For some sad reason, right as a year is close to screeching to a halt, I can’t help but utter the phrase “good riddens.” It rolls off my tongue almost perfunctorily. Each year has its highs and lows, and this year was no exception. 2007 kicked off in morbid fashion when my mother was almost killed in a head-on collision (thanks to an ignorant driver) in the leafy Chicago suburbs. Luckily, she survived relatively unscathed, at least physically. On the plus side, I moved to Seattle and made headway on some new goals, established new routines and dived into graduate school and volunteer projects. But besides mourning our own unpleasant experiences, it’s easy to be sullen over the year our own nation has endured: We continue to heartbreakingly lose too many American soldiers as tension swells in the Middle East; the housing market continues to look grim; scandal riddled the sports worlds; and the most recent blows – floods battered Seattle and the senseless slayings in Carnation. At times, it’s difficult to not want to disencumber yourself from the fetters of all that plagues our world, and just pretend it’s not happening.
However, there’s a sort of dis-ease that comes with a new year as well and as I’ve grown older have tried to ask myself, how am I going to make this year a step up from the previous? Even slight tweaks in one facet of one’s life can undoubtly make the new year more resplendent. But that’s always easier said than done. If your 2008 starts murky, here’s a web site that might quell your moroseness and prompt you to unleash chuckle or two.
Let’s hope 2008 is great! Cheers!
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Sweet Home Chicago!
Going home to Chicago for the holidays was more than enjoyable. It had been a year since I had seen one of my brothers and sister-in-law and months since I had seen my parents and other siblings. Presents, food, laughter and fun brimmed my empty-nester parents’ home. What was most surprising was how maneuvering the airports during the holidays was quite a cakewalk. Though my redeye flight leaving Seattle was delayed two hours (mechanical aircraft problems really ease my mind, j/k), which meant we took off from the Emerald City at the ungodly time of 2 a.m., leaving me zombie-like for the first few days of my trip while my friends and I braved the malls for holiday gifts and indulged in a Chinese massage.
One thing that was apparent was that returning to the Midwest had me reverting to the fast-paced way of talking, going-about-things that I have somewhat left behind since I’ve lived in Seattle. It’s interesting to hear if others observe differences in a person that hasn’t been back in months. My mom (jokingly, I hope) repeatedly called me detached, which made me ornery and react with a slight cringe. Though I attributed any disconnectedness to the redder than red redeye flight and time change. Five days in Chicagoland was plenty, especially with the bitter cold that is inevitable there, but I treasured mingling and going to church with my numerous friends and family there. One of my hobbies is writing novellas, so I was also tempted to start a yearly book club with the family since books became a hot topic at the dinner table at certain points, or whip out the Scrabble board, but my geeky self resisted!
As a sort of news junkie, I couldn’t help but inquire into how the Chicago burbs have handled the intense media scrutiny that has swirled around Bolingbrook, IL (neighboring town of my hometown) and embattled ex-cop Drew Peterson, who is under the glare in regards to his missing wife. Some of my friends mentioned the onslaught of Fox News trucks around and others just cited an eeriness to the areas amid the hubbub.
And go figure, we didn’t have a white Christmas in Chicago, but I heard Seattle sure did. And how about the last two gorgeous sunny days we’ve had here in Seattle – just an anomaly? Perhaps yes.
Happy New Year to you all!
On Christmas morning after my kids had opened up their gifts, I couldn’t believe it when it started snowing. I was jumping up and down and taking pictures and my kids were like, “oh, whatever, where’s my iPod?”
I visted the despair dot com site and had a blast laughing at the posters.
I use to work for a company that purchased an entire wall full of motivational posters and then had them FRAMED. THEN, they hung the framed posters on the wall in…..the training room. Every time I taught a class in that room, I had to remove the pictures from their hooks that were set in the drywall with a level so that they all lined up perfectly.
So, of course by the 50th time I had been taking them down you know one would fall and break. So we exchanged the poster with one from despair dot com on April Fools Day and the managers never even noticed it. I believe it’s still there.
My faves:
“You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor.”
and
“You aren’t being paid to believe in the power of your dreams.”
I’m glad to hear you had fun in Chicago, Karen. What’s it like now to be coming “home” to Seattle?
You should tell you mom that there is a word for how you behaved: The Seattle FREEZE. 🙂
Hey Jillayne!
Great to hear from you! The Despair.com site is pretty funny, that’s too amusing that you exchanged one from the site with a genuine motivational version. LOL. I keep debating whether to get one of them since they really are hilarious, but think I’ll wait til I get my own place 🙂
We should do a girls night out in the spring again, that was so much fun; it’s been too long.
It’s great to be back home here in Seattle! I like the snow-free (for the most part:) environment and missed the laid-backness!
Off to Fremont and Ballard watering holes to ring in the New Year’s! Have a terrific one!
Galen, I think you’re right. I didn’t even think about that! Wow! I better read up on the symptoms again! 🙂 I am still an outgoing person though, so I hope I have not turned cold!
Oh yeah. You’re cold and mean. Or initially superficially nice, then cold and mean. I can tell already.
No, I swear I’m not. I’m not a good enough actress to be like that 😉
Happy New Year!
Is there a space in this site for stupid questions/FAQ’s?
Like, how does this thing run, and why aren’t there banner ads to support it?
A list of do’s and don’ts?
A way to delete a post that you posted inadvertently 3x?
And how did Kirkland and Issaquah become a Seattle neighborhoods? Was I napping when the annexation occurred?
Can I annex Bellevue, too? I live here, but I’m not positive I embrace the prevailing ethos. Culturally, I am probably some mixture of Duvall and West Seattle.
Roger,
1) you want to ask that question on one of Dustin’s posts, but basically Dustin is the benevolent benefactor of RCG
2) There aren’t too many don’ts at RCG, but when you hit one, you’ll know it.
3) You can email me or Robbie or Dustin or the post’s author. Any one of these can remedy the problem. Dustin is Admin, Robbie and I are Editors and any post author can edit comments on their own posts. Last I heard anyway, that was the case. We don’t like to edit on blogs, so it has to be a real duplcate post and not just that you wish you hadn’t said that…for the most part.
4) To people in NJ, Kirkland is a Seattle Neighborhood as is Bellevue. While this is a Seattle Blog for the most part, it is nationally read, so there is some latitude there. I guess “Seattle AREA Neighborhood Blogs” would have been more accurate. But the sidebar is wide enough already and it’s already the widest heading.
5) You’d probably have more luck annexing West Seattle to Duvall than you ever will trying to annex Bellevue and Seattle.
I popped in for Karen on this one, but if you want a 2nd and better opinion, post those questions on one of Dustin’s blog posts. The writer gets emailed when you comment on their post, but not when you comment on other people’s post. So the most direct access to Dustin is to comment straight onto one of his posts.
Ardell covered it all! 🙂 Always feel free to email me with questions!
Happy New Year Karen!
Happy New Year to everyone…contributors, commenters and readers here at Rain City Guide!
Happy New Year to you too Deborah!!! 🙂
Karen, Ardel, and Jillayne,
Help