As hard as it is to believe, I’ve had some kind of presence on the web for over a decade now. And, for more than a decade now, that web presence has yo-yoed between being active and neglected. I think that’s how most Internet-folks work.

Obviously, for the past couple of years, this site has been in the “neglect” phase.

Why?

• You know how, on your birthday, someone always asks “do you feel any older?”
  A couple of birthdays ago, I actually did. Not too long after that, my now-fiancé asked me, “do you think you’ve out-grown anything that you used to like?” I said, “blogging.”
  Truth be told, there is an awful lot on this site that I now feel self-conscious about. I’ve taken down a couple of posts where I really feel like I over-shared, and I’ve even been tempted to take the whole site down. (It’s the confessional posts like this one that I am the most uncomfortable with. Ironic, huh?)
  
  I think a lot of people grow quieter and more private as they get older, so it makes sense that I’m far less interested in “blogging” than I was back in undergrad. So, the website has sat.
• Facebook
  Besides, in terms of the things that I have wanted to share, Facebook has actually been a much better place to do so than this website ever was. And I’m less shy about admitting to being a facebook user than I am to admitting that I have a personal blog. It seems less egotistical, even if it’s probably more so.
• Nana
  Almost exactly 5 years ago, I quit my job in DC so that I could take care of my grandmother, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. I cared for her 24/7 for a year, and then 24/5 for almost another year. I blogged about it quite a bit. Remember?
  
  My grandmom died on October 1, 2008. Partially because I wanted to provide an account for other Alzheimer’s caregivers, and partially because I wanted to have a record of her last few days, I made up my mind that I would write a long blog post chronicling how things all came to an end.
  
  But a LOT happened during her last few weeks in this world. And, although I’m still thankful that I had the opportunity to share Nana’s last two years with her, I’m really not sure how to wrap that up into a nice little take-away article.
  
  On top of that, I tried to devote the months immediately after her death to myself and enjoying my freedom. It worked out better in theory than in practice, but I still had some nice times.
  
  So, I never got around to writing that post. (I still have at least 3 drafts saved, but it just never happened. As odd as it sounds, I even tried again when my guinea pig, Forrest, died, but it still never happened. I guess this will have to do.) I told myself that it wouldn’t be right to post again until I wrote that long post. And I never did. Thus, the blog withered!
• Busy!
  2011 has been the busiest, and probably the best (although 8th grade was pretty awesome) year of my life. Just this year, I’ve gotten engaged (!), been on Who Wants to be a Millionaire (!), gotten a promotion (!), seen the Dalai Lama speak (!), danced with Matt(!), traveled in three countries and booked a flight to a fourth, seen my mom go through cancer treatments, and really gotten into How I Met Your Mother. And the years between my last blog post and 2011 had a lot going on, too. There was a lot to write about, but less time than there could have been.
• I’ve been lazy.
  No surprise there.

Despite all of this, I’ve been wanting to bring this site back more and more over the past few months.

I’m a TV news producer. Whether that makes me a “journalist” is debatable, but, at the very least, my job is journalistic. And so is my personality. I like finding little-known stories, and I like sharing them.

There really is something about everything on the Internet, but sometimes there really isn’t all that much. I’m always doing semi-weird things on weekends, and I always want to read more about them. But I come up blank way too often when I’m researching some of the obscure things that I’m interested in doing. I can’t be the only one googling things like “baseball in Costa Rica,” “Tijuana soccer,” “Kish Island passport stamp,” or “abandoned US-Canada border posts,” can I?

So, I’m hoping to bring this blog somewhat back to life, but less as a web journal and more as a place place where I occasionally write about things I’m doing/interested in that don’t have much information already on the internet. A lot of it will be about sports, but not all of it. And I’d imagine more of my traffic will come from Google than from frequent readers, but it would be awesome if you’d come here frequently anyway.

I’m planning on writing a fair amount about my experience on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Leave a comment if you’re still out there!

About two more hours until I head back home to NJ for the week. 

This week at work has gone just fine.  Uneventful, but fine.

I was just sitting here at my desk, and I remembered something from my trip to DC from a few weeks ago that I thought was worth posting.

At the bottom of this post from a few weeks ago, I mentioned the surreality of sitting at my old desk at my old job and receiving an e-mail from my old roommate offering me my old apartment back.

Well, the very next week, I checked into a hotel.  I just happened to be assigned room #324.

Those of you who came to visit me at the old Hotel Garyfornia in Silver Spring may remember that my old apartment was #324.

*Cues Twilight Zone music.*

It’s hardly conscious; more often than not, I’ll be totally preoccupied or busy doing something when a song will come on, and I get this very vivid picture of some other time.

Last night, I was sitting here listening to music and playing a video game (thanks, Slickdeals!  Free is better than $20!), when I decided to listen to Barenaked Ladies Are Me.  I was totally focused on the game, but when the first track came on, it felt like last October.  (Ok, maybe the air conditioning being on had something to do with that, but still!) 
I didn’t even think about it; I just got this vivid picture feeling of waking up at 1am and putting that CD in as I got ready to head into work for my 3am shift. 
As rough as that month was, it was still a nice memory.  I guess it’s easy for anything in the past to be “the good old days.”

Anyway, that happens to me fairly frequently, so I just thought I’d share. 

My Background

Junior year of high school was a pretty big year for me.
I was learning that I really enjoyed TV production, and my history teacher thought I had a real knack for the social sciences.  In fact, she was so impressed that she had my high school nominate me for the New Jersey Governor’s School of International Studies.  I didn’t get in, but “it’s an honor just to be nominated;” each high school only gets to nominate one or two students.  I didn’t really know anything “international” at that point, and I got into another special program that summer, anyway.  So all was well.

Madison County at American Legion Jersey Boys State--the program I attended in the summer of 2000. It probably ended up being less influential than the program I didn't attend!

For college, I knew that I wanted to do something with TV news.
Thinking back to those Governor’s School brochures, I thought that International Relations might be a good way to supplement journalism as a second major–you know, like international news.  Well, long story short (because you’ve probably already heard the long Newhouse story), things ended up going the other way: I landed primarily in International Relations, grew into that, and used my TV skills to supplement the IR.

As a new International Relations major, I knew embarassingly little about the world and embarassingly little about the field I was heading into.
But, as I said, I grew into it, and I grew to really like it.  I chose (or rather, my advisor steered my freshman self into) a concentration on modern Europe, and that worked out fine for me.  I got to travel, make some great friends, and see some incredible things in some incredible places.

In doing so, I came to believe that being able to work cross-culturally is only going to become more and more valuable as a skill as the world becomes increasingly interconnected (“globalized”).  I began to understand people, and the world, better.  I became more confident in my choice of a major that I picked semi-half-ass-edly.  I became more confident in myself as I learned how to handle situations that were once foreign to me.  And, believe it or not, I even began to get annoyed by some of my (often pedantic or inexperienced) IR peers who seemed to have a specific fetish for one specific country or culture*.  After all, I think the point of studying internationally is more to learn more about the whole world and its similiarities than it is just to learn about one or two countries and their differences.
But all I really knew was Europe.

So, I was somewhat surprised when, less than a year after college, I met an amazing girl (who happened to be from India) and landed a job producing a TV news program (that happened to air in Pakistan).

Much like International Relations and Europe did years before, South Asia landed in my lap.  And, honestly, I found it pretty intimidating at first.

Krores and lakhs and dosas and kurthas and cricket, theek-hai?  Chalta-hai?  Insha’Allah!
No matter how western-thinking my friends and coworkers were, little particles like that kind of made my head spin.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long at all for me to learn that I prefer my samosas without chutney.  And, when I saw The Namesake the day before yesterday, I couldn’t help but crack up when Gogol told his soon-to-be brother-in-law, “Just call everyone auntie and you’ll be fine.”
I guess I began to catch on.

The Movie

I read Maryland Macaca’s good post on The Namesake a while ago.  But, not having heard a peep about the movie beforehand, I unfortunately didn’t pay it all that much attention.  Oops!

But last week, when I paid a visit to my old office, one of my friends showed me the trailer; I re-read MD’s post, and it seemed like something I should see.
(Is it ironic or appropriate that the person who showed me the trailer was one of the only other white guys in the office–a Spanish-speaking Armenian-French Canadian who works for a Pakistani TV show in Washington?)

So, not being sure how much longer it would be out, I moved it to the top of my priority list.  Tuesday, even with my Netflix languising, I stuffed some Wendy’s cheeseburgers in my pockets (I was hungry and didn’t have time for dinner!) and made my way to the Ritz theatres in Voorhees.

ANYWAY!
In reviewing a movie about culture and self, I thought it might be appropriate for me to talk a little about myself and my intercultural experiences.  But how about the movie itself?

The Namesake was excellent.

In short, it’s about the US-born children (“ABCD”s) of Indian-born parents, and how both struggle to find themselves somewhere between East and West.  This conflict is largely shown as the main protagonist struggles in romantic relationships with both an American girl and a Bengali girl, and also as he struggles to come to terms with his two given names: “Nikhil” (an easily-Americanizable desi name) and “Gogol” (a name that come from his father’s past, but which is equally foreign to both Indians and Americans).
But it’s not just about him; it’s about his whole family.

I’d mostly agree with Maryland Macaca in that the film takes a nuanced view of things: it shows that cultural background alone is not a valid measure of compatibility.  It’s mostly free of oversimplifications and stereotypes, but I do have to say, a couple of times American characters’ actions made me cringe (calling Gogol’s parents by their first names, skimpy dress at a funeral, vandalization, etc.).  I hope us goras are mostly more sensitive than that, yo!

For me, though, the most thought-provoking theme in the film was also one of the most understated: the generational differences in the struggles faced by the parents and the children.
Note that I don’t just say “the generational differences between the parents and the children.”  This is certainly a HUGE, and interesting, theme throughout the film.  But if you look a little deeper and think about the characters and their struggles (especially the parents, because the struggles they faced in their 20s aren’t explored nearly as in-depth as those of their children) , there is a lot to think about.

While 20-somethings Gogol/Nikhil and Sonia both struggle with reconciling their own culture with that of their parents, the parents themselves spent their 20s dealing with the banal differences between life and culture in the US and life in India (I found the scene where Ashima is trying to make herself breakfast a touching, and slightly humourous, example of such).  Gogol suffers dealing with the freedom he has in chosing his partners, while we couldn’t help but feel for his mother while she was left alone in the early days of her arranged marriaged.  The children don’t always know how to communicate with their parents, while, for the parents, the logistics of communication to their homeland proved to be an isolating, and time-consuming challange.  As Americans, the kids struggle to keep in touch with their Indian heritage, while the parents struggled at acclimate themselves to the US.  Yes, the immigrant experience is multigenerational.

Both the parents and the kids struggled in their 20s, but in different ways.  And, most likely, when the children reach their parents age, they will struggle with different, but similiar, issues (aging, the loss of a spouse, how to spend retirement, etc).

I think it’s this aspect that really seals the films universality.
Yes, the characters are brown.  And yes, it’s mostly about intercultural issues.  But there’s more to it than that, existentially.  It’s also a movie about generational conflicts, family conflicts, and how we are ALWAYS still growing up.

(One of my favorite things about Gogol was that he really does mature.  He learns from his mistakes and works to fix them, something that should be so basic, but which so few of us actually do.)

If you were to spin this movie off into a sitcom series (which really wouldn’t be all that hard to do), I think it would resemble Rosanne.  So, even if you’re not brown and don’t know anyone who is, it is definitely worth seeing.  I wouldn’t exactly say it’s revolutionary, but it’s very relevant, surprisingly accessible, and very well done.

As a TV news producer, when I watch an artistic film, I can’t help but feel like the guy who paints the walls at the Louvre.
I more-of-less understand what the direction’s vision is, and in some ways I’m in awe.  This film definitely had artistic merit.

Particularly, I enjoyed the recurring train imagery.  Trains symbolize journeys, which represent life.  And each time we saw a train (the accident, Agra, Gogol’s marriage, the ending scene), we knew a big change was coming on that journey.
Combine that with the way the Howrah Bridge and George Washington Bridge are used to visually compare NYC to Kolkata, the way books are used to definine characters (Gogol, Ashoke, Ashima, and Moushumi), the holograms in the airport, a little Bollywood homage, and some other motifs that I’m sure I missed,  and WOW!  It’s really well-directed by a true auteur.

The character development was also well-done.  EVERYONE seemed so complex, and, aside from Ashima (whom I liked throughout), my opinion of each character changed at least once.
That’s a lot in two hours, but not too much.  It was great film-making.  And great acting.

The South Asian phase of my life may or may not be over with, but at the very least it’s on hiatus.  Still, I intend to visit India one day (possibly via an overland trip from Europe, possibly as soon as I finish caring for my grandmom), and I bet I’ll feel more at home there than I would in, say, Russia, where the people look more like me.  I’ve grown comfortable with the Indian culture, and how it, like others cultures, is becoming increasingly intertwined with that of the US.  Maybe that’s why I enjoyed the film so much.  But even if you haven’t grown that comfortable yet, you should see this to understand just how intertwined the world is becoming and how there are similiarities even in the different challanges we all face.

Four and a half stars out of five.

*People who say things like, “I like Asian girls,” or, “I wish I lived in Canada,” annoy me because, 9 times out of 10, they don’t really know a damn thing about what they’re talking about, and they frequently have nothing to compare it to.  They might even be basing things off a romanticised version of reality or a stereotype.  Yes, it’s ok to have specific interests, as I do, but, as I said, the world is a big place.  I hope you don’t see me as being hypocritial by being annoyed by this.  It’s hard to explain, but it makes sense to me!

I thought of a fun game to play: trying to name a store that previously occupied the location of all of the current stores.

Strawbridge’s, Fashion Bug, Babbage’s, Xhilarama, that luggage place….
Combined, my mom and I have been going to the Echelon Mall for more than 60 years, so we did pretty well.

My trip to DC (May 11-15) was similiar to our game, only more bittersweet.

I lived in the DC area for about 2.5 years, and I was last there at New Year’s. 
I can’t exaggerate; I haven’t been away for all that long at all.  Sure, there were lots of new restaurants, and bus routes, and new metro maps, and little things like that that stuck out as being new and different.  But really, not all that much had changed.  That’s part of what made it odd.

It was kind of surreal, actually.  It felt a bit like The Twilight Zone:

• I stayed at the same youth hostel that I stayed in when I was looking for an apartment, and the same people were working there.  (But this wasn’t the start of a life in DC.)*
• I rode the red line to get to where I was staying.  (But I got off one stop before my old apartment.)
• I spent a little while in Silver Spring (but I didn’t live there anymore, so it was just for a haircut)
• I had dinner with two awesome friends in Dupont Circle (but I’m no longer dating their sister/cousin)
• I walked the same streets as before (but they were no longer my streets)
• I spent several hours at my old office (but I don’t work there anymore).

Don’t get me wrong; it was a wonderful trip.  Just a little bittersweet, as you’d expect.

Some highlights (because I love unordered lists):

• Being bought lunch by my old coworkers.  It was my first time having desi food in months: “Butter Chicken for Butterworth.”
• Seeing a Hershey Bears Calder Cup Champions Coca-Cola can.
• On the street, randomly running into the parents of one of my high school friends from NJ.  (They were visiting their son, my friend, who is a Navy pilot.  He flew himself up here for the weekend from Alabama.  How cool is that?!)
• Catching up with SO many wonderful friends and coworkers, including some I didn’t even expect to see.
• Meeting one of my online friends for the first time!
• Visiting the EU Embassies, as I mentioned in a previous post. 
  I walked from Dupont Circle, up Mass Ave all the way to the National Cathedral, and then to Cleveland Park (!!!), visiting Slovenia, Luxembourg, Italy:
  
   and Finland in the process.
  
  Finland had people in traditional dress, so that was my favorite.  Had I gotten an earlier start, I could have visited more, but I was happy to sleep in and visit four.
    It was a really fun event, but the lines were a little long, and there weren’t enough shuttle busses.  Hopefully, they’ll have it again!
• The beautiful views from the National Cathedral.  (I’ll have a post on this, one day).
  
  

In other news, my grandmom will be home tomorrow morning.  That’s just one day shy of being exactly 6 months since the day I moved back to NJ.  You just know I’ll have a post on that!

Link du jour: Interesting article about the best and worst places to work in the Federal Government. 

*Staying at the hostel gave me an interesting idea for a TV show.  Imagine, for example, the show Cheers.  But, instead of having “Cliff” as a character, each night, have a different mailman sitting in the same stool, having the same sort of conversations.  That sort of rotating archtype is exactly what you find in a hostel.  It’s fun, comforting, and interesting.

In high school, in my AP English Literature class, we had an amazing teacher. 
To this day, when people from that class meet up, we debate whether he was the greatest genious in modern history, or a run-of-the-mill nut.

I’m leaning towards the former, but I’m open to persuasion.

Regardless, as we learned in class one day, the only two movies that he has ever walked out of at the theatre were The Matrix and American Beauty.

The former is in my Netflix queue; the latter was today’s Netflix pick.

American Beauty, while unsettling, was a great movie.
It is every bit the perfect example of the modern, existential suburban dystopia.

It’s very dark, and, in a way, it’s a perfect subject for a follow-up to my post on the Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible.

I certainly hope this won’t be my life (I’m almost positive it won’t be), and I hope it won’t be for anyone I care about either.  Although I do know people whom I worry about settling into the suburban groove, where status and possessions are everything, and where insecurities are hidden to create appearance of “perfection” that is more important to life than (and that can even prevent) true satisfaction.
Tonight

Tonight my friend Mike from high school (who, like me, also just got out of a great, long-term relationship for no logical reason, and who has also found his way back to South Jersey) had a great idea: we should get drunk over instant messenger!

We tried that once before, but, having eaten too much that night, I just couldn’t keep pace.  Oh well.

Anyway, tonight he suggested it around 7pm. 
But before we could get started, I had to go to the post office to return my movie (by the way, I’m definitely downgrading my Netflix plan; 3 at a time is just too much of a chore). 

I also wanted to go running. 
The weather was a little chilly, but it’s getting nicer.  And running is probably my favorite form of exercise, aside from sports.  I walked a mile to the track, jogged 2 miles in 24 minutes, and walked a mile back, arriving almost exactly an hour after I left.  I really am a fat old man.  lol.  But it was fun anyway, and I’ll get better.

After I got back, I had to acknowledge that Mike had a fun idea, and a fitting one, considering what I got in the mail today.

(Yes, I really do use an old Gateway PC as my nightstand, but I’m talking about the sign).

When I lived in France, I lived in Schiltigheim.  Schiltigheim is a a close-in suburb of Strasbourg.  It is also known as the capital of France’s beer industry.

From my place there, I lived within walking distance of three breweries.  Fischer was my favorite. 

For a while, I had wanted a metal Fischer sign.  I didn’t like the one that was most common.  The only time I saw my favorite, it sold for over $100 on eBay.  So, when I saw this one for under $20 including shipping, I just had to get it.
It came today, and I hung it right over my bed!

In the US, Fischer’s logo is Strasbourg’s Gothic cathedtral.  In France, though, their logo is a little kid sitting on top of a barrel of beer drinking from a cup as big as his head.  The French logo is cooler, and that’s what I got!

Anyway, Mike and I drank online tonight, which was a surprisingly fun way to spend a Friday night.

(Speaking of surprising, isn’t this a surprisingly coherent post after having 7 drinks?  I’m proud of myself, but I’ll reevaluate in the morning).

My highlight (ok, lowlight) was trying a beer that had been in my grandmom’s fridge for at least a decade. 

It wasn’t as bad as you’d think, but it was hardly good.

After the second drink, I dumped it.

Here’s a picture of me with it:

Yes, I look homeless.

That’s all for now! 

73s!

Some kids were wearing their little league shirts, the more precocious or risqué were wearing their “co-ed naked soccer” shirts (remember that fad?).  Me, I was proud of the “Justa Hafta Fish” t-shirt that my mom gave me for Christmas.

One day, we were discussing college scholarships in my history class (the main place to discuss college that early because, for some reason, in middle school, history was the only class that had a “smart” section, dubbed “EXCEL,” for “EXplorations and Challanges for Exceptional Learners.”  How’s that for a buzzword-filled phrase?!).  I asked if any schools offered fishing scholarships.  My teached didn’t know, but she said she wouldn’t be surprised.

I watched the fishing shows on TV.

I asked for line and lures for Christmas and a baitcasting reel for my birthday.
(I struggled with it mightily).

I got up early to go fishing.  And I never get up early.

One year, a fishing store half an hour away was having a weekend of events, and I made my dad take me.  They advertised that they would be welcoming a special guest: a professional bass tournament fisherman!  I got there, and I was hugely disappointed when he was some no-name, new to the the high-stakes tournament trail.  I didn’t even bother to get his autograph.
The next year he won the Bassmasters Classic and became a minor celebrity.  D’oh!

I wrote letters to my fishing heros and got back autographed fishing cards.

I asked my family to stop calling me “Gary,” and instead call me “Bassmaster G.” 
(It didn’t go over particularly well).

I was REALLY into fishing.

Every month, my dad’s fishing magazines came.  Every month I read the tournament recaps, and every month I was dissappointed that none of the competitors were from my area.  They were all from the south!

After a while, I stopped paying so much attention to fishing (and more to ice hockey, but that’s for my next post), but as I drifted out of it, a new name was starting to appear on the amateur tournament rosters. ”Mike Iaconelli”

Iaconelli began to move higher and higher in the amateur standings, and then he broke into the pros, where he shattered the notion of fishing being something for the good ol’ boys from Dixie.  With his flaming shirt, occasional grunge goatee, and tattoos, Mike Iaconelli became fishing’s first rock star.

AND HE IS FROM SOUTH JERSEY!
Not only that, but he went to Triton, the sister-school to my alma mater, Highland!

Who knew that the Black Horse Pike Regional School District produced one of America’s 10 most hated athletes?

Today, my dad, his wife, and I belatedly celebrated my birthday.  In the afternoon, my dad and I went up to Princeton University to see an NCAA hockey game for the first time.  Then, we picked up my step-mother, went out to eat, came home, where I was presented presents!  What did I get?
Mike Iaconelli’s autobiography!

I was going to post about the game now, but I wanted to tell that story.

Game recap soon!

Link du jour:  Virginia becomes the first US state to formally apologize for slavery! About damn time!

I remember when I was in elementary school; in the summers, we would frequently visit my dad’s extended family in Asheville, North Carolina.  Once, I asked my mom why everyone around there had an accent, but we didn’t.  Sometime, as I grew older, I realize that, of course, everyone has some kind of accent.  I’ve been aware of that conceptually for a while now, but it’s only been in the past few months (shortly before I moved back here) that I’ve actually been able to notice the South Jersey/Philadelphia accent on my friends and family.  Probably because I had been away for about five and a half years.

I had my first visitors here at my grandmom’s a week or so ago: Dan Dean and his girlfriend! 

(Don’t worry I’ve since had a haircut, so I look far less ridiculous.  Also, my grandmom’s house needs a “Hotel Garyfornia”-esque nickname, don’t you think?  Also also, why don’t YOU stop by?!)

It’s funny that I stumbled across that accent quiz today, because Dean’s lady mentioned to me that she didn’t think I had much of an accent.  In a way, I was happy to hear her say that, because the extreme Philly accent annoys the hell out of me (especially on girls).  But at the same time, I was also kinda proud to score a perfect “Philly” on that test, too.  Ironic, huh?  Or hypocritical?

(I took that test honestly, just to let you know.  I didn’t try to get any particular result).

Of all the areas I’ve visited and lived (South Jersey, Syracuse, Washington DC, Strasbourg, “suburban” Maryland), I’ll admit that NJ was never really my favorite.  Judging by the number of people I know who’ve moved out of the area (Florida seems to have a particularly strong appeal), I don’t think it’s many people’s favorite.  (I over-use parenthetical comments, don’t I?).  I’ve definitely found great things everywhere I’ve been: 

• Syracuse probably has more of an impact in making me who I am than anywhere else, and, through the University, I’ll always have some connection to the place.  I liked it a lot.
• I was probably more of a “success” in DC/Maryland than anywhere else.  Aside from NJ, I spent more tine there than anywhere else, and I knew my way around the area better than anywhere else, too.
• Strasbourg was probably my favorite place.  It’s friggin beautiful!  And I probably had more fun there than anywhere else.

But since I’ve been back in NJ, I’ve been kind of surprised to notice just how much more of a connection I seem to feel here than anywhere else.  Meeting some family members I hadn’t seen in 18 years, drinking my grandfather’s liquor, and spending more time with my family in the past month than I do in an average year might have something to do with that, but that’s not really it.  I think it’s mostly just that, having spent more than 18 years here, I just feel like more of an insider than anywhere else.  I know exactly how everyone feels when the sports teams choke, I remember the obscure news stories from a decade ago, I legitimately love Wawa, I say “wooder,” and the theme from Channel 6 Action News (the Delaware Valley’s Leading News Program) is oddly comforting.  And I desparately want the Iggles to go all the way this year.

I’m not sure I really have anywhere else to go with this.  Just that it’s odd to feel more at home in a place you don’t particularly love than anywhere else. 

(Do you guys like these introspective posts?  I always feel weird writing them.)

Oh, and another thing: being from this area, I also know it’s weird to wear short sleeves “down the shore” in January!  I’ve been looking for some pictures to illustrate just how messed up this weather is, but I can’t find them.  Check back later and hopefully I’ll have added them.

Stratford, NJ

I was down to the former Hotel Garyfornia for most of the weekend to finish packing and to enjoy my last couple of days of being out on my own.  I had a good time.  I planned on writing one last long post from Silver Spring while I was down there, but fittingly, that didn’t happen.  Things don’t always go as planned.

Anyway, I have that long year-end survey that I post every year to get to, so I’ll try to make my musings minute.  But I have a couple of photos to share!

Mish and I exchanged our Christmas gifts this weekend.  I got, inter alia, the awesomest bubble bath ever!

(Yes, I occasionally have my immature moments.  And yes, I like bubble baths.  So what?!  Also, thanks to my mom for being the hand model.  She’s no George Costanza, but she gets the job done).

Mish and I went out for New Years eve…

…but we ended up somewhere different than I had planned on when I opened my wallet to find that it had a hole in it and MY LICENSE WAS MISSING!

(Fortunately, the Irish bar where these pictures were taking had a genuine Irishman working the door for the night, and he didn’t bother to card us.  So, we had a happy new year after all).

Now onto the traditional, belated……

Year in Review!

1. What did you do in 2006 that you’d never done before?
Travelled on business (twice!).  Worked 3am-Noon (pretty much the only hours that I had never worked previously).  Quit my life and moved in with my grandmom.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn’t really make any.  I might resolve to use my time here in Stratford more productively, through reading, studying, and freelance writing.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, marshala.

5. What countries did you visit?
The UK (London, England) and Canada (Montréal, Québec).

6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?
2006 had everything.  No complaints.  I wouldn’t mind if 2007 was more like the first 11 months of 2006 than December, but I’ll take whatever it gives me.

7. What date from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Hmm…there aren’t really any dates that stick with me.  Some probably should, but I honestly can’t remember without checking a calendar.  (I said that last year, didn’t I?)

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Getting a big raise to help launch a new show.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I’m not sure.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Na-hee.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
The double-edition of the new BNL CD from Canada.  Barenaked Ladies Are Men is incredible. Buy it when it’s released in a stand-alone package!
Actually, my ticket to Montreal was probably better than that.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
The people I worked with at 3am in October and November.  True dedication!

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Several former coworkers.

14. Where did most of your money go?
DC restaurants.  And the government.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Both of my business trips, and my Montreal trip!  I met Brian Lara!  And I taught a deposed Prime Minister about overexposure!  And MacZde Carpate bought me a drink!  (My Pittsburgh trip is in Feb. 2007, but I started getting really excited in 2006, so that might count, too.)

16. What song will always remind you of 2006?
Any of the new BNL or MacZde that came out this year.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. Happier or sadder?  Less happy, but more self-assured.  So, I’d say it’s a push. (That makes sense to me).
ii. thinner or fatter? About the same.
iii. richer or poorer? Richer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Nothing really.  I actually think I had a good balance of everything. Although, this year did show me that I can get money-hungry, and I hope I always remember to balance that out.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Nothing that I can think of.

20. How will you/did you spend Christmas?
Christmas Eve with my dad and stepmom, Christmas Day with my mom her at my grandmom’s.  Just like the first 20 years of my life.

22. Did you fall in love in 2006?
I didn’t fall out of it!

23. How many one-night stands?
0. C’mon now.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
TV Ashna and Ashna TV (I can’t chose!)

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No.  But I am dissappointed in some people.

26. What was the best book you read?
That’s a tough one.  Maybe The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup. I’ve always thought that sports were one of the best ways to get an insight into a culture, and this book (and Franklin Foer’s How Soccer Explains the World, which I could also name here) really back that up.  Soccer is still my number three sport, behind hockey and baseball (probably tied with American football and ahead of cricket), but unfortunately those sports don’t have the broad international appeal of soccer, and I don’t think this type of book could really be written about those yet.  Maybe one day!

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Dave Melillo?  Eve 6?  They’re both good, but I wouldn’t really call either “a discovery.”

28. What did you want and get?
The chance to travel, for work and fun.

29. What did you want and not get?
More time for travel!

30. Did you make any new friends this year?
New coworkers.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 23 and I got a bed, watched the Olympics, and went to the Caps game in the snow with my dad.  I REALLY enjoyed that day, and I think about it pretty often.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
A better work situation.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?
Meh.

34. What kept you sane?
Faith that things always work out for me, and I see no reason why that would change.  Besides, there really wasn’t all that much to make me insane.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Alizée !  Actually, I probably should have put her up as my “musical discovery.”

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Immigration reform.  We need guest workers, we don’t need English-only legislation, and the crusade against illegals is starting to get scary.

37. Who did you miss?
No one in particular; I just wish everyone could be in one place.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Probably one of the guys I trained at work.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005:
1) Keep work professional.
2) Things are easier than they seem.  If you’re thinking about doing something, suck it up and do it.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I can never do this one.

So there’s 2006.  Here’s to an even better 2007!

Link du jour (thanks, Mish!): http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/us/30support.html?ei=5088&en=6cd79ccb19e562a8&ex=1325134800&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

When I got off the plane in Paris, it struck me just how anti-climactic the whole act of travelling was.  While it wasn’t cheap, the ticket wasn’t cripplingly expensive, and the flight itself wasn’t any longer than the Greyhound trip from Mt. Laurel, NJ, to Syracuse.  (Although, admittedly, I missed the stop at the Wendy’s in Binghamton in the middle of the night.).  I don’t think I had been in France for more than 10 minutes when I realized that something I had looked at as a momentus, even intimidating, occasion wasn’t really all that momentus at all, and there was certainly no need to be intimidated.  I think it was sometime between immigration and customs (I still have a fairly clear picture of that smoky arrival hall) when I realized that going to Europe wasn’t by any means a once-in-a-lifetime event.  (And yes, every day I realize how fortunate I am to be able to make statements like that.)

In fact, it was so easy that I’m still surprised that so many of people I know have never crossed the ocean, or done any of a number of similiar things that, if they actually got around to doing them, they would find tremendously rewarding.  I’m always surprised by how empty the stands frequently are at sporting events, by how even the most popular movies are seen by such a small percentage of the population, by how few people volunteer or vote, and even that I’ve only visited maybe 20% of my own country (and I think I’m more undertaking than most people).  I’m not sure if it’s because of intimidation, or apathy, or simply being caught up in life.  Or maybe it’s just a mindset that “I’ll get around to it one day,” but that day never comes.  Whatever the reason, people just don’t do all that they should.  Of couse, by being more undertaking, fewer things are literally once-in-a-lifetime, but more unique meaningful experiences are had, nonetheless.

If I were to become a novelist, I think the two themes that I’d explore the most on would be easyness of living unique experiences and the apathy/intimidation/factors that keep us from realizing this. 

* * *

My grandmom, aka “Evelyn,” aka “Nana,” aka ”Nan,” will be 89 in May.  Her health has been trailing off for a while.  Mentally and physically, she’s just not as sharp as she once was.  About two months ago, she took a bit of a dip.  She had a fall, broke her wrist, and spent 6 weeks in an assisted-living home for rehabillitation.  She wasn’t happy there (not neccessarily for any good reasons–it was a nice home; she’s just closed-off to the idea of living in one).  Plus, decent homes are awfully expensive, and, while she definitely needs someone to watch over her, to make sure that she eats, and to help her get around, she doesn’t really need a 24/7 medical team.  So, I offered to move up here and play-stay-at-home mom for a while.  Whether that means 2 weeks or two decades, I don’t know.  My gut is telling me two years, though.

My last day with the insane 3am-11am shift was earlier this month (Nov. 4?  It feels like much longer ago), then I went back to my normal schedule for a week, then I moved back to NJ.  I moved back by bus with just a suitcase, which is just how I moved down.  I have my apartment through December and probably into January, so I have a while to go back down and get the rest of my stuff. 

I told a few people at work what I was doing.  No one told me I was crazy, but I could tell that a few people thought so.  What surprised me most was that some of the people who were the most supportive were the ones I least expected, and vice-versa.

Not surprisingly, it’s been easier than I expected.  The worst part is that I’m getting lethargic.  I brought a whole bunch of books to read, but I haven’t been able to read as much of them as I’d like (my grandmom just keeps the TV too loud), and I’ve just generally been lazy.  Of course, I miss my apartment (I had a great deal on a great place), I miss not having to think about money, I miss my job, and I miss my girlfriend.  But I do believe that I’ve made the right decision.  I have faith that, once this all ends, I’ll be able to pick up my life right where I left off.  Whether or not this pans out, at least I’ll have had an experience, and I think there is some value in that.

* * *

If you take the Chinatown bus from DC to Philly, you briefly pull off at a TravelCenters of America in Baltimore, just like the one in Binghamton that has the Wendy’s.  We passed it as I was coming back up here to stay.

Now that I’m here, almost every night, my grandmom points out the postcard I sent her from London in August.  Once or twice, she has mentioned that it was probably a once-in-a-lifetime trip.  This time, I assume she’s wrong.

Now that I have a lot of time on my hands, I’ll try to post more often, assuming I can hold off the lethargy.

*The title, ‘Easy,’ has nothing to do with the BNL song of the same name.  (Unless the song’s theme is similiar to that of this post.  Honestly, I haven’t really listened to the lyrics of that song all that closely, yet.  I will, though.).  The title, though, does remind me that I didn’t post the setlist/mini-review of the BNL show at George Mason University here after I went to the show.  I know that’s a little out of character for me.  My biggest observation is that “Just a Toy” rocks hard!

Currently Reading Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus By Robert D. Kaplan see related