Surgery and The Aftermath

To make sure I wasn't overwhelming you all with a massive post, I split my surgery story into two manageable posts.  Here is a continuation of my earlier post, Surgery: The Buildup.

Thursday
The big day had arrived.  I woke up, got ready for school, and had some tea for breakfast (remember, I wasn't allowed to eat anything).  The worst part about the day was I would constantly get hungry; my stomach seemed to never stop rumbling.  Drinking tea and water helped a bit, but after ten I just had to try my best to avoid thinking about food.  Overall, I was really happy I went to school because I completed two crucial tests and turned in some homework that was important to hand in.  It felt good to release a bunch of stress and being busy kept me preoccupied from thinking about the surgery.  Every once in a while, I would start freaking out about the IV and the plate, the stitches and the anesthesia.

On the outside, I looked like this...

GIF courtesy of Mashable

But really I felt like this.

GIF courtesy of Mashable

Surgery: The Buildup

In case you didn't read my previous post, I broke my collarbone two weeks ago.  Last week's post was an account of how it happened (the details and such).  This post is about the buildup to my clavicle surgery and how crazy the past few days have been for me.

Monday
Over the weekend it was decided that I would meet with an orthopedic doctor to discuss the pros and cons of natural healing and the pros and cons of surgery.  We set an appointment for mid-morning on Monday.  I left in the middle of second period and got back just before fourth period.  During the visit we learned many things, the most unnerving was that the decision was all mine.  It wasn't black or white whether I should get surgery or let it heal on its own.  That left me in an unending loop of silently arguing with myself, weighing the downsides to each course of action.

On the one hand letting my collarbone heal on its own would mean no cutting into my body, no risk of infection, and no scar.  However, my shoulder would be shorter because the bones were overlapping and displaced 1.8 centimeters.  I would have a large, circular bump where they would heal together.  Lastly, there was a five to ten percent chance that my collarbone wouldn't heal at all due to both the overlapping and displacement factors.  Basically, the bones were not in good alignment.

On the other hand, surgery would almost guarantee the bones would heal as there was a less than one percent chance of not healing.  It would set the bones creating proper alignment so my shoulder would be straight, without a big lump.  However, I would have a scar the length of my clavicle and permanent numbness (about quarter-sized) below the incision because the doctor would need to cut through the clavicle nerve.  A titanium plate would be put on top of the break, and six screws would be used to keep it in place (three on each side).  Although it would be out-patient surgery (meaning 1 hour surgery, 4 hours total time, and then I would go home), I would still miss at least a day of school, something I knew would be difficult to make up.

Which would you choose?  A scar or a bump?

Tengo una Clavícula Rota

I have a broken clavicle (aka collarbone).

Of course, the big question is: How did it happen?

Well, I broke it during a soccer game, my second one that day, in fact.  Here is a lengthly, detailed description from my point of view.  At least, this is what I think went down.  I'm not sure I remember it quite right.  You'd have to ask a witness.

Here I was, dribbling the ball.  I was going down the right side of the field, between the center circle and the sideline.  There was a girl from the other team coming at me.  Just before she got to me, I kicked the ball away and put in a little burst of speed, attempting to run around her.  However, she came in and collided with my right knee and thigh which caused me to tumble forward.  At this point, I may or may not have been suspended in air.  I think I was.  My momentum carried me forward and gravity pulled me toward the ground.  Now, I have been in this situation before with almost the same exact tackle.  That time, I simply rolled out of it.  I was tripped, went off the ground, tucked in my head and shoulder, hit the ground, rolled a bit, then popped up like nothing happened.  Literally, I didn't feel a thing, not even a bruise.  Keep in mind all of this happened in seconds so it was more of natural instincts kicking in that left me pleasantly surprised afterward when nothing hurt.

This time was different.

Some Art to Shake Things Up

Great news!  I remembered to take (almost) step-by-step pictures of one of my art projects.  What I mean by almost is I may have forgotten to photograph a couple steps.  Even though I have been taking the half-year jewelry/metals art class since January, I keep forgetting to take pictures.  This time, I made sure to do it.  I have also been eating to post about something other than soccer.  First, there is the high probability you readers are bored of it and second, I don’t really feel like describing how we tied, again, despite the face we were up 2-0 (so it really felt like a loss).

For this art project, we made pendents which will go on a necklace.  These pendents consisted of two pieces of metal that were soldered together (solder is pronounced with a silent “l,” like “sodder”).   Soldering is a technique where two pieces of metal are connected through a lot of heat and tiny bits of metal that act as glue (between the two pieces) when melted.  My last project involved putting two layers of metal by cold-connection which is accomplished by using rivets.  Riviting is a whole other process, but the point is each project incorporates a new method of metal making, each one harder than the last.

Another requirement of the pendents was the piece had to have negative space, or in special cases, just a really complicated top piece design.  I decided to have negative space with a relatively simple top piece.  If you don’t understand what is being described here, don’t worry, it will make more sense when you see the pictures.

The first step was designing the piece and drawing it out on paper.

I decided to go with a moon (representing water) and fire.  These two things symbolize opposites and balance (at least, to me).  They do come from the show, "Avatar: The Last Airbender," if they seemed familiar.  My plan was to have the bottom piece be nickel silver and the top piece (the fire) be brass which looks like gold.  My negative space would come from sawing a crescent moon out of the nickel silver.  Of course, we had to brainstorm other designs as well.  One of my other options was a leaf where the veins would be a sheet of metal on top another sheet of metal.

Next, put in a metal order and acquire your metal.

Nickel silver and brass squares of metal.

On a plain piece of paper, I drew out my design, cut it out, and glued it onto my metal.  I used rubber cement so I could just peel it off when I was done sawing.

This is just a simple outline of my bottom piece.

In this class, we use a thin handsaw to cut our metal.

 Then, cut out either top or bottom piece.  In my case it was the bottom piece.

Bottom piece.

Follow with sawing out the other piece.

Top piece.

Put them on top of each other to make sure everything fits right.

As you can see, I needed to do some filing in order to shorten the ends of the fire.
I also did filing to touch up all the other edges.

Here is another picture of my pieces.

After filing and sanding the pieces (sanding helps the solder a bit), I washed my pieces extremely well with dish soap.  Washing removes any oils from the metal; it is very important to have a clean piece when soldering.  Sorry, I don't have a picture of this.

Now on to the hard part: soldering.  Since this is a pretty complicated process that would take to long to explain in detail, here is a picture of when I am finished soldering my pieces together.

As I mentioned earlier, soldering involves quite a bit of heat.  Little torches are used and when you heat up metal to this degree, it does't exactly look pretty.  The green stuff you see is called flux, which is a alien-green watery liquid that you paint onto where you want the flux to flow.  Soldering also causes fire-scale on a piece.  However, all of this goes away after putting your piece in the pickle for a few minutes.  The pickle is a chemical that gets rid of heat coloring on metal.

Upon taking it out of the pickle, my piece looked like this.

Much better, right?

You might have noticed that these are not the same colors I started out with, and I still needed to do some cleaning up around the fire.  This is where sanding comes in, once more, because it removes the pickle, like scratching off a coat of paint.  Afterwards, I buffed it to make it look much more shiny and painted Liver of Sulfur (a chemical that colors the metal) on the fire to add contrast.  This took me a couple of tries because I couldn't get it "just right."  Oh, and I drilled a hole at the top to the necklace string.

Unfortunately, I got so excited that I forgot to take pictures of the previous actions, so here is what my piece looked like at the end of class on Friday.

I kind of like it, but I kind of don't, you know what I mean? ;)

I may or may not change it next class because I have yet to decide if I like how the fire looks.  I kind of wanted it lighter, without bits of blue and purple, more of a dark golden color, but who knows?  Maybe I'll change my mind after thinking about it over the next few days.

Finally!

This week I had soccer everyday except today (Friday).  Monday was practice, Tuesday was a game, Wednesday was a game and Thursday was practice.

And guess what happened on Wednesday?

We won.

Whoops, I meant to say:

WE WON!  THAT’S RIGHT, WE.  FREAKING. WON!

This was us.
GIF courtesy of Mashable

So...You Should Check Out These Blogs! (Plus a Soccer Update)

I wanted to introduce you all to some new blogs, but I wanted to be creative about it.  Then I got this brilliant idea to incorporate a wonderful website called Wordle that creates what the website has dubbed  “word clouds” using any words one types into the "create" section.  Feel free to try it, as it is free and pretty cool.  To use Wordle in my blog post about other blogs, I made a "word cloud" based on each blog's "tags" or "labels."  This adds a pop of color and some visual interest to an otherwise relatively monotone post.

Enjoy!

Audrey's Blog, Anything You Can Imagine is Real

A Poem to Baffle Your Brain

Nothing quite blog-worthy happened this week.  Although, school has provided me with boatloads of homework which, in turn, has resulted in little sleep these past seven days and lots of stress.  Here I thought fourth quarter was going to be a tad easier.  Well, It looks like I was wrong.  But I’m not here to complain or rant about my problems because life could be worse and I should appreciate what I have.  Besides, I highly doubt you readers of this post would enjoy it.

That being said, I must not suffer alone!  Therefore, I hereby present to you a poem!

What?

Are you not scared?

Does a piece of poetry not frighten you?

What Is Going On With The Weather?

Ahh, mud season.  That time of year when it is too warm to go skiing and too wet to play outside.  For the most part that is.  Right when the grass starts to dry off and the sun provides substantial heat for outdoor activities, the weather turns sour by dumping an inch or two of slushy snow on the ground.  The only thing I think this is good for is increasing the county's water supply.

I realize it's not quite winter, and not quite spring, but really?  I mean this pictures were taken in basically the same spot not twenty-four hours apart.

My Recent Reading List

Lately, I have finally been able to get some fun reading in.  Since winter break, I have finished not one, not two, but THREE books, none of which were required by school.  Oh, and did I mention that the combined number of pages happened to be somewhere around 1,200?!  I take this to be a huge accomplishment because "fun" reading can only really take place after I read my Honors English novel, my AP Human Geography textbook, and occasionally my Honors Bio textbook.  The point is, my fun reading has gone way down this year, which is really unfortunate for me.  Well, here are the three AWESOME books.  I don't know if the sci-fi/fantasy genre is your type, but I would at least take more than a glimpse at them, because you would be really missing out on some great adventures.

Las Vegas, We Meet Again...

As promised, this post discloses the results of the Las Vegas soccer tournament my team went to last weekend.  Well, really it was more of a showcase because we only played three games (and there were no semi-finals and final).  There were also some college coaches too.  Come to think of it, I remember seeing a Westminster College car in the parking lot and my dad thought he saw a Westminster person at one of our games. . . .

Sorry, I was getting a little distracted there. ;)

Joe

Joe was an average Joe who always took time to enjoy a nice, steaming cup of Joe.  He couldn’t bear the thought of (in his opinion) letting one of life’s simple pleasures go to waste.  One of Joe’s favorite places was a quaint coffee shop located a few blocks away from his job.  Joe was also a realist who strongly rebuked theoretical visionaries and avoided creating rapport with quixotic groups whose ideas bore striking differences to his own.  As one can see, Joe truly was an ordinary guy.

Or was he?

There was one strange anomaly that refuted Joe’s normality. For a few weeks every summer, Joe went to live in his bare, unadorned cabin in a sparsely inhabited part of Canada.  It was even rumored that he spent much of his time weaving baskets, whittling wood and whispering to the local bears . . . .

© 2014 Jessica

Pancakes!

This past week was the week of Mardi Gras or "Fat Tuesday."  It was followed by Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the catholic season of lent.  My church hosted a pancake supper to symbolize the big feast before a long period of fasting. The youth group was put in charge of taking orders and actually cooking.  There was about five to seven of us flipping flapjacks, serving guests and we even had a person calling out BINGO.  At the beginning, there were a few minor problems like having the two skillets short-circut the power outlet so we had to move them to a different area.  After a hectic twenty minutes, we finally got the hang of things.  Plus, a couple more kids showed up to help out.  One of them was my friend, Molly (feel free to check her blog out).  Although the turnout of people wasn't quite as good as last year, but it was still fun.

A Silver in St. George / "Dam" Las Vegas

Well, I haven’t posted about soccer in a while, but the only thing I’ve been doing for the past months is practice, which isn’t the most enthralling thing.  So instead of talking about my soccer, I will recall on this post my brother’s soccer tournament in St. George.  We left on Friday, drove for a good few hours, and arrived in the sunny, red rock environment of St. George.

As a result of not doing so well during their fall soccer season, my brother’s team was looking for a confidence booster in winning the tournament.  The first game, they won 3-2.  The second game, they won 1-0.  The third game, they won 5-2.  Now, I don’t what it looks like to you reading it, but those wins felt A LOT better than the multiple season losses, even from a spectators point of view.  After winning all three games they moved on to semi-finals, which was a success too.  The finals was pretty intense; going into overtime and penalty kicks.  Unfortunately, they lost during the penalty kicks.  Sound familiar?  Yep, this situation took place before in the girl’s high school state semi-finals soccer game.

Whoo, yeah! Second place!

Science Fair Surprise

Last Wednesday, a science fair was held at my school.  As an Honors Biology student, I was required to participate in it.  I think the last time I did a science fair of any sort was in third or fourth grade.  When I heard that I had to do a science fair project this year, I was very saddened, for I am just not into that type of thing.  Nonetheless, this project was a big part of my grade and who knows?  Maybe it would turn out to be fun.

So I started thinking and researching stuff that pertained to my interests.  Finally, I found a site that talked about food and reaction times which reminded me of gum.  I did some research about gum and learned scientists had already proven that gum improves your reaction time, so that experiment was out of the question.  I didn't want to totally throw out the idea, so I thought about adjusting it.  Then...light bulb!  I would do an experiment to see if gum improves reaction times more in children or adults.  Yeah!  I did more research, this time on brain plasticity in kids.  And I was off!

I created a question and a hypothesis.  I found a website that tested reaction times and made little sheets of paper for volunteers to write their results on.  The hardest part was finding forty volunteers to do my experiment.  However, even that got done eventually.  I wrote my research paper and finished my display board.  I was ready for the science fair.

And, of course, after being perfectly healthy for months, I get sick the day of the fair.  Of all the times.  The good thing was I was still able to go to school and participate, but it was very uncomfortable because I had a sore throat and a mild, but painful cough.  When the judges came around to my display, I temporarily quelled my cough, but I had a terrible performance!  I rushed through everything, forgetting to say key things like my hypothesis and half my procedure.  It was very embarrassing.  However, I figured they were only judges and my goal was to get a good grade from my teacher.  Luckily, my presentation to my teacher went a lot better, and I got the feeling she liked my project. Overall, it was an okay afternoon.

Two days later, on Friday (the day this was posted) the twenty finalists moving on and the twenty honorable mentions were announced during second period.  My second period class is relatively loud, so I missed the first half.  The second half revealed some names that belonged to kids in my class and I congratulated them.  The big surprise came at lunch when my friends told me they had heard my name on the announcements!  At first I didn't believe them, but sure enough, a special certificate with my name on it was waiting for me in the office.  What, I made it?!  Despite my awful presentation?  Apparently it wasn't as bad as I thought. :)  So I guess I'm going to the district science fair. -_-  At least it will look good on a college application.

Here are a couple cat memes that have to do with science.

Image courtesy of Le Café Witteveen

Image courtesy of Beam Me Up

A Park of Dragons

Enter DragonVale.

It's a digital game for touch screens and smart phones where the player builds a park with various kinds of dragons.  In my opinion, it's pretty awesome.  Although, I did stop playing it for about a year because my iPad experienced some technical difficulties and I didn't get back into DragonVale for a long time even after the iPad was fixed.

It all starts with a floating island in the middle of the sky.  On it, a bunch of rocks and trees that need to be cleared along with one portal.  Through this portal comes tiny wizards that walk through your park, earning the player money.  The more wizards in one's park, the better one is doing.  Of course, one isn't going to get far without dragons.  The most basic dragons (the starter ones) are the plant dragon, the fire dragon, and the earth dragon.

To move further along in the game, one must breed dragons, collect coins, and grow treats.  My favorite and least favorite part is breeding dragons, hoping to end up with a rare kind.  I love seeing the cool egg designs and new dragons created, however, it can be immensely frustrating.  Getting rare dragons is, well, a rare event.  There is no guarantee one will get the dragon one wants, no matter how many times one breeds the same pair of dragons.

Above is one of the floating islands of my DragonVale park, just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.
Sorry about the poor resolution; you might want to click on the picture to enlarge it.

Click here to visit the DragonVale Wiki.  It has a ton of info such as all the kinds of dragons, breeding hints, and the latest news.

A |ˈbākən| Mishap

bacon |ˈbākən|nouncured meat from the back or sides of a pig.
I considered myself to be a decent cook.

I can make a multitude of things ranging from a simple slice of buttered toast to a Thanksgiving dinner (minus the turkey).  Of course, I've made a numerous mistakes along the way.  There was the time I forgot to put baking soda in chocolate cupcakes (they turned out very dense and compact).  I once added baking soda to a pretzel dough when the directions said to let the baking soda dissolve in water (where one dips an unbaked pretzel before placing it in the oven).  Turns out, baking soda in a pretzel  tastes HORRENDOUS.  Like EXTREMELY salty guck.  That same night, I accidentally used half of my dad's calzone dough in making the pretzels before realizing I had mixed up the two bowls of dough.  (That was not my night.)  On other accounts, I have melted butter to the point where the cookies don't turn out flat, boiled pasta until it almost turned into complete mush, and burned white chocolate in the microwave when I was just trying to melt it.

Other than that, I've been pretty successful in my food expeditions.

However, this past weekend, I recently experienced one of, if not the worst cooking accident in the history of me.  In fact, I very nearly burnt down my house.  No joke.

And I blame the bacon.

It was a nice, fifty degree afternoon with the sun shining and the snow glistening on the ground.  I had just come home from soccer practice and was going to make lunch for the family while they were out on a walk around the neighborhood.  I decided to make sunrise sandwiches (so it was going to be more like an afternoon breakfast than a lunch).  I was trying out a recipe for this meal which involved canadian bacon as the meat for the sandwich.  There happened to be no canadian bacon lying around, so I came to the natural conclusion to use regular bacon instead.  The recipe called for warming the pre-cooked bacon in a pan, but I was already using the pam dusted pan to fry/grill five or so 1/4 inch tomato slices (about 2-3 minutes if you were wondering).  I wanted things to be ready when my family got home, so I set about multitasking.  I mixed up some eggs and put them in a second, larger pan on the stove and they began to cook. While the tomatoes were also on the stove, I placed four strips of bacon on a toaster oven pan (eight inches wide, five inches long) wrapped with aluminum foil.

Now, you must understand that "toasting" bacon has been done quite often in my household.  We put the bacon in the toaster oven, set it to a "toast" setting and keep an eye on it until the bacon grease is foaming up.  Then the bacon is removed and set on a hot plate and patted with a paper towel to absorb the excess grease.  IT TURNS OUT JUST FINE.  The worst that has ever happened is the bacon was in the toaster oven too long and ended up drily burnt.

I took it to a whole new level.

My family arrived home while the bacon, eggs, and multiple rounds of tomatoes were cooking.  My dad decided to help by preparing English muffins topped with a sprinkle of cheese.  I started putting the cooked tomatoes on a plate and the scrambled eggs in a serving bowl.  Both of our backs were facing away from the toaster oven and stove when my mom asked "Is something burning?"  I guess my dad and I were so focused on our jobs we didn't notice the smell (even though we were three feet away and my mom was in another room).  It was mostly my fault though for not watching cooking appliances that were on (something I need to improve on).

Anyway, we both turned around to see the bacon in the toaster oven COMPLETELY ENGULFED IN ONE. BIG. FLAME.  HOLY CRAP!  My dad opened the toaster oven at which point the flame split into flames and expanded out of the toaster oven and licked top of it along with the underside of the wooden cabinet that was on the wall above the toaster oven.  He immediately and started blowing on the fiery bacon as hard as he could while I kinda just stood there (I know, I'm real professional in these disaster situations).  For those of you who are confused at this point, my dad was trying to blow out six to eight inch flames because it was a grease fire and you never put water on a grease fire for it will EXPLODE.  One way to put out grease fires is eliminating the fire's air supply aka smothering it (for other methods, click here).  My dad was trying to accomplish this; there was no time to do anything else.  Luckily after a few hard exhales, the fire went out, but then a massive amount of smoke filled the house, turning the air into an ugly haze.  Plus, it smelled bad.  Fans were switched on and windows were opened to force the smoke out.  Oven mitts were used to carry the scalding toaster oven pan out onto the deck to cool atop a hot plate.  After things calmed down, there was still two problems.  The bacon was ruined and no way were we going to miss out on a bacon, egg, cheese, tomato and avocado (spontaneously added) sandwich.

I checked the bacon bag and there were four pieces remaining.  Only four.  This time I put them carefully in a pan on the stove.  I watched those precious pieces like a hawk, well maybe not to that extent.  The bacon cooked nicely, was added to the sunrise sandwiches and we finally sat down to eat.  It was delicious and all was well.

Except for one thing.

I haven't yet told you what the bacon looked like after lighting on fire.

It was not the burnt, crispy charcoal that one might expect.

No.

That bacon was melted, MELTED I SAY, so it looked like strips of TAR.  Yes, that's right, somehow I FREAKING MELTED BACON...INTO TAR!  How is that even possible?

And now *snivel, snivel* I have lost my faith in bacon.  How epically tragic.


For your convenience I present you all with a visual aid consisting of what I call "tar bacon."

Yeah, this is what it looked like.
Image courtesy of my brother.

Oh, by the way, this NFL Super Bowl XLVIII weekend, my family is having a bunch of friends over to watch the game.  AND GUESS WHAT?  I'M MAKIN' APPETIZERS AND DESSERTS!  OH YEAH!  Don't worry, nobody will be harmed in the making of these foods...And the house won't burn down...

hopefully.

A Little Deodorant Should Do the Trick

As previously mentioned in my JV Annihilation post, (I know, that was a few months ago) my soccer team experienced some pretty interesting matches during the season.  One particular away game was against Union.  The field was out in the middle of nowhere, but still located near the mountains.  It was sunny, but not too hot, although it was a long bus ride.  JV was unloading and Varsity was warming up, when I heard the first cries of “Ok, guys, don’t sit on the ground; some bugs just bit me!” and “Ah, I think I just got bit by a mosquito!”  Soon, we were all being “attacked” by pesky blood suckers.  I, for one, do NOT like mosquitos; the bites can swell up to the size of a golf ball on me.

No one was expecting this; the only time I remember Utah being buggy was when I went camping in the summer.  Of course, no one had any bug spray, but we had to do something.  Then one girl recommended using deodorant (yep, that’s right, the stuff you apply to your armpits).  Apparently, if applied on a mosquito bite, it would suspend the itching sensation for a little while.  Uh, come again?  At first I was skeptical, but hey, it’s not like I had another idea.  I tried it out, rubbing it on a growing bump on my left hand.  It didn’t completely work for me (wearing off after around ten minutes), though it was better than nothing.  So all through both games I was trying to resist the itch on my left elbow or my right knee.  Not too fun while one is trying to do homework.  However, my other teammates were happy with the results, so I guess it was just me.

Thankfully, Varsity won their game and JV was up 8-0 at half time.  According to the Mercy Rule, if a team is winning by eight goals ten minutes into the second half, the game will end early.  Ten minutes into the second half, we were up 9-0 so the referee blew the final whistle.

We packed up, loaded the bus,  ate some pizza (delivered during our game) and settled in for a two hour ride.  Of course, most of the time, my numerous bug bites were not very pleasant.  When I got home I put some anti-itch gel on, much to my relief.  Much to my dismay, those darn mosquito bites lasted for a week.  Not cool.

Well, here is just a comical soccer meme.  It's not really related to the post, but I thought you might like it. :)

Image courtesy of Meme Center

How did I spend New Year's Eve? Reading, of course.

I didn't light fireworks.

I wasn't celebrating with friends. 

I even missed the ball dropping in Times Square.

Instead my New Year's Eve consisted of a movie and three hours of reading.  Not that I'm complaining.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

It began (around 7:30) with Tom Hanks starring as Forrest Gump in the 1994 movie Forrest Gump (didn't see that one comin', did ya☺).  I, for one, was really impressed.  I had no idea what the movie was going to be about, and when I asked my parents, they gave me nothing.  So I came in with low expectations and I was pretty happy with it.  Although it wasn't the action-packed, special effects filled film that peaks my interest the most, but it definitely had a lot of emotion along with a very good plot line.  Forrest Gump is just the kind of character that amazes you with how he takes everything, good and bad.  I also liked how it had a happy and complete ending.  For those of you who haven't seen it, I highly recommend that you pick up a copy and watch it.

We finished the movie just after 10 o'clock (keep in mind this is mountain time).  We switched to the CNN channel, but it was too late.  Unfortunately, the ball had already dropped in New York.  Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin were joking around with partying people in the background.  I was a little disappointed; I've enjoyed counting down and watching the festivities of New York in the past.  Oh well, I guess there's always next year.

The previous night (Dec 30), I had gotten a book from the local library that I had been waiting on the edge of my seat for.  I had started it the morning of New Year's Eve, but I wasn't satisfied only reading a few pages.  For the next few hours after watching Forrest Gump, I stayed up reading, while the rest of my family went to bed.  Being that it was New Year's Eve, there were many bursts of fireworks in the neighborhood and my dog would occasionally jump up without warning and run to a window barking.  These were unpleasant interruptions to say the least.  Anyway, I think it was about 1 or 1:30 in the morning when I found a reasonable part in the novel to stop and go to bed.  Maybe I'm too much of a bookworm...

Yep, that concludes my epic (not really) New Year's Eve Tale.  Until next time,

"Life's a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

-Mrs. Gump