On the Right Foot

2009 is off to a good start. For one thing, I just realized 2009 is very easy to type because the 9 is right next to the zeros. I like that. As always when a new year starts, though, I can't believe how quickly time has gone by. It seems like just the other day that my grandma was giving us Y2K gifts for Christmas and I was drinking sparkling grape juice at my friend Sara's party with all of my high school friends. And now almost an entire decade has gone by.

Anyway, last night was a lot of fun. I ended up wearing my purple dress after all and with tights and my winter coat I was actually perfectly comfortable. It helps that we were either inside the club or on the subway for most of the night, and we drove to the subway station rather than walking so I was really only outside for a grand total of ten minutes. The concert was so much fun. Robert Randolph is funk and soul, so it's great music to dance to. Since the only time I can ever get my boyfriend to dance with me is at concerts, I took full advantage and we danced all night long. We were also just tipsy enough that we thought it would be a good idea to make out like horny teenagers all night long, too. Actually, that WAS a good idea. Once you're an adult there's something really fun about just kissing for a while. Plus it's not like every other couple in the club wasn't dancing close and kissing all night, too. New Year's is definitely a holiday made for couples, which I had never really thought much about until this year. At one point I thought, "Hmmmm, maybe I should be appropriate and stop kissing for a second," but then I looked around and every couple around us was kissing, too, so, yay, guilt-free public displays of affection! Happy 2009! The concert was a good way to ring in the new year. At midnight the band led a countdown and a ton of balloons rained down from the ceiling as we grabbed our free shot of champagne and the music started up again and we went back to dancing. It was the perfect mix of low-key and celebratory, and I had a great time. The night even ended well because we hadn't put much thought into how we were going to get home, other than hoping that the trains would run later than they usually do on Wednesday nights. Fortunately, the trains were running later than usual and we somehow lucked into making our way into the station two minutes before the last train of the night pulled up to the platform. All in all, it was a fun way to say goodbye to a very memorable and special year.

I celebrated the first day of 2009 by not leaving the house at all other than to take the dog outside to go to the bathroom. Penn and I woke up, napped for a while, woke up again, decided to nap a little more. I finally took a shower at about 4:00 in the afternoon. Penn and I spent most of the day sitting on the couch watching football with his friends who are visiting and Anna, who came over for a while. We also had bratwursts for dinner, since apparently it is good luck to eat pork and sauerkraut on new year's day (crazy Yankees...I only knew about good luck black eyed peas prior to this year).

Tomorrow I'm on a mission to buy a pair of used skis because on Saturday Penn and I are driving to Sugar Loaf in Maine to go skiing for five days. Skiing! In Maine! I've never been to Maine, and even though it's going to take forever to get there (we're basically going to Canada) I'm really excited to see it since it's supposed to be beautiful. I'm also really, really excited to go skiing since it is my favorite physical activity and the last time I got to do it was almost four years ago (and, actually, the last two times I was on a mountain I was snowboarding, not skiing...I think there's going to be a pretty steep re-learning curve next week). Penn loves skiing. I'm fairly certain he's going to be bored out of his mind skiing with me, actually, since I know I'm going to be much more slow and cautious than he is. But I hope it's going to be really fun. The only downside is the high in Sugar Loaf was 9 yesterday. THE HIGH. So I might die of frostbite, and I might end up with broken bones, but I hope that I get a couple of good runs in first. I'll let you know how it goes.