New Day--New Year

I like Nick, he's a great kid. He's about my height, his face framed by glasses, and a mop of hair like you'd find on one of the Beatles back in the 60's. Speaking of the 60's, spend a little time with Nick and you are transported back in time. He hands you platter after platter to look at. His Albums are treasures, handled with care. I think we connect so well because he recognizes that only a guy from my era can really appreciate his album collection. So he hands me his Three dog night album, and an Emerson Lake and Palmer album. Nick is one of my daughters roommates. Nick greeted us yesterday as we arrived in Charlottesville to visit our daughter Courtney. We were there in a way to celebrate a New Year. Nick talked enthusiastically about going out to buy a desk. I suppose you could say the purchase of the desk was a New Year's resolution. He was going to start the New Year with a flourish. He was certain that the desk would help him get organized in 2008. It would help get all the clutter out of his room. He talked about it repeatedly. There was no doubt about it, the desk was the answer to everything. It was going to be in place by the end of the day.

I can't think of a better way to spend the first day of the year then with a bunch of young people in their early 20's. They are full of life, full of enthusiasm, and on this day full of hangovers. They were all struggling. The New Years party had gone late into the night. So my wife and I decided to show up around 3pm, just in time for breakfast. Courtney had asked us to pick up bagels and cream cheese for everyone. We did! We also picked up a bottle of champagne to use to toast the beginning of a new year.

The champagne was a great litmus test to determine who drank too much the night before. A young man sitting in the living room refused the champagne. He was holding his head, he looked miserable. Nick confided later that he thinks the kid in question, was the one who threw up upstairs to usher in 2008 early Tuesday morning. I didn't ask about who threw up downstairs, given the way he framed this, I'm certain some one did.

It didn't take long before someone began grousing that there wasn't a toaster for the bagels. So in the long litany of toasts, I proposed this one.

"Let's toast to the lack of toasters in 2008"

There is a certain amount of irony when there is a large group of toasters toasting the lack of toasters.

Part of our mission was to move Courtney's stuff out of the house she shares with her roommates. She'll be heading off to a semester at sea later this month. It's being called the trip of a lifetime. That's because it will be the trip of a lifetime for her, and it will take me the rest of my life to pay for it. That of course is a typical father with the cost of higher education joke. It's a rite of passage for all of us. I have a buddy of mine who has a son at Harvard. This is his joke, "Having a kid at Harvard is like going to the dealership each year and buying a brand new 40 thousand dollar SUV and driving it off a cliff."

By the way 2008 is off to a great start for me. I convinced Courtney to trash some stuff. So we didn't have to load as much material into the SUV as we thought. Nick helped with the heavy dresser. So I didn't have to wrench my back. By the way by the time we left Nick still had not left to get that desk. I think his New Years resolution is already on life support, but then again so is mine.