01. Riding In the New Year(s)

...

I finally beat jet lag. Ask me how, and I'll tell you that I can't tell you, but anyone sitting with me at the Turf Club on Wednesday night could probably tell you. I'll just say that I proudly slept through the first leg of my Minneapolis to Iceland to London flight and showed up chipper in London at noon.

Having declared this, though, I also have to admit that I proceeded to boldly waste this accomplishment by not only celebrating the Greenwich Mean Time New Years countdown, but also the--though admittedly much hazier--Central Standard Time countdown. Anyone who missed out on my drunken phone calls around midnight CST can surely look forward to more in the future: last night I only dialed the phone numbers that I knew off hand, whereas I now have everyone's phone number recorded into a single (and very accessable) place. I hestitate to really consider the full possibility for hilarity when I next move these phone numbers into a cell phone in India. Did I mention that the time difference between India and home is eleven and a half hours? That means that I will be going to sleep when the Midwest wakes up, and vice-versa, so I'm just going to appologise in advance for all of the possible suprizes that such a time difference will certainly bring about.

Time differences aside, New Years Eve was spent with Dave Schelesinger, his girlfriend Anne, and the shocking last minute guest appearance of one of my favorite people: none other than the Little Rock born, and fellow-can't-stay-putter, Ginny Sims who is currently teaching English in Barcelona, and a few of her friends who live in London. The night started at 5:00 in front of the Natural History Museum, and wound a path that stopped for pints in a gay pub in Earl's Court (oops) where we weren't overly-appreciated, an excellent dinner at The Troubadour complete with New Years resolutions and party poppers, a countdown at a somewhat annonymous pub in South Kensington, and then hours and hours passed and bottles and bottles of red wine consumed at the house/studio of a pretty well-known sculptor friend of Ginny's in South London, where catching up with Ginny was more like a supervised visit than old friends talking, and where the three of found more common ground as we rounded out the second, more Midwestern, New Years Eve countdown, before finally giving in to sleep. I woke up under a very thin blanket, on a sturdy (though not particularly comfortable army surplus-style cot), in the middle of a room full of plastic-covered sculptures.

In summary: I am tired.

Also: I forgot how much I like this.