The Year That Was

New Year's Eve is one of my favorite Holidays.  The arbitrary nature of our calendar conveniently places the New Year a mere week beyond the gluttonous duo of Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The turning of the year affords us a delightful opportunity to wipe our hands clean of the multitudes of "sins" in which we heartily indulge during the previous two months.

I am also a huge fan of the hundreds of lists that populate mass media of all forms.  The Best of, the Worst of, the Top Ten... in every genre, available for every palate!  Had I played my cards correctly I would have spent the past week filling this forgotten blog with my personal opinions and my favorite things of '07.  Alas, I make this eleventh hour post, in which I shall demarcate the year that was, for me at least.

Double-oh-seven was a good year for yours truly.  It will be forever remembered as the year that I indoctrinated myself fully to the art of living in New York City. There is more to learn, I am sure, but I am happy with my progress.  In the year 2007, I happily found my first full time job, which is happily tolerable and happily happens to utilize my two degrees in music.  I continued to play in several different orchestras, and secured my first paying gig(!).  I even narrowed my commitments to reflect a quality of playing that I had enjoyed in my previous engagements as a musician.  In 2007, I traveled quite a bit, to Illinois, Western New York, Kansas and New Mexico.  For the first time, I flew in a hot air balloon, ate Korean food, heard jazz at the Blue Note, and visited the Metropolitan Opera House in all its lavish glory.

Tomorrow I shall post my goals for 2008.  To end my final post of this fine year, I shall post a "Best of" list of my own:

Best Movies of 2007:

5. Superbad

4. Into the Wild

3. No Country for Old Men

2. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

1. Juno

Happy New Year!

OMG

What a night.  We had the company Holiday Party, which the library had dubbed "MEAT FEST," at an "urban barbeque" joint on 27th and Park.  As feared, the vegetarian plate was really just a conglomeration of various sides.  Nothing too impressive.  Although I did loved the deviled eggs.

I am stuffed but luckily I'm no longer tipsy.  I cannot say the same for other members of the office, who I will avoid tomorrow if possible - in order to reach our minimum, certain members of our staff were able to enjoy bourbon at $30 a glass.  This definitely makes me wish we could divert some of these funds into a raise for ME.  I need it, more than people need to drink $300 in bourbon alone.

After an interesting ride home, I am enjoying a sample face mask from Lush.  Once again I have stayed up past my bed time, so I will go lie on my bed awake, wishing that Jules was home to snuggle up with me (he is currently in Louisiana attending a funeral, which happens to fall on his birthday, poor guy).

Schmapple

Today is an important day for the record books:  the grand opening of the West 14th Street Apple Store.  Too bad my lack of understanding of the gravity of the situation completely prevented me from partaking in much more than standing 20 feet from the store, on the other side of the slowly moving line of over 1,500 people vying to get in for their first glimpse of New York's largest flagship Apple Store.  Blah, blah, blah.

Well, I love my MacBook, and I love the springiness of the keyboard.  I especially love that I bought an apple-green Speck case to protect this baby, as I hear cautionary tales just about every night.  However, I am not an Apple devotee enough to stand in line for hours, waiting for the thousand people in front of me to clear the store so I can get my first look at it.

So instead of getting to watch J. in action tonight, I did other fun New York things, like brave the throngs at Macy's in search of new shoes for my friend and a hat that does not smoosh my bangs in the morning, because now I care about things like that.

Upon emerging from the subway on my walk home, I received two texts from J. which apparently were sent within minutes of one another:

"I met Mary J. Blige" 

"I just touched Whoopi Goldberg"

Great.  So while I was bounced around like a ping pong ball in the fifth dimension that is Macy's and performed a walk-about in search of a diner, J. was in the midst of a brush with fame.  In the form of Guinan from TNG!  I am so lame.

UPDATE: Apparently, even though the official count of the traffic at W. 14th was 10,000, I would have been able to see the store about 2 hours after the opening.  I still wouldn't have gotten a t-shirt though, so whatev.