happy new year

or something like it.

dude, so since i mostly just have the family around while i'm in town, and occasional get togethers with friends, there wasn't something large and profound to do tonight... dad suggested we should go out to eat and see a movie, only he insisted the movie should be "cold mountain" and got mad and said we were ruining a good suggestion when we told him maybe we should have family discussion about which movie... so whatever, we saw it.

dad thoroughly enjoyed it... brother's comment "it was good, but not one i woulda gone to see on my own"... for mom, it was the first R rated movie she's seen in her life and she said "it was really really weird to be sitting by my children while some rather pornographic stuff was going on on the screen"... for me, i was glad i was cold and had my coat to hide under when mass shooting/killing scenes were going on, which were frequent enough to make me somewhat unhappy... the overall message of the movie was really good, the plot was really good... i'm just not good with graphic details.

so happy 2004... 2003's been a long year.
a year ago right now i was still trying to adjust to american time zones, having just gotten back from a semester in budapest the week before... memphis jenny and i rented a few movies "labyrinth" in particular comes to mind, since we joked "what's better than ringing in the new year with david bowie?" =P... however, i kept falling asleep... we stopped the movie for the official countdown to the new year and instead ended up watching a recorded countdown from somewhere on the west coast from the previous year... laughed our heads off about it, and i went back to sleep. =P

in the meantime, survived undergrad, survived re-aclimating to the states enough to deal... graduated, niagara falls road trip, trip to cancun... worked hard for a summer and moved out of the family's house for good... started over again in NJ... lost nicole, lost stephen, had lots of friends lose lots of people they love, had the most stressful semester of my life and just about went spastic, but here it is break... going back in another 2 weeks, fresh start to attack it all over again.

it's amazing how incredibly much can be lost and gained in a mere 12 months. how much people can change. last spring i would have said that my time in budapest changed me the most of any time period in my life to that point.... now, pretty sure 2003 as a whole has done the same all over again. i don't know if i can even really put it into good words, but it really really has... in some ways i've gotten more tense and picky, in others i've had to learn to roll better with major punches just in order to cope... and the list goes on and on.

hopes/resolutions for 2004? i used to be really big on new years resolutions, and a couple times kept them the whole year through. at this point, however, i think i've come to the conclusion that very very little in life is certain. the most i can ask of myself is to sincerely deal with whatever comes my way to the best of my ability. maybe i'll be a little less loud, maybe i'll worry a little less, maybe i'll learn to like myself a little better more of the time. but all i can ask of myself is to try my hardest and put in my best to whatever i take on.

yeah, i'm vague. so be it. =)

happy new year... i'm off to finish a good book until i fall asleep or until it's done... some things never change.