Happy New Year!!

I guess I should post an obligatory new year's post since a lot of people seem to be doing that.

New Year's Eve this year was kind of bittersweet for me. The bitter part is that I couldn't spend it at home with my mom and sister because I needed to leave myself plenty of time to cram for the candidacy exam this coming week, and I knew I wouldn't get to study as much if I were at home. Plus, it was Bree's birthday yesterday, and I really wanted to be there for it. But, alas, I couldn't. But I think she was okay with that. Of course, I will definitely need to be there for her birthday next year because she turns 21. That's a biggie that I'd rather not miss. Plus, I don't think Mom and Bree missed mine. Or at the very least, they made it special even if they didn't make it to Waukesha to see me. How sad is it that I can't even remember what went on on my 21st? And no, it's not because I was too drunk to remember anything. My memory is just shoddy in some areas. However, it does retain random trivia well, which isn't incredibly useful, but still is nice when doing crossword puzzles or playing Trivial Pursuit.

Anyway, the sweet part of last night is that I made last minute plans with Josh to go to Chum's and have a couple drinks and ring in the new year. That was incredibly fun. I was glad I could make it, because it seems like I've unintentionally blown him off the past few times he's invited me out, mainly because things came up. Yesterday, though, I didn't really want to spend all of New Year's Eve studying, especially into the night, because I'm not that big of a dork. I probably would have ended up drinking here in my apartment and watching New Year's Rockin' Eve. Going out was much more fun, though. Josh had his friend Rachel there with him, and she's just a blast. I had so much fun just chatting with them and drinking a couple drinks. I also saw Chad and Kevin there, which was nice because I haven't seen them in a while. I should really make it a point to chat with them more often. A little before midnight, the two bartenders were passing out party favors, like noisemakers, hats, streamers, etc. We also got free champagne to toast the new year. All in all, it was a lot of fun.

Of course, as midnight drew closer, New Year's Rockin' Eve was turned on in the bar, just so we could see the ball drop. I must say that Dick Clark is looking really good yet, considering he had a stroke. He is looking a bit older now, but really, it's about time. People can't remain ageless forever, well, at least not with out a lot of cosmetic surgery, and those people just freak me out. Anyway, getting back on track, Josh, Rachel, and I were talking about Hilary Duff and how skinny and sickly-looking she is. It seems like all the teeny-bopper stars have all become anorexic lately. It's just not attractive. Of course, I'm not an authority on this stuff, but I find women to be more attractive when they have some sort of figure to them. I don't mean they should be obese, but they should at least be able to fill out a dress well. On the opposite end of the scale, we had Mariah Carey on Rockin' Eve as well. She definitely can fill out a dress. However, I think she should have perhaps had more of a dress on. It's winter, for Pete's sake! She was dressed like she was about to head to the beach. And it really looked like her dress could hardly contain her breasts. Seriously, I kept half-expecting the bra-thing under her dress to just fly open in the middle and have an even bigger Janet Jackson moment.

So, that was my New Year's Eve. Sometimes the best times are had when things are rather spontaneous.

Today when I woke up, I was surprised to see we were under a winter storm watch. Now, I'm not a forecaster, but all the forecasts I'd been seeing recently didn't lead me to belief that we were going to get anything significantly wintery in the near future. However, here we are now under a winter weather advisory because we could get significant icing. I'm not sure if I really believe that. All I have to say is where is Karen when we need her? She did quite a good job on the last major weather event that we had, all because of her awesome forecasting skills. (As an aside, whenever I start to mention anyone having some skills, I keep wanting to add "and nunchukus skills...." It's just stuck there in my mind from Napoleon Dynamite. That and "Tina you fat lard, come get your dinner!") Anyway, after going off on yet another tangent, my point to this is we'll see if I have power in the morning. If I don't it'll be really fun trying to study all day tomorrow with no power. I'll have to sit next to a window to get the natural light.

On another note, the Packers won today. I'd be more excited, but it's basically a meaningless win. Although I am happy that they beat the Seahawks. I'm still a little bitter at Mike Holmgren leaving the Packers because he wanted to be both head coach and general manager when Ron Wolfe retired, and when he didn't get that, he took off. The double duty didn't work very well for him in Seattle either, since the general manager-ship (is that what you're supposed to say?) was taken away from him. But, at least the Packers started off the New Year and ended their season on a positive note. Now there are two main questions. Is Brett going to leave? That one I'm not too sure about. Of course, it's his decision, but I think he may still have a year left in him. Hell, he probably has several years left in him. The other question is if Mike Sherman is going to be fired. I think that may be a bit pre-emptive of people to discount him. Yes, the Pack has had a bit of a downslide since he took over as head coach from Ray Rhodes (who I think is the major contributor to the downslide of the Pack). However, many of the star players from the Super Bowl Packer team either went to other teams or retired due to injuries. And considering that we had winning seasons for the past several years while rebuilding the team, Sherman's doing a pretty good job. This year is the first major stumbling block, but it's not all Sherman's fault. If our players could just stop getting injured, we'd have a good team. Just looking at all the losses, most of them were only lost by a few points. So, we have a good team, but we just can't pull through in the end. But, we'll see. I'm sure some fans are clamoring for Sherman to be fired, but I don't necessarily think that that will make that big a difference.

I thought I had more random thoughts from my trip home to append to this post, but I can't seem to remember them. Oh, well. It's not a big loss. I'm not even sure how many people care about my scatter-brained thoughts, anyway. I just write them because it's something I do on the AMC message boards. This semester I couldn't watch AMC every day because of school and not having time at night to watch each episode, so I catch up on them on Friday and Saturday. Then I make a long post about random things I've thought during my AMC marathon. Some people on that board really enjoy them. I always get comments back from my thoughts from one person in particular, and we seem to agree in general about the show. And I must say that this person is one of the most articulate 14-year-olds I know. (Now, don't get the wrong idea here. We just chat because I find her thoughts to be very, very insightful. Most people on the board are as impressed with her as I am.) I'm sort of considering creating another blog just to post my random thoughts about AMC on there so I can leave the message board space freer. But, we'll see. I'm so far behind in my soap-watching at the moment, though. Part of my relaxation after the candidacy exam will be catching up on the shows. At least that's the plan.

The candidacy exam is on Thursday and Friday of this week. Yikes! It's coming up so quickly. Plus, we have a snow day set to be Saturday, which I'm hoping we won't have to use. The way it is, I don't have much time to recover before classes start. Luckily, I'm not taking any classes, so the first week for me will be realtively stress-free, but I still have to work on planning out my first lesson for the lab I'm teaching. My point in all of this is that if we have to take part of the exam on Saturday, I really wouldn't have much time to recover. The way it is, I'm planning on recovering Friday after the exam, all weekend long, and then taking Monday off, too. But we'll see what happens. It depends on what Mother Nature decides to throw at central PA. She's such a fickle one.

OK, I guess that's it for now. Happy 2006 everyone!!