Thursday, January 02, 2003
Happy 2003! Let's hope it's better than 2002. Although if my New Year's Eve is anything to go by, 2003 is going to be a huge disappointment.
One of my good friends had a little New Year's party at his house. This was all well and good. I was looking forward to it. He had invited a fair amount of people, and had been planning this thing for weeks.
Now, my friend is a very good, moral person. But his brother is a complete delinquent -- and he also decided to have a little "get-together" on New Year's Eve. I knew it was going to be bad news when my friend stressed the importance of knocking at the front door, unless I wanted to be around the horde of drunk stoners in the garage.
As it turned out, even this little precaution was moot in the end: I have no idea why my friend thought that his brother and drug-addicted pals would keep things confined to the garage, but of course, they did not. Watching one or two inebriated individuals attempt to make coherent conversation was rather amusing at first... but then more and more began to infiltrate the relative safety of my friend's living room: young men with slurred speech offering to "liven up" our party, drunken floozies staggering in with beer and marijuana, and a creepy, leering older man. Around twelve-thirty or one in the morning, our group had fled the house, forced out by a coalition of people who could no longer walk in a straight line.
It was only then that my friend decided it was best to move the party to someone else's place. I was not a happy individual by this time, and gladly drove elsewhere. I don't understand why he did not change his party's location earlier; I know plenty of people present who would gladly have offered the use of their houses for this cause. It's a shame that his party turned out like that -- doubly so considering that January first is also his birthday, and the party served a dual purpose -- but I really, really wish he had not been stubborn about keeping it at his house after discovering his brother's nefarious scheme to ensure that everyone can now identify the smell of weed.
In other news, our family jaunt to Rockport turned our rather nice. There are many nifty little shops -- including this wonderful bookstore that has shelves upon shelves of antique books, rare books and first editions. Naturally, such books are priced accordingly, but it's great fun to look through them. Rockport-Fulton itself is a beautiful area, with lots of pretty scenery. Rockport is home to a very large, very old and very gnarled oak tree that is creatively dubbed the Big Tree, and it's impressive -- you know, for a big tree. More unique, and more beautiful, are the windswept oaks. The wind blows so often there that the trees are bent back; some grow almost horizontally. Conditions for fishing were poor, but I wasn't discouraged: there was still the water, and any area with a large body of water is pleasing to me. I don't know exactly what it is about water and beaches, but the seaside is probably my favorite place in the world (excepting Galveston, which is a cesspool). I can spend hours on a beach and be perfectly content; I love watching the waves, the wind, and the wildlife. I'm not a birdwatcher by any stretch, but I have this odd fascination with waterfowl. I think it may stem from my experience at the age of twelve, when I saw the Brown Pelican roosting islands during a fishing trip to the Chadelier Islands in the Gulf of Mexico. In any case, I now have this thing about seabirds, pelicans and loons especially, and one of the highlights of the "mini-vacation" was seeing the flock of White Pelicans. I've never seen White Pelicans anywhere else, and they're so much prettier than the Browns. Yes, I am weird.
We returned from Rockport on the 31st, and I came back to Austin last night. I had a much more enjoyable holiday than I expected, which was wonderful, but I'm glad to be back.
| 8:22 AM |
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