10

So Christmas and New Year's have come and gone, and that's given me a lot of material to work with. So if you have to go to the bathroom, go now, because this is going to be a long ramble.

Remember the days when you'd wake up around 4:30 am on Christmas Day then scurry down the hall to wake your parents. Then climbing back into bed for another couple hours so you can nurse the wound from the whiskey bottle that your folks chucked at your head for waking them up so early? Those were the days, eh? Now on Christmas I don't even wake up on my own steam. Thankfully, nor do my little sisters. But that didn't stop my Dad from waking us all up at 7:45 because he got tired of waiting. And if you're wondering, the whiskey bottle wound is healing quite nicely.

What's the best way to react to that one gift that you can't believe someone got you. For example, a friend of mine once received a Brita water filter from his grandmother. It's functional, but is it thoughtful? What's odd is that this is often the gift that has the most staying power. I can't even remember what I got for Christmas a few years ago, but the George Foreman grill from my grandfather that we were scratching our heads over has turned into a household fixture.

Apart from Christmas, I'm sure the major reason we all we went home was to see old friends from high school. If this is the first Christmas back, its bound to be a little weird. I've had a couple good friends to swap stories of college with, and that's pretty much all we did, rarely touching on high school. When I met up with some other friends at a party all they had to talk about was "Remember that time in tenth grade?" Because my family moves around so much, I don't have the luxury of looking back any more than 2 years with a friend. With me, reminiscing is more akin to, "Remember the day we met? You know, yesterday?"

Then came New Year's. The one thing I love about New Year's Day is that the only reason that it's a day off is so that people can recover from hangovers. There is simply no other reason. Wouldn't it be great if we had other holidays for that same reason? Get the day after Mardi Gras off. Get the day after finals off. Get the day, hell get the week after St. Patrick's Day off.

What irks me about New Year's are all the corny resolutions and sayings that crop up. Let's dissect them shall we?

1. "It's a clean slate." No, it really isn't. If you were a dick last year, chances are you'll be a dick this year, and people won't forget last year's performance. If this was really true, people would be a tad more forgiving towards O.J.

2. "Out with the old, in with the new." Does anyone really follow through with this? You don't see people dumping girlfriends religiously on New Year's, nor do you see us ridding ourselves of old standbys. "Fuck my job man! I'm quitting! You know what they say...."

3. "I'll lose weight this year." Listen honey, the only weight you're losing is when you barf up that bottle of Parrot Beach you polished off for New Year's.

4. "Should old acquaintance be forgot." What the fuck is this? Look, to the Irish guy who wrote this song, it's a wonder you have any friends with that philosophy. God, you're and Irish poet and musician. Something tells me that if you have any "acquaintances" left after your whiskey-fueled songwriting binges you shouldn't rid yourself of them at year's end.

5. "I can't believe it's (insert name of year)." Are these people amazed by the concept of time? You realize that years do actually progress, right? Are they caught in some sort of time warp where they can't conceive of a new year? This wouldn't be quite so annoying if people didn't say it every fucking year. For 2000 it was acceptable because its such a milestone year. Anything else, just shutup and buy a calendar.