and around
I am no good at New Year’s resolutions. In fact, the spirit of starting over and discovering new motivation doesn’t even come to mind, with my image of New Year’s. I watched Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve with some friends last night and was in awe at the sight of mindless 20somethings celebrating little more than the opportunity to “live”. But, I might say, if your life is so dreary that you take any chance to party and forget your troubles, then you are not living to begin with. Anyways. Actually, I was more amazed at Dick Clark’s unbelievable ability to refrain from blinking and soldier through those teleprompts.
So, this year, I hope to maintain resolute on two things: cycling and recycling. Now that I have a bike on campus, the opportunities for grand group exercise are open to me. While on break duty, I have spent several hours of my days biking around Blacksburg, twice to Christiansburg. The sights are beautiful, the experience gratifying. This is something I hope to continue, with an equal fervor, into 2007. As 2006 closed, I was slowly building up a habit of recycling, not simply the glass-plastic-paper kind but the attitude of reusing things, generally. I think that an approach of sustaining usability of an item, even after its expected life, is going to be commonplace in coming years. An old computer gets scrapped for parts or put to eBay; cracked dishwares become vases; clothes go to Goodwill; books I read are sent to friends rather than accumulate dust. Why not start now? or at least more so aim my focus in that direction.
In reality, my favorite part of New Year’s is seeing atomic clocks (computers, cell phones, atomic clocks, etc) all change the year digits. It’s assuring that electronics still love us and feel the need to make the leap with us as well.
January 2nd, 2007 at 1:15 am
Funny you should mention Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Years Eve. A friend of mine is actually in charge of production for that show.
What very few people know is that the entire audience for the “party segments” of the show are audience members that are taped months in advance.
I’ve been to one of the tapings here in Los Angeles. It’s quite an experience. It’s actually rather funny seeing all the volunteers dressed up and pretending it’s New Years Eve in the middle of summer!
January 2nd, 2007 at 5:04 pm
I think Dick Clark needs to retire. The only thing more painful than Dick drudging through his script was Ryan Seacrest’s presence at all.
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Armen - I’m sure it was quite a [mortifying] experience.
Jeremiah - My group all guffawed when Seacrest was about to kiss Aguilera on the lips and then she turned him her cheek. Seacrest’s immediate response, post-kiss, with a glimmer of New Year’s pizazz was, “I just kissed Christina!”
Of course, she gave this embarassed look of, “you didn’t actually just say that…”