2007 finished

Now I'm back in Austin.

The usual Christmas Eve/Christmas/birthday celebration has passed. This year was similar to all the others except my dad cooked a new dish as part of his annual Christmas Eve "Seven Kinds of Fish Italian Dinner". Red peppers stuffed with rice and sardines and bits of their bones and some other stuff. Another first...this year my sister woke up Christmas morning throwing up all over the place. We all sat downstairs opening presents while she repeatedly swallowed to keep it down. (Food poisoning likely, but not from my dad's food.) My parents' divorce changed the holidays only slightly. My dad was still around on Christmas morning. My mom's boyfriend came over for Christmas dinner and my dad ate with some friends. My sister stayed upstairs in bed.

Now I'm 22. But I don't really feel like I have an age anyway. Physically I'm sure I look different than I did when I was 8, 14, 17, whatever; mentally I feel like the way I think and process things is mostly the same. Since I got to college I matured in a particular way, just by dealing with and experiencing different things. My maturation is also manifesting itself in the form of white and gray hairs. I am becoming increasingly worried about the silvery veins poking out every time I part my hair. For my birthday dinner I chose to eat at Nit Noi, a Thai restaurant my family's been going to before we even moved to Houston. We eat there for birthdays almost every year. We drove to Rice Village and right where Nit Noi was, there was a giant blank piece of land. We thought maybe we were in the wrong place, but they totally tore down the whole building the restaurant was in. I couldn't believe it. Luckily Thai Spice was close so we decided to be adventurous and try something new. Thai Spice was excellent also. Later that night I went out with friends to a couple of bars and then to dance.

A few days ago I moved back to Austin. I'm now living in a house north of campus. It's so huge. I've never lived anywhere with so much space to myself. I chose to live in the attic so I have very oddly shaped bedroom that overlooks both the front and backyard. There are six windows. I'm so excited to get all my stuff in here and make it look like more than a wooden room. It's hard for me to integrate into the rest of the house though. When I'm at home I usually just hang around upstairs since my room is so big and since there's another even bigger attic room across the stairway. I'm a little anxious about living with other people just since I've never really done it.

Tonight is New Year's. After so many nights of partying I want to see if I have anything left in me. I'm feeling really lazy and run down during the day. I'm not really getting much done. I've been worried about certain stuff and it's distracting me a lot. My room being in disarray is causing me to allow the rest of my life to get more out of control. My state of mind has been weird since I got back from Spain.

I don't have any resolutions for 2008. I'm just hoping for an exciting and somewhat successful year. I don't really know what to expect since a lot will depend on my summer plans. To think that this year I will probably get my first job...is crazy. However, after the past year of moving around and traveling and being pushed into new experiences at any time, I feel more prepared. I guess, if anything, I want to keep the generally optimistic and satisfied feeling I had for most of 2007. I think this past year was one of my better ones. A lot of really good things happened and even some bads, but the bad things I learned from. I felt like I found my place this year, at UT and in Spain. I met so many new people in 2007. I feel like I grew up a little more this year. I'm still waiting to see exactly how/if I was changed by my time in Spain.

Right now I just don't know about many things. I'm not sure that I want to.