2011

Now that it is officially 2011, it's time for me to present my annual doodley thing for the year. I must admit, it was notably harder this year because of the two "ones."

I noted a year ago that we typically spend 31 December overly romanticizing the coming year, while we spend 1 January getting used to the fact that the first day of the new year is, in fact, exactly like what we'd already been used to. For 2010, it took, at most, a few hours for me to get acclimated to that. Just a flaw of human nature, I guess.

But so far this year, I really haven't had that problem. Honestly, today, the first day of 2011, has felt a lot like a continuation of 2010. There are probably a number of reasons for that:

1. It's still the holiday break, and my brother is still home.
2. Today started, unfortunately enough, with some of the same gripes that many a day in 2010 did.
   
3. I didn't do much different today from what I did yesterday. Mostly watching football, blogging, and doing year-end website stats.
4. I'm still closing out my post-graduation list of things I'd put off doing.
   

Still, it's important to look forward. While I'd always known that 2010 was at least going to bring the end of my undergraduate career, 2011 is effectively a blank slate. There is absolutely nothing on my life calendar which is more-or-less guaranteed to fall in 2011, and there hasn't been. Whereas at the dawn of previous years, there was always something somewhere on the horizon, I simply don't have that this year.

In some ways, that's refreshingly inspiring. In others, it's paralyzingly daunting.

But I'm looking forward to it. Who knows what 2011 will bring? It's exciting, in a way. I have some ideas of how I want to shape this year (in ways both big and small), but who knows where exactly I'll end up?

I've already set my bearings. All that's left to see is how far I go. ;)

Here We Are Again

Well, here we are again. The end of another year.

As I write this, I'm half-watching NBC's Minute to Win It while mom finishes cooking the second course of our "fancy"-ish New Year's Eve dinner, even though it's nearly two hours since we had the soup. I'll probably have to go eat well before this ever gets posted, but the beauty of blogging is that you'll never know where I left off!

(And yes, if you happened to remember from last year's end-of-year post, the second annual New Year's Eve Nachos are going to be one of the courses. Eventually.)

Twenty-ten has been an interesting year for me. I know you probably couldn't tell that from this blog, but it's true! Most of the stuff I've gone through in 2010 has been rather personal in nature, which is a large reason why I didn't write much of anything here. Still, it comprises a lot of what has shaped 2010 for me, so I'll do my best to summarize things a bit for the benefit of my readers.

If you've been paying particular attention, you may have noticed that I recently changed my mini-bios on many of my social networking sites (including, naturally, the "About Me" section on this one). That's because I have officially graduated from the University of Pittsburgh on 18 December 2010 with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, an undergraduate certificate in Nuclear Engineering, and a minor in Music.

But wasn't I supposed to graduate in May? Didn't I actually participate in Commencement back on 1 May? The short answer to both of these is yes.

The slightly-longer-but-not-too-in-depth answer is that I had had some personal issues in the fall of 2009 which had affected my schoolwork and caused me to earn some incomplete grades. After a full 19-credit slate of senior-level courses in the spring of 2010, I then could refocus myself on finishing those last requirements for graduation. Unfortunately, other external pressures prolonged this effort past August and reset the goal to December. And I hate being so vague, but it really is better in this case. Sorry.

I moved back in with my parents at the end of July, which I'd written briefly about at the time, and which has thusfar remained neither largely good nor largely bad. It just is.

Although I worked toward my graduation steadily throughout the year, I spent the last part of November and the first half of December frantically picking up the pace and finishing everything that was left, at the expense of putting off other routine tasks (among which, obviously, was writing for this blog). And so, on 20 December, once all of the graduation stuff was finalized, I found myself with nothing more than a long list of things to do (literally, I made a list, even including individual episodes of television shows I'd intentionally missed). And I've been slowly whittling away at that list ever since, so that I can begin 2011 at least mostly unencumbered by 2010.

Anyway, here we are again. In the waning minutes of 2010. I'll forgive myself for having written last year that I was excited for a new decade to begin in 2010 when, as ABC Australia wisely noted, this is technically when the decade rolls over. I guess I was just dealing with the "modern" understanding of a decade. Writing the "1" seems to have meant more. But surely writing two of them will be even more significant?

So, I'll put up with the unfortunate double-keystroke in "2011" which I'd mentioned last year. And I'll actually post some of the photographs I took in 2010. For as much as I'd looked forward to 2010, I'm looking forward to 2011 more.

Random tangent: Carson Daly is saying "Twenty-Ten" and "Twenty-Eleven," whereas Ryan Seacrest is only further promulgating the ignorance in the old "Two Thousand and..." way. No disrespect to Dick Clark, but I think that after tonight, I'll be switching my New Year's Eve loyalty to NBC until further notice.

I'm Alive

It's true. I am indeed alive. But you certainly wouldn't know it from this blog alone.

I'm truly sorry for that.

There are a number of reasons I haven't been writing here as frequently, but to itemize them here would be moot. Those who know me personally have an idea of what's been going on in my life recently (although you probably don't even know the half of it). It's been a bit of a stressful time, to say the least.

Nevertheless, it is indeed the last day of the month, and as I prepare to say goodbye to November while still feeling as though I'd just welcomed it in, I feel I owe you guys ten minutes of my time to write something just saying that I'm still here. At least in some manner of speaking.

Last week, I did churn out something markedly longer than this post with the intent of putting it here. It's not particularly timely, but it just happened to be something that was on my mind and, as is usually the case, the simple act of writing about it proved quite therapeutic. After thinking about it for a while, though, I decided that it's going to need a lot of careful revision before it can ever be allowed to see the light of day. And that's something I don't particularly have time for right now.

You can see my dilemma, hence this post.

On the plus side, this all promises to be temporary. I will properly emerge from this cave of bloggy nothingness in a few weeks. And I have to say... I can't wait for that day to arrive.

The Eyeball

I know I've been ignoring this blog (what else is new?), but today I do have a quick little Hallowe'en anecdote to share with you.

My mother was handing out our candy to the Trick-or-Treaters this evening, and to get into the spirit of the holiday she put a fake eyeball (a decorated ping-pong ball) into the bowl with the candy for fun.

Well, even though we only got a couple dozen visitors this year, nearly every single kid (especially the young ones) saw the eyeball and wanted it. Mom was getting a bit frustrated by having to keep telling these kids that it was just there for decoration and that they couldn't have it. At one point, she even mentioned that she should just decorate a bunch of ping-pong balls as eyeballs and pass those out instead of candy next year.

Then she mentioned that that might actually disappoint the children. And that it might be a choking hazard.

She's probably right on both accounts.