything. If there's anyone out there still reading this thing, I wish you all the best, and I hope the future's holding wondrous things for all of us. Sigh, okay, there's nothing more to say, really, but in honor of the champagne-soaked upcoming holiday that inspires these annual resolutions, I'll truly, truly finish with a popular bar lyric from Semisonic, "Closing time-every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."
This is no easy passing, though. The summer after my high school graduation, all of my college years, my time abroad, the first three semesters of graduate school-these are huge life events that have been documented here, and it's a difficult task to close the book on them. Of course, I'm not closing the account, so I can always come back and review my past, and I'm probably going to go through and tag everything at some point, and some things will just be transferred to other places: my thoughts on and predictions for the Oscars, for instance, will probably become Facebook notes from now on, and I'll inevitably talk about movies I've seen and books I've read on Facebook, too. But it won't ever be the same experience that it has been. And anyone who knows me well knows that I'm shit with goodbyes. While I won't cry like a baby this time, it's still going to tug at my heartstrings a little to put the final period at the end of the final paragraph in this post.
So what to do? Well, first, let's look back at the last month, just to fill the gap between the last post and, well, the last post. It's pretty easy to sum up: Paper Season Fall 2010. The usual painful process of putting fingers to keyboard and spilling out ideas in a frenzied torrent of despair and frustration. Somehow, seventy-three pages appear in the span of a single month, and I find myself gasping for air upon resurfacing. I'm so, so grateful that this will only ever happen one more time in my life. Just one more time, man.
But it hasn't been all bad. Classes ended, after all. And I got an A+ on one of the papers and was told, for the first time, that it could become an article at some point. The best part-it's about shit. I'm not shitting you. It's about the physicality of fear in Folengo's Baldus, which is just a nice way of saying that it's about the frequency with which characters are literally scared shitless in the poem and what that means. Irony, gotta love it.
Got caught up with all of my TV shows (currently How I Met Your Mother, The Event, Chuck, Glee, Criminal Minds, Bones, Fringe, and 30 Rock). Fringe is easily the best thing on TV this season, holy shit. Everything else has been on par or better than ever. Also accidentally restarted my Netflix (long story), and as a result, I got to see the complete series of Better Off Ted, which was hilarious and was sadly, sadly canceled before its time. Other shows to watch at some point: Breaking Bad, Community, The Wire.
Saw a lot of movies, too. Black Swan was disturbing as all fuck, but it blew my mind. It's just a perfect movie. Perfect. I already loved Natalie Portman, but she was cataclysmically impressive in this film. Deserves every major award and the Oscar and possibly the Presidency. Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, and Winona Ryder were also great. As for the movie, it slips just slightly ahead of The Social Network and Inception to become, I think, for right now anyway, my favorite movie of the year. 127 Hours was super-energizing and super-horrifying and really made me grateful for everything in my life. And for my right arm. Winter's Bone was dull and didn't live up to the hype. Jennifer Lawrence, however, is fantastic. The Kids are All Right was just all right. Annette Bening, the supposed other frontrunner for the Oscar, had better not win. She's good, not great, and it would be one of those wins that I hate, where they award an overdue performer rather than the best performance of the year. Better than the America's Sweetheart-type wins (see: Sandra Bullock, Reese Witherspoon), but not by much. Honestly, Julianne Moore is better than Annette Bening in this movie. And the two kids and Mark Ruffalo outshine them both. Toy Story 3 was pretty great, frequently made me laugh, but also made me cry (that whole childhood-is-over sensation is fairly overwhelming to revisit). The Ghost Writer was a solid thriller, but nothing that I think I'll revisit any time soon. Olivia Williams was pretty awesome, though. Scott Pilgrim was a lot of fun, especially for someone who has read the comic books on which it's based. I'm still not a fan of Michael Cera, but the rest of the cast made up for it. Other films that will be seen in the coming weeks include True Grit, How to Train Your Dragon, The Secret in Their Eyes, and possibly, hopefully The Fighter and The King's Speech, too. Yay for movies!
I also made dinner TWICE for friends. The first time, I made sauce and meatballs. The meatballs were awesome, but I burnt the bottom half-inch of the sauce and made the whole thing rather smoky. Blast. But people really liked it anyway. Also made some tasty garlic bread and a salad. The second time, I made chicken parmesan, and for my first time making chicken cutlets, it went quite well, actually. I sort of like the whole cooking thing. Planning on pursuing further culinary adventures.
In spite of these tasty food ventures, I've been relatively successful with my new dieting and exercise plan that I've been undertaking since October. Nothing crazy, really, I just try to work out for forty-five minutes at least three times a week, I've cut out soda, sweets (except for chocolate chip cookies which I have never been and will never be able to resist), and late-night snacks, and I try to limit carbs to one meal a day. So far, I've lost fifteen pounds, and I'm pretty proud of myself, to be honest. Here's hoping I can stick to it.
Oh, and there was the small matter of the holidays. Shari's Hanukkah party was banging, much like last year's, and I would kill a man for good latkes, so it was an all-around win. And then at the first dinner mentioned above, we had a Secret Santa swap. I drew Shari and got her martini glasses, a cookbook, and some candy. Daniel drew me and got me the Godfather collection, which made me pretty happy. Then there was family Christmas. I got Dad a Yale hat, Mom some quilt squares she wanted, Spencer money for her trip to Australia, Tristan Toy Story 3, the godson a Yale shirt and Legos, and the rest of the cousins five-dollar gift cards to Target. Everyone seemed pleased with their gifts. As for me, I got a veritable smorgasbord of media products, haha, some of which were purchased on Amazon on Christmas day and others later at Target and Borders using money and gift cards I'd received from my parents and others: 30 Rock: Season 4, Avatar--the three-disc collector's edition Blu-ray, Bones: Season 5, The Bourne Ultimatum, Chuck: Season 3, Coraline, Diary by Chuck Palahniuk, Drood by Dan Simmons, Fargo, Fringe: Season 2, The Hangover, Inception, Moon, Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris, The Town, and True Blood: Season 2 (all these in addition to the four movies I bought the week before Christmas, Batman Begins, Let the Right One In, Risky Business, and When Harry Met Sally). Plus, I got a pair of jeans, a Mad Men wall calendar, and a $25 gift card to the new fro-yo place in New Haven. All in all, a damn great haul. And it was really great to see my parents and my puppy for the first time since May and my brother, too, though I just saw him at Thanksgiving. Oh, and of course, the usual awesome food made by my grandparents, including the delicious stuffed shrimp that I only get once a year. Really just great. New Year's Eve will be at my uncle's house, and it includes a large bonfire and plenty of booze. Which will also be plentiful on Thursday, since it's a pre-New Year's Eve tradition to hit the bar. Wooh!
Wow, this post is getting pretty epic already, perhaps because I'm avoiding the inevitable. But it has to come eventually, because that's how the inevitable works. So, I'm going to conclude with two things, one looking back, and the other looking forward. First, the annual year in review meme needs to be completed a final time. So, here goes:
JANUARY: Standing on the Precipice, One Foot Outstretched [hey, guess what? I didn't fall after all… I made it to the other side]
FEBRUARY: Not Quite the BEST DAY EVER, But Still a Damn Good One [Oscars + Lost = super-win in my book]
MARCH: Ready to Roam: The Montreal and Boston Edition [Spring Break 2010, in which my goal was essentially to go to cold places just to buck the trend, haha]
APRIL: "College" [grad school has, in many ways, been more like the stereotypical college experience than college was]
MAY: Paper Season's On Its Way Out [ah, the frustrating focus of every semester's end for the grad student in his early years]
JUNE: Going Home and Fighting Zombies: A Summer's Tale [made it back to C-Town for a brief stint and also studied Latin, which is a like a zombie because it's dead and ate my brain]
JULY: Not Much to Say, Really [based on the frequency with which I posted in the following months, this was a pretty accurate sentiment]
AUGUST: Summer, Dear, Please Don't Leave… What Can I Do to Make You Stay? [ah, the lingering moments of blissful freedom that slipped through my fingers, as they always must]
SEPTEMBER: Round Two [grad school strikes again, but I survived again… everything always gets done-it's a motto I live by]
OCTOBER: Caught in a Celluloid Jam [Glee did Rocky Horror, but the lyric also points to just how central movies and Film Studies were to my semester]
NOVEMBER: Paper Season's Here. Fuck. [see May, also thank God it's over… just one more…]
DECEMBER: One Last Hurrah [and there you go, ending the year and this LJ with a bang]
And I think it's fitting to conclude with a glimpse of the future, so I'm going to close with my New Year's resolutions for 2011 (an important year for me, since I'll be turning twenty-three, my favorite number… so I have big expectations). In no particular order, my goals for 2011 are to truly finish my first novel, to improve my spoken Italian, to no longer be single by year's end, to stick to my diet-and-exercise plan and reach my weight goal, to find an apartment, to make steps towards becoming comfortable with driving again, and to have the best year ever. If I can meet even a few of these, my life will be better for it, but I'm hoping to meet them all. I'm steeling my resolve, LJ, and I believe that when I'm really determined, I can achieve anything. If there's anyone out there still reading this thing, I wish you all the best, and I hope the future's holding wondrous things for all of us. Sigh, okay, there's nothing more to say, really, but in honor of the champagne-soaked upcoming holiday that inspires these annual resolutions, I'll truly, truly finish with a popular bar lyric from Semisonic, "Closing time-every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."