Belatedly, I had a great time for Thanksgiving week back home in California. (Why is is that wherever I'm living is never "home," but California always will be?) Saw great friends, spent quality time with my mom, spent a disappointingly-snow-free few days in Tahoe, drank a ridiculous amount of alcohol in the span of two days in San Jose... and all that was marred only by relatively mild gambling losses and the unfortunate results of a pre-airport trip to Jack in the Box. Won't do that again. Never even got to the deep-fried tacos I stashed in my carry-on. Sad.
My return to Florida (note: not "home") was followed quickly by Tribune, the parent company of the Sun Sentinel (and the L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune, among others) filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. So that's always fun.
But just a week and a half from now, I'll be jetting to London on the night of Christmas Eve, and spending Christmas Day around what sounds like it'll be a deserted city center. That's fine. I've got Boxing Day tickets to see Reading play Cardiff City, and a few days later, I'll sit three rows off the pitch at Old Trafford to see Manchester United take on Middlesbrough. I'll spend my birthday watching Billy Elliot in the West End. And New Year's Eve either in London or Windsor, where I'll stay.
I'd liked to have started off this post with a photo of picturesque California in the autumn. That'd be impossible, though, as I took nary a single photo, despite lugging my camera and three lenses back home. Funny how documenting good times take a back seat to experiencing them.
I'll part with this, which made me think while reading today's New York Times. In Deborah Soloman's interview with the author Jonah Lehrer, this is the second-to-last exchange between the two:
DS: How old are you now?
JL: I'm 27.
DS: How nice. You have your whole life ahead of you. I hope you use it to make good decisions.
Which made me wonder how many people consider my being on the verge of 29 as still having my "whole life" head of me. I often think quite the opposite. It feels like I've lived an entire life already, and I can't say I've ever been very happy with any of it, save for the wonderful friends I've made along the way.
So to look at it from the other perspective is refreshing, even a little jarring. Maybe there are great things ahead. Hopefully, at least, there are a lot of years. I hope I use them to make good (or at least better) decisions.
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