The New Year

Up until last night, I have spent every New Year's Eve in Pasadena. Although the thought of celebrating New Year's Eve in a different time zone than my friends and family was at first unpromising, there couldn't be a better place to spend New Year's Eve than New York. Or so I thought, that is, before being locked out of my apartment with my room mate on New Year's Day.

With two dead cell phones, 60 dollars on an American Express Gift Card and a handwritten list of emergency locksmith addresses (that all turned out to be delis), we were at the brink of defeat and contemplating spending the night at team mate's apartment that some have referred to as "the shit hole". Thankfully our luck changed. I sat miserably on a cast iron fence anticipating the cold wet dew from the metal to seep through my jeans while my room mate gave the buzzer one last try, and like the sound of a distant plane engine to someone on a deserted island, the ring of our buzzer faithfully granted us entry once again. It turns out, Andrew, my other room mate hadn't left back home to Philadelphia yet, but was out sending his visiting girlfriend off at Penn Station. It wasn't the best way to start off the new year but it ended up working out.

Before I left back to New York someone told me that the way you spend New Year's is the way you'll spend the rest of your year. Like most people I was skeptical but just out of curiosity I gave it a thought by comparing previous New Year's Eves to the years that followed. As I recalled my terrible past New Year's Eve experiences I could only nod in relief at the affirmation of my disbelief in such a kooky myth. Hopefully my skepticism is just and the myth is false otherwise I'll be knee high in locksmith bills by next December. Only time will tell and until it does I'll keep my fingers crossed. Happy New Year!