I’ve found a girl, lost a great friend, travelled something over 4,500 miles by train and realised that when I was small ‘2007′ was far away enough to be totally unimaginable; by then inventions on Tomorrow’s World would be around. I spent silly days in Korčula pulling faces and failing to guess ‘keys’ in a game of twenty questions, found the best named shop in the world in Olomouc (beats Valencia’s ‘Happy Crack’ for audacity) and was robbed of my book of everything in Rome. In Plitvice I sweated like fuck and wasn’t allowed to swim in this. In Split Kylie attempted to educate the world’s revolutionaries (look hard) and I realised that large, dark objects brushing against my legs in deep water -really- makes me panic. I played Faithless’ Salva Mea enough times to know that it’s 10m37s long and I scored 194 points in a game of Scrabble against my cousin with the word ‘beeswing’. That’ll never happen again : O.
What did you do?
I flew 12,718 miles this year, had 4 job interviews, and took one of those jobs. Re-stained a deck for the second time in a year, replaced a sink and a water heater, cut a hole in my son’s wall, replaced it, and painted over it, removed 3-inch ice from the driveway, got a house ready to sell in a matter of days, watched only 2 or 3 movies in the theatre but really liked the ones we saw, watched a couple of presidential candidates give speeches, defeated Nicholas in the World Travel Challenge, and lost my lofty crown to another friend.
I went to France and London. It was awesome.
Last year I went 10 months without working a 40 hour week; thought I had reached peace with my Scandophile (?) ways, only to realize it was not to be; moved to New Jersey; began planning my move from New Jersey; visited Minneapolis/St. Paul for the first time in over a year to confirm that I am, in fact, insane for liking a place that cold and snowy; somehow convinced people that I am completely capable of managing a 6-month research project on my own; and, finally, was not able to rid my car of the strong stench of mothballs despite the use of many, many air fresheners.
I went to Olomouc in August 2006, how could I have possibly missed such an awesome shop??