The Twilight Report

What was 2004? It was a year of stolen and disputed elections in Georgia and the Ukraine, the rise and fall of Howard Dean and John Kerry, the first private space flight and the end of the "X-Prize," disaster in Darfur, prisoner abuse in Iraq, expansion of the European Union, the death of Ronald Regan and a month of flags at half mast, the return of Greek Olympics and a very smug presidential victory. In less political but tragic terms, the worst natural disaster in my memory has occurred in Asia as Tsunami death tolls top 135,000 according to CNN.com.

For me, the year started out as a bleak one in the coldest New York winter I have ever experienced. My mother came to visit me for her birthday. We stayed in Manhattan and it was bitterly cold.

Lowel and Johanna

I took a lighting class at Dutchess which was a blast. Some of my friends from Black and White II were taking the class and I met some other cool people. It was so much fun working with those people, including the teacher, Lowel Handler.

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In Short, 2004 was A Great Year and I have high hopes that 2005 will be even better.

Mike

My high school and CORE coding buddy Mike came up yesterday and brought his wife Sarah so they could attend my much anticipated Halloween party. It is hard for me to convey just how nice it was to see Mike. Sarah is also from Los Alamos, so I had the rare opportunity to talk with people who grew up on green chili and who know about Mrs. Moss and have heard about Mr. Farley's Butt-Ear. They stayed at my place last night and this morning we wondered around the city of Beacon. I am equally looking forward to seeing Tyler in February now!

Mike, Mike's manager, and Mike's weed

Anyway, the enchiladas came out like clockwork. I've got a fairly established procedure for it now. I threatened to give people costumes if they didn't bring their own, but alas... they were not worried, because most didn't come dressed up. Enchiladas, Posole and Guacamole were a huge success, and everyone was super impressed with Mike's fire breathing prowess. When I get the slides back (and if they come out) I will scan them and put them on my web site, along with the digital general party milling about pictures.

For some reason, iTunes "randomly" chose to play Born Slippy like three times during the course of the party. Granted, they were different versions of the same song, but still. The third time I swore vociferously and got up to advanced to the next song. My consternation made Steve laugh quite vocally, which is always fun, because he is usually so quiet.

I was so glad that Mike was able to meet all my friends. I love it when friends from different aspects of my life come together and get along well. It sort of affirms what I already know: my friends rock!

On Friday, I was doing the laundry and they were playing the Beetles song "Hello, Goodbye." This made me laugh after the previous entry because this song reminds me of another old friend from my past. I won't go into the details, but in elementary school my best friend (at the time) "gUe" and I performed a skit to this song for the Aspen School talent show. It was by far the most creative performance that day, although I can't really take credit for that... the idea had been gUe's mom, who seemed to like the idea of putting us in the talent show.

I thought this was funny, because earlier in the day the song Ruiner had reminded me of another old friend (see previous entry), and I have been thinking about old friends a lot lately. Old friends in this context meaning anyone I was friends with before I moved to New York. I had been thinking also about how I don't keep in touch with anyone from the Los Alamos period in my life to talk to them about these thoughts, but then I remembered that I was going to Philly to see my friend Mike, who goes all the way back to my junior year at high school.

Just last year, he married a nice girl named Sarah who is also from Los Alamos; although I'd never met her until I went down to see Mike this weekend. So I had a bit of Home Town Overload, although it was surprisingly nice. I was pleased with myself because I recognized their wedding photographs as being taken at the White Rock Overlook, which incidentally was also featured in the film Silverado.

Mike was having a summer BBQ/party and I got to meet many of his friends and coworkers. A few of whom I had met the couple of times I have seen Mike since I moved here. He has very nice friends. They are all of the married/have young children age group... which I don't quite relate to yet. I only know one married couple who plan to have children, and that is still some time away. Anyway I was glad to go down there.

Next weekend I go to Maine!