I'm not sure why. It might have something to do with the fact that I thought of this awesome, snazzy title.
As it turns out, I don't have as many bullet points to get through as I might have expected. I'm not quite sure how to leverage that in this crowded head of mine. It just... is. I don't think that it means that 2013 was the worst year ever.
Nevertheless, as I told Mom as I was running around saying my goodnights, I won't be particularly sorry to say goodbye to the year with 13 in it. I'm not superstitious. I'm just saying.
So here I sit, and at the moment of writing this it has been 2014 for 30 minutes. A nice, round number. 90 minutes back in New Haven, but I am not in New Haven, and I don't really mind much that I'm not.
It's very quiet. People are either reading or sleeping, and Mahomet has dark and quiet down like Liverpool never did. Schubert has regained his memory of where he sleeps. Curled up and sighing softly in sleep at the foot of my bed, he doesn't seem impatient to get back to the little doggy bed under my parents' bed. He does resent it a bit in the morning. He's earlier to rise than I am, but then again, he sleeps a lot more than I do.
There were some nice things that happened in 2013. I passed my orals and formally earned my master's degree, for one. We celebrated with ice cream cake from Ashley's, and then we went out for Mexican food to celebrate some more.
I think that it is a little harder to benchmark big happenings in graduate school when one has lost the urgency and deadlines of classes. It's a big day when the cupcake truck stops by the food trucks, or when we head over to the med school campus for lunch and coffee for a change of pace.
I'm not sure what 2013 taught me that was unique to 2013.
My parents obviously relocated. It's not so bad, though. The house seems familiar, with all of the same things that were in the old house, and when the kitchen is remodeled, the house as a whole will be quite gorgeous. The kitchen is sort of the heart of the home, after all.
Champaign isn't such a bad place. I don't really mind that "there isn't anything to do". I like quiet, the local library seems adequately large, everything you need is out on Prospect, and (most importantly) Chipotle is local. I never saw myself living in the midwest, but then, I never really plan anything out particularly far in advance.
Laura got engaged. I suppose that's more of a deal for her than it is for me. Contrary motion with DJ. I do have the maid of honor duties, so I suppose I should figure out what to say on the day that my little sister ties the knot.
I had two sets of fish. They both died. Lt. Ellen might actually have been a zombie at the end. This is not really a good thing, but the second time around was less traumatic so I guess there's that.
Syracuse basketball had a good run last year, and this coincided with the first and only time that I successfully did water marbling on my fingernails. Beginner's luck, I guess.
I made it home for Thanksgiving - my plane tickets were a gift from my parents for my birthday, and it was a wonderful birthday gift. Thanksgiving seems to me to be the most depressing holiday to spend alone.
I'm tired and I am not having profound thoughts, so I'll end with this. Science has been generally going poorly lately. I would like to throw myself back into the fire with renewed resolve to make the best of frustrating results and to more successfully shepherd my project.
Sigh. I'm not ready to face a new year. This holiday is never my favorite, but it is a good reminder that sometimes you have to buckle up and get down to business, whether or not you feel like it! And maybe I'll start to be able to see the silver lining in a blank slate of a year stretching out in front of me.
Gotta make it count!
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