1 January 2003 ---JOURNAL ENTRY SEVEN---
Happy New Year, fellow human beings! I'm sweat-crusted, having just come back from a run and I must tell you that life is good! Sure, my new year's eve wasn't that good, I had to deal with a bunch of fools and non-tipping SOB's but it could have been worse, right? I guess if you put me under the hot lamp, I would say that I had a good time, but it went by too fast. All of a sudden I'm scrambling like mad trying to get all the little plastic champagne flutes filled for these people that paid upwards of 50 bucks per person to sit in the "VIP" section.
P.S. That's a picture of me above from last night at work. FYI, I've also used that shirt for a gay cowboy costume, it's quite versatile as you can see! I ended up walking with a hundred bucks and more should be coming my way so that's nice. Speaking of money, I've surpassed the $5,000 mark in my Germany account, a feat I'm quite proud of. Once I sell my car, I should have at least more $7500 in there. Theoretically, that's enough money to live for a year without work, though I'd prefer not to go the next year without work. It's an irony of course, but ideally, that money I come to Germany with can become a savings account by the summer, allowing me to do, for example to have a two-week holiday in Scandinavia, or perhaps even Turkey.
I got home around 4:30am and slept good enough. A bagel, lox and cream cheese got my day started and I must admit that this is the nicest weather we've had for a few weeks and southern California is known for some of the best weather in the world so you can imagine how nice it is right now. It's almost 3pm now, I hope to clean my room (sounds so juvenile, right?), do some writing and finish updating my webpage, something that I have learned takes a lot of time and effort. It's somewhat obvious that I only have a basic webpage, the layout is the exact same for each page, just the colors, text and some of the pictures are different. For that I'm sorry and I hope to make some adjustments to it this year. So, without further ado, here are my New Year's Resolutions...
*Learn to speak German proficiently
*Write a new novel that is tentatively entitled "Schwarzfahren"
*Find a way to sustain myself financially in Germany
*Make my webpage much better, eventually getting my three novels and all completed short stories on there
*Learn a new trade while in Germany, whether it be teaching English or shoe repair. I always want to learn something new and concrete from each major experience in my life
*Minimize, simplify, culture, develop, if ya know what I mean
Well, that's a good start, we don't want to be tooooo ambitious on New Year's Day, right? You'll notice I didn't put "eat right" or "workout" or any of that stuff because I am about to make a major foundational change in my life and I don't want to put too much pressure to make personal adjustments while trying to adjust to a new environment as well. It's just not fair, and I'm a firm believer in fair. So, Happy New Year, here's a new story for you, for some reason I think it's a'propo because it's titled "Damn". Damn.
Today's lesson in German is below:
Kann ich noch ein bier haben bitte? = Kahn iH nahH ine bee-ya hab-n bitta? = Can I have another beer please?
