365 Magnum
Jan. 2nd, 2008 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfieldYear in Review: 2007
January
The year begins with a full belly, having engorged myself on an indulgent five-course meal at Acadiana hours earlier on New Years Eve. I attempt to replicate this gastronomical derring-do for my annual Martin Luther King Day Dinner with J., but end up parmesan-crusting my George Foreman grill rather than the fish for which it is actually intended.
February
The sixth annual Super Bowl Extravaganza & Arlington Invitational is held, with the usual special guests and fanfare, even if Jeremy misunderstands when I ask him to bring some babes to the party. The touch football game is played on artificial surface for the first time, though my on-field prowess is breathtakingly real.
The mood is far more solemn at my grandfather's funeral, held just days later, at which I am simultaneously immersed in the morbid pageantry of death and strangely spellbound by it.
March
A full-blown phlegm-based illness prevents me from attending a scheduled cooking class. I am able to receive a refund, but not after I have to submit a detailed ten-minute lecture to the Sur la Table people about how much of a shame it would be if I accidentally showered my classmates' cuisine with my personally incubated bacteria.
Comcast finally outfits my apartment for high-speed Internet access and bundled home phone service, for which I and my next of kin agree to pay them $125.00 every month in perpetuity, subject to random increases and periodic service disruptions (to be blamed on sunspots, federal regulations or divine intervention), under penalty of lashing via coaxial cable. The Comcast billing department will insist that I pay them the precise amount due on time every month, while the installation and service technicians casually suggest that they may get to my home anytime between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., Monday through Tuesday, "as long as it's not raining."
April
The aforementioned phlegm-based illness transitions to a low-level phlegm-based existence. My heretofore modest collection of allergies coalesces into a formal fighting force and stages something less than an attack; it is more of a long-term occupation with the occasional border skirmish. A trip to the allergist reveals that I am in fact allergic to a great many things, including air. Drugs are requested, ordered and now consumed with Swiss precision in order to keep my nasal passages from closing up like a subprime mortgage lender.
I formally join a fantasy baseball league with several former fraternity brothers. Thus begins an all-consuming competitive enterprise that will wreak havoc with my professional and personal life. As far as J. is concerned, I might as well have taken up heroin.
My folks come in to town to enjoy the various sights of Washington D.C., though not necessarily at the same time. Mostly we find places at which to eat meals, and take in whatever various sights there are to see on the way to the next meal.
During a brief visit to New York City, I have lunch with an old friend, stumble past the NFL Draft event and unwittingly export a family of socially active bedbugs in my luggage. The Big Apple really does have it all!
May
At an enjoyable CAKE concert in Baltimore, my friends and I heed the group's exhortations to "sing along" and "clap your hands." At least I think that's what they are saying. Our seats are so far away that they may in fact be telling us that they are on fire and we should notify emergency personnel.
The local softball season begins in earnest. In my first inning of pitching, I give up approximately 1,000 runs, many of them earned. Shortly thereafter I decide to forego a running total of my statistics this year.
J. and I, under the silent but implicit agreement that we are probably heading towards someday "biting the big one," decide to bite a medium-sized one by moving in together. Much of the month is spent touring various apartment buildings and using psychological warfare to subtly lobby for our own preferred choice.
June
Suddenly and without warning, and during a particularly busy time of year, the president of my company "rewards" me with a fancy promotion, thereby ensuring my misery for at least two months. After assuming the mantle of responsibility, I realize that "assuming" such a mantle is no less asinine than assuming that Felix Hernandez is finally going to turn the corner and stop walking so many goddamn batters.
Over a two-week period, J. and I move into our new apartment in my old apartment building, guaranteeing at least another year of consistent Noodles & Company and Baja Fresh patronage. After only a week, I abandon any hope that I will ever get to decide which furniture goes where. (I am at least fourth in line of succession, behind J., her mom and the previously mentioned bedbugs, who -- sensing a reliable meal -- follow me to the new place but get lost looking for the bed.)
July
Per tradition, my close friends and I gather in the nation's capital to America's independence. For twenty minutes, we watch fireworks shoot into the sky and explode, just like they always do. Not too many surprises. Sometimes they explode one at a time, sometimes in groups. Sometimes it is color-coordinated. Occasionally, something mildly atypical happens, like a rocket flying off sideways or not exploding at all, which sort of interests me until I am distracted by the next standard combustion. It's a good twenty minutes, I guess. Then J. and I spend an hour and a half getting home.
Later in the month J. and I spend an extended weekend in Detroit, the Motor City and Motown, which all turn out to be the same place. We take in a Tigers game, the Ann Arbor Art Festival and Downtown Royal Oak, the kind of unassumingly enjoyable suburban experience that makes Rochester look like Syracuse.
August
I attend my first Board of Directors Executive Committee Meeting in my new big-cheesy capacity. As a result of a scintillating debate on demographic challenges in southern China, the meeting runs long and my five minute speech at the end of the session is compressed into twenty seconds, punctuated by attendees lunging for the exits and/or restrooms.
I contribute to Washington D.C.'s late-summer exodus by embarking on my annual hometown weekend, highlighted by not one but two minor-league baseball games. My parents treat me to dinner, home-baked cookies and all the TV I can watch after 8 p.m. as long as I don't wake them up when I change the station.
September
Boys' Weekend in Las Vegas is a prosperous and indulgent way to end the summer, notwithstanding the harrowing exeunt from Sam Boyd Stadium after the UNLV-Wisconsin football game. It would be uncouth for me to compare such an experience to, say, that of Somalian refugees, when we were members of the privileged class just several miles from the conspicuous consumption capital of the world. However, (a) we were in the middle of the desert, with no way to get back to civilization, (b) there were at least 5,000 of us, all trying to fit on to three buses, and (c) only by the barest minimum standards does the Monte Carlo breakfast buffet constitute a healthy, full day's nourishment.
Coming down to the last game of the season, my fantasy baseball team ekes out a narrow first-place victory. The grand $120 prize will be used to offset the various fees for subscriptions, services and resources used to manage the team, as well as the promised flowers, meals and other assorted bribes designed to keep J. from using my lucky bat on my own head.
October
I attend the "Taste of Georgetown" in Washington D.C.'s tony enclave. It tastes a little like bacon.
I also drag a number of friends to see the Weakerthans (with the Last Town Chorus) in concert at the 9:30 club, where they blend into the crowd with their spot-on impressions of mildly disaffected youth.
November
J. and I travel in style (via Virgin America) to San Francisco, where we tour the various districts, hot spots and ghettos of America's chillest city. (Motto: "Yes.") We tour the surprisingly unpretentious wine country of the north, examine the strangely compartmentalized ethnic neighborhoods and take a dizzying ride around and across the Golden Gate Bridge. Just prior to our arrival, an oil tanker runs aground, dumping a sh!tload of crude into the San Francisco Bay, allowing us to witness the region's famous "liberal outrage" as a sightseeing bonus.
My parents return to town for Thanksgiving and for my birthday, and for a tour of the Capitol building (and, for my dad, a trip to Potbelly Sandwich Works). J. and I succeed in serving a hearty Thanksgiving meal without any abrasions, contusions or acute gastronomical problems, and the smoke alarm goes off only once.
I receive an alluring but ultimately fruitless solicitation from a former suitor in a faraway land, with the possibility of sexy results to come. And it's not a dream.
December
The year draws to a close in a fashion similar to its beginning: with a meal of crusted fish cooked to perfection by one of the city's finest artisans. The Christmas Eve dinner also features an abundance of champagne, insouciant gossip about friends and their romantic endeavors and a sadistically energetic little holiday elf.
My Christmas day is spend preparing for and sitting through a flight back to Las Vegas where my family was already enjoying the warm glow of lights, holiday and otherwise. This time my gambling is limited to the sports book and, once again, the Monte Carlo breakfast buffet.
Questions for 2008:
- Will I resolve to write more in this Journal? Will I resolve to write less? Will I resolve to outsource additional writing and customer service to workers on the Indian subcontinent?
- Will I find satisfaction in my job and career? Do I demand satisfaction, or is mere contentment enough?
- Where will my travels take me? Seattle? Scotland? Kansas City? Bankruptcy court? A Turkish prison?
- Is this the year that I finally grow up, buy a home and get engaged ... in a fierce debate about the moral hazard of farming subsidies?
- What are they putting in that Monte Carlo breakfast buffet, anyway?
January
The year begins with a full belly, having engorged myself on an indulgent five-course meal at Acadiana hours earlier on New Years Eve. I attempt to replicate this gastronomical derring-do for my annual Martin Luther King Day Dinner with J., but end up parmesan-crusting my George Foreman grill rather than the fish for which it is actually intended.
February
The sixth annual Super Bowl Extravaganza & Arlington Invitational is held, with the usual special guests and fanfare, even if Jeremy misunderstands when I ask him to bring some babes to the party. The touch football game is played on artificial surface for the first time, though my on-field prowess is breathtakingly real.
The mood is far more solemn at my grandfather's funeral, held just days later, at which I am simultaneously immersed in the morbid pageantry of death and strangely spellbound by it.
March
A full-blown phlegm-based illness prevents me from attending a scheduled cooking class. I am able to receive a refund, but not after I have to submit a detailed ten-minute lecture to the Sur la Table people about how much of a shame it would be if I accidentally showered my classmates' cuisine with my personally incubated bacteria.
Comcast finally outfits my apartment for high-speed Internet access and bundled home phone service, for which I and my next of kin agree to pay them $125.00 every month in perpetuity, subject to random increases and periodic service disruptions (to be blamed on sunspots, federal regulations or divine intervention), under penalty of lashing via coaxial cable. The Comcast billing department will insist that I pay them the precise amount due on time every month, while the installation and service technicians casually suggest that they may get to my home anytime between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., Monday through Tuesday, "as long as it's not raining."
April
The aforementioned phlegm-based illness transitions to a low-level phlegm-based existence. My heretofore modest collection of allergies coalesces into a formal fighting force and stages something less than an attack; it is more of a long-term occupation with the occasional border skirmish. A trip to the allergist reveals that I am in fact allergic to a great many things, including air. Drugs are requested, ordered and now consumed with Swiss precision in order to keep my nasal passages from closing up like a subprime mortgage lender.
I formally join a fantasy baseball league with several former fraternity brothers. Thus begins an all-consuming competitive enterprise that will wreak havoc with my professional and personal life. As far as J. is concerned, I might as well have taken up heroin.
My folks come in to town to enjoy the various sights of Washington D.C., though not necessarily at the same time. Mostly we find places at which to eat meals, and take in whatever various sights there are to see on the way to the next meal.
During a brief visit to New York City, I have lunch with an old friend, stumble past the NFL Draft event and unwittingly export a family of socially active bedbugs in my luggage. The Big Apple really does have it all!
May
At an enjoyable CAKE concert in Baltimore, my friends and I heed the group's exhortations to "sing along" and "clap your hands." At least I think that's what they are saying. Our seats are so far away that they may in fact be telling us that they are on fire and we should notify emergency personnel.
The local softball season begins in earnest. In my first inning of pitching, I give up approximately 1,000 runs, many of them earned. Shortly thereafter I decide to forego a running total of my statistics this year.
J. and I, under the silent but implicit agreement that we are probably heading towards someday "biting the big one," decide to bite a medium-sized one by moving in together. Much of the month is spent touring various apartment buildings and using psychological warfare to subtly lobby for our own preferred choice.
June
Suddenly and without warning, and during a particularly busy time of year, the president of my company "rewards" me with a fancy promotion, thereby ensuring my misery for at least two months. After assuming the mantle of responsibility, I realize that "assuming" such a mantle is no less asinine than assuming that Felix Hernandez is finally going to turn the corner and stop walking so many goddamn batters.
Over a two-week period, J. and I move into our new apartment in my old apartment building, guaranteeing at least another year of consistent Noodles & Company and Baja Fresh patronage. After only a week, I abandon any hope that I will ever get to decide which furniture goes where. (I am at least fourth in line of succession, behind J., her mom and the previously mentioned bedbugs, who -- sensing a reliable meal -- follow me to the new place but get lost looking for the bed.)
July
Per tradition, my close friends and I gather in the nation's capital to America's independence. For twenty minutes, we watch fireworks shoot into the sky and explode, just like they always do. Not too many surprises. Sometimes they explode one at a time, sometimes in groups. Sometimes it is color-coordinated. Occasionally, something mildly atypical happens, like a rocket flying off sideways or not exploding at all, which sort of interests me until I am distracted by the next standard combustion. It's a good twenty minutes, I guess. Then J. and I spend an hour and a half getting home.
Later in the month J. and I spend an extended weekend in Detroit, the Motor City and Motown, which all turn out to be the same place. We take in a Tigers game, the Ann Arbor Art Festival and Downtown Royal Oak, the kind of unassumingly enjoyable suburban experience that makes Rochester look like Syracuse.
August
I attend my first Board of Directors Executive Committee Meeting in my new big-cheesy capacity. As a result of a scintillating debate on demographic challenges in southern China, the meeting runs long and my five minute speech at the end of the session is compressed into twenty seconds, punctuated by attendees lunging for the exits and/or restrooms.
I contribute to Washington D.C.'s late-summer exodus by embarking on my annual hometown weekend, highlighted by not one but two minor-league baseball games. My parents treat me to dinner, home-baked cookies and all the TV I can watch after 8 p.m. as long as I don't wake them up when I change the station.
September
Boys' Weekend in Las Vegas is a prosperous and indulgent way to end the summer, notwithstanding the harrowing exeunt from Sam Boyd Stadium after the UNLV-Wisconsin football game. It would be uncouth for me to compare such an experience to, say, that of Somalian refugees, when we were members of the privileged class just several miles from the conspicuous consumption capital of the world. However, (a) we were in the middle of the desert, with no way to get back to civilization, (b) there were at least 5,000 of us, all trying to fit on to three buses, and (c) only by the barest minimum standards does the Monte Carlo breakfast buffet constitute a healthy, full day's nourishment.
Coming down to the last game of the season, my fantasy baseball team ekes out a narrow first-place victory. The grand $120 prize will be used to offset the various fees for subscriptions, services and resources used to manage the team, as well as the promised flowers, meals and other assorted bribes designed to keep J. from using my lucky bat on my own head.
October
I attend the "Taste of Georgetown" in Washington D.C.'s tony enclave. It tastes a little like bacon.
I also drag a number of friends to see the Weakerthans (with the Last Town Chorus) in concert at the 9:30 club, where they blend into the crowd with their spot-on impressions of mildly disaffected youth.
November
J. and I travel in style (via Virgin America) to San Francisco, where we tour the various districts, hot spots and ghettos of America's chillest city. (Motto: "Yes.") We tour the surprisingly unpretentious wine country of the north, examine the strangely compartmentalized ethnic neighborhoods and take a dizzying ride around and across the Golden Gate Bridge. Just prior to our arrival, an oil tanker runs aground, dumping a sh!tload of crude into the San Francisco Bay, allowing us to witness the region's famous "liberal outrage" as a sightseeing bonus.
My parents return to town for Thanksgiving and for my birthday, and for a tour of the Capitol building (and, for my dad, a trip to Potbelly Sandwich Works). J. and I succeed in serving a hearty Thanksgiving meal without any abrasions, contusions or acute gastronomical problems, and the smoke alarm goes off only once.
I receive an alluring but ultimately fruitless solicitation from a former suitor in a faraway land, with the possibility of sexy results to come. And it's not a dream.
December
The year draws to a close in a fashion similar to its beginning: with a meal of crusted fish cooked to perfection by one of the city's finest artisans. The Christmas Eve dinner also features an abundance of champagne, insouciant gossip about friends and their romantic endeavors and a sadistically energetic little holiday elf.
My Christmas day is spend preparing for and sitting through a flight back to Las Vegas where my family was already enjoying the warm glow of lights, holiday and otherwise. This time my gambling is limited to the sports book and, once again, the Monte Carlo breakfast buffet.
Questions for 2008:
- Will I resolve to write more in this Journal? Will I resolve to write less? Will I resolve to outsource additional writing and customer service to workers on the Indian subcontinent?
- Will I find satisfaction in my job and career? Do I demand satisfaction, or is mere contentment enough?
- Where will my travels take me? Seattle? Scotland? Kansas City? Bankruptcy court? A Turkish prison?
- Is this the year that I finally grow up, buy a home and get engaged ... in a fierce debate about the moral hazard of farming subsidies?
- What are they putting in that Monte Carlo breakfast buffet, anyway?
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Thank You...
Date: 2008-01-05 02:45 am (UTC)