It could be that my life is just supremely boring right now. Or I am busy. Or lazy. Or some combination of all of those.

But still, a belated birthday to Baba. I think we all had a pretty good weekend celebrating.

I guess the best place to start would be the start of the year. History! Barack Obama elected President. Yay! My guy had one for the first time since I could vote. And not only was it my guy, but it was the guy that I had supported from the very start. So yay! We won!

Wait. What? You mean in a lot of ways he has turned out to not be what you wanted at all? Well that’s probably my own fault for placing so much hope in him, but he did tell us to do that. Oh well. At least my guy still “won”.

But politics are boring. So lets talk about all of the other glorious things that 2009 had for us. In April, Kelly’s horrible foster dog Jesse, who humped everything he could find, and ate through every piece of clothing he could get his hands on, finally left. But only after he ate a bunch of raisins, which could have killed him, so Kelly and I had to force him to drink some hydrogen peroxide in order to get him to throw up. Fun!

In one of the more surprising parts of the year, Abby managed to get a boyfriend. A real one. And one that is actually a good guy. And can put up with her. His came is Neo, and as far as I can tell, he has the patience that can only be imparted directly from God.

But that actually isn’t the most surprising relationship part of the year. No, that would have to be Phil and Helen getting married. That in itself is not surprising. We knew that they were going to get married since last year. No, the surprising thing is that I, Nathan, doofus of the family, performed the ceremony. And you know what? I did an awesome job. A much better job than you could have done, dear reader, for two reasons. One, I know Phil and Helen better than you, and two, I am better than you at being funny and witty and yet heartfelt. Their wedding was actually a very good day, and I think my blood sugar is still way too high from all of the amaretto cake that I ate.

Mom and Dad still have their new house that they got at the end of last year, although it is vastly improved. The entire improvement to the house, though, comes in the shape of a new room for Abby. The rest of the house is pretty much exactly the same, but now Abby has a brand new basement room that is the size of Phil and Helen’s apartment, basically. Dad built it with his friend, and now new family relative, John. They literally worked on this room for months, and spent untold fortunes on making it. It is beautiful, but there is an argument to be made that Abby didn’t deserve it.

But the biggest news has to be the reopening of Highway 40. I’ve recently gone into how great it is to have it open, so I won’t rehash, but I will say that now that it has been open for a few weeks, things have definitely smoothed out, and it makes my commute much easier. It also makes it much, much easier to get to Mom and Dad’s, except when I forget that it is open and still go the long way out of habit. But it is open, and there is something to be said for small good things in the face of immeasurable suckage.

Speaking of immeasurable suckage, I was talking to Kelly this year about how terrible this year was. Mostly because of some complete brain issues on my part. But they were pretty unhappy making, and kind of cast a bad light over the whole year. (Now we are into the realm of the traditional end of year letter.) But she made an important point. She asked if everything was okay right now, and yes, right now, at this instant, things are okay. I just ate a pastry, and I’m not unhappy, and I have a 3 day weekend coming up. So yeah, I am happy right now, even after this crappy year. And maybe that is all that you can really expect.

In conclusion, today is an arbitrary delimiter of time, so let’s not get too excited everyone. Drive safe. Don’t shoot guns in the air. Don’t make a big deal out of this. It is just Thursday.

This year, as opposed to previous years, I am writing a New Years letter, as opposed to a Christmas letter. Mostly this is because I was lazy and didn’t get around to writing it yet. But also, everyone writes Christmas letters. I’m going to be a little different. It should be up in the next few days. I will do my very best to have it up before the new year.

I’m also getting very excited about my trip to Europe. I leave in less than two months, and it is going to be quite an adventure. Actually, when I say excited, what I really mean is scared out of my mind. And excited. But SCARED. I have never been someplace where they didn’t speak English (unless you count Puerto Rico, which I guess I should, but don’t) and it is going to be quite the experience. But I should come back with at least a few stories.

So I hope everyone has a festive week, and keep checking for that New Years Letter.

- Two weeks after I get back from that I’m going to California again. I don’t really know what I’m going to do when I’m out there. But I do get to ride on a turboprop airliner, so that’ll be fun.

- In February I’m going to Belgium. That will get a whole post at some point. But…

- I fell TWICE at skating this weekend, and I hurt my hand pretty bad. It feels much better, but my left hand still hurts pretty bad, and it is kinda hard to type.

- I had to buy new tires today. Buy new tires is not a fun thing. It isn’t like buying $350 worth of chocolate.

Once I get better, we’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming.

Let’s see…

Friday night Kelly and I went shopping for Mother’s day and for her friend’s wedding, which is on Saturday, which if you can count you will realize is also MY BIRTHDAY. WTF?! We also got dinner at this place called Pat’s which is down the street from my house. I got fried chicken which was good, but also went ahead and fried my lip and shot HOT CHICKEN LIQUID up my nose. It was really unpleasant, and now it looks like I have a cold sore and I want to go up to people and explain “No, that’s a chicken wound.”

On Saturday Dad, Kelly, and I replaced the brake pads on my car and Kelly’s car. It was trivially easy, which was a shock, because for some reason in my head I had horrible memories of the last time I had done this. But those memories must be wrong, because all together it took us maybe 45 minutes to do both cars. And that included the time it took to find the tools.

Sunday I cooked a Mother’s Day meal for some mom’s that did not include my own Mom because she was in New York with Abby. But Baba and Kelly’s mom came over, and I made fried chicken and meatloaf and there was cake and pie made by other people, and it was good.

Yesterday night I spent a really unacceptable amount of time sweeping little prickle balls into piles in my front yard. I have this obnoxious tree in my front yard that enjoys dropping them, and I guess since I own the house or something, it is my responsibility to do something about them. And so I did. But it was really, really not a fun thing to do.

Tonight I have to go to the grocery store, and maybe take a stab at taking those God forsaken prickle balls and putting them in a bag or something. But let’s be honest. That isn’t going to happen. It just isn’t.

Then tomorrow, Kelly and I are going to see some show at the Fox. I always forget the name of it. Something about a singular sensation. I don’t know. There will be Nepalese/Indian/Korean food (wtf Korean?) beforehand, and Kelly is treating, so I’ll go.

And then Saturday. The big event. My birthday. Being overshadowed by a wedding.

So yeah. That’s why you haven’t gotten the attention that you deserve. I’m sorry.

Now, this development in itself is pretty sad. And it is really depressing, because when you think it is supposed to be a certain day, and you feel like it is that certain day, well then when you find out that it isn’t, that’s like “WHAM!”, right into a brick wall.

But that’s not really the sad part. No, the sad part here would be that what I’m really sad about is that this means I have to wait 24 more hours to watch America’s Next Top Model! How embarrassing is that?! How sad is it that I actually care if this is the week when Allison gets sent home?

I feel like I should have kept these thoughts inside my head.

- The fact that my 10 pound dog gets all irate and acts like she can actually intimidate the 5 ton garbage truck.

2) The video for “I’m On A Boat”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfISlGLNU

c: Thinking about the gokarting that Phil and I did while I was in California, and the fact that I was faster than him. Admittedly, I’m crazier than he is, and more willing to risk life and limb for half a second.

iv = Not having cable.

iv part a :: As a corollary to part iv, I’m loving my xbox – orb – media center connection. I can watch TV and movies and downloaded podcasts and stuff on my TV in my living room streamed from my computer.

– I rearranged my office and that has allowed me to have a fan on my desk.

6. Airplanes.

h) Hulu. I like to think of Hulu as the boredom slayer. Sometimes I’ll just put on something from Hulu in the background just to have some white noise going on.

So yeah. I guess those are the main things. I guess that is pretty good, actually. Seven randoms things that are doing a pretty adequate job of making me smile lately.

Also, I’m working on another one of those ridiculous facebook memes. This one is “15 albums that changed me.” I’ve come up with 9 so far. I just don’t really deal in “albums” much. But I’ll finish it eventually.

Still, I’ll try.