For Auld Lang Syne, My Dear

Happy New Year, anyways.

So This Is The New Year

"so this is the new year.
and i don't feel any different."

Every year, as December draws to a close, I get the same feeling. I feel restless, unfinished, like I'm waiting for something. I'm always looking around for something big, this elusive Something Big that will happen before the clock strikes twelve on the 31st. I know that I all too often wish life was like the movies, and so maybe I've just been brainwashed by When Harry Met Sally... and other such films, where midnight on New Year's Eve brings bigger things than just another day. But whatever the reason, I always feel like I'm waiting for Something Exciting to happen to me in the last hours of the year, and that Something never happens, and there's always a bit of disappointment. It's always another year. Just another year.
My options, it seems, are these: I can keep feeling like this, waiting for Something Big until 10987654321-Happy-New-Year and be disappointed. Or I can give up on 2004 early, go ahead and get over the disappointment, and spend my New Year's Eve just like it's any other night, having fun with friends and not expecting anything at all. Or I can make something happen.
The obvious answer is to make something happen, right? But what?
Maybe I'll just stick with disappointment.

"so everybody put your best suit or dress on
let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
as thirty dialogues bleed into one

i wish the world was flat like the old days
then i could travel just by folding a map
no more airplanes, or speedtrains, or freeways
there'd be no distance that can hold us back."

Merry Christmas, Everybody!

May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be whiter than the ones you'll experience in jolly old Georgia, where I've been wearing t-shirts for days.

On a slightly related note: I got an iPod!

Turns out my parents do like me enough!

And now, on this Christmas Eve, my favoritest holiday of them all, I'm going to go dance in silhouette against a bright background. 1-2-3 turn your head and come with me...

Stay In School, Part II

A conversation between me and Kari, one of my managers, today:

KARI: Amy, where do you go to school?
ME: UGA.
KARI: Oh, what's your major?
ME: Journalism.
KARI: Ooh, what do you want to do with that?
ME: I want to write for a music magazine.
KARI: Oh, then you should definitely talk to Patti next time she works.
ME: Why's that?
KARI: Well, she used to work for 99x-- she did a lot of radio journalism and did a lot of cool stuff with music. (Unspoken: Now she works at Bath & Body Works for a living.)

Oh really, somebody used to have a cool job and now she's stuck working retail? Greeeaaaat. I think I'll go change my major to accounting or some other such boringness like that now.

Stay In School, Kids, And Just Say No

Geez. I can't think of a better way to get people to finish college and get their degree than to have them work retail with adults. It's depressing. I have a newfound ambition to do really well in school so I can get a real job, though, so that's good I guess.

"Uh, I just saw a woman spray a wall and then smell it." --My manager over our earpieces.

So today was my second day working at the North Point Mall Bath & Body Works (the upstairs store [the good one]), and I was compiling in my head all the worst things about working there as I walked around and greeted people and restocked like whoa all day long. And it's come to this:

The number 4 worst thing about working there:
Oh my God it hurts to stand up for that long. But I suppose that's the same as any retail job so I won't complain.

The number 3 worst thing about working there:
Just because two products smell good alone does not mean that they'll smell good together. So after a day of being around so many different scents, I don't smell bad, but I smell strange.

The number 2 worst thing about working there:
Somebody brought in the Jessica Simpson Christmas album today. Enough said.

The number 1 worst thing about working there:
You can almost guarantee that every single guy who comes into our store is not so single after all-- if they aren't asking you for help with "Well, my girlfriend really likes Plumeria..." then their girlfriends are there, all clingy and territorial, wrapping their arms around said boyfriends so tightly I'm surprised they don't cut off circulation and kill them. So while it's still occasionally possible to get in a little subtle flirting with the first kind of guy, the second kind is stuck in a Plumeria-scented stronghold and it's just a lost cause.

Next time maybe I'll just get a job at somewhere more guy-friendly. Like a Foot Locker or something. Yeesh.

"I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them." --Rep. Gerald Allen

Oh wow. This almost makes me glad I live in Georgia. Almost. Although I really don't think that Georgia's new slogan should be "Hey, at least we're better than Alabama."

Time To Change

I've changed my AIM screenname-- it's now SmokeSignalSky, for those of you interested. It's part of a lyric from "Dancing Virginia" by Jump Little Children (who were wonderful last night in case you were wondering). I still have the old one so you can talk to me on whichever. Just so you know.

Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful

That's a lie. It's a balmy 61 degrees outside, and that's at night. So maybe it's not beginning to look a lot like Christmas. So what? My room's been decorated since, oh, about the dawn of time. Lee Ellen and I put up the Rutherford Christmas Tree in the common room, and though it looks about Charlie Brownesque as a full-size fake tree possibly could, it's still festive. Tomorrow we're shopping for Christmas decorations for the dorm, Sunday I'm shopping for Christmas presents for people downtown, and tonight we're going to the school's Holiday Concert, where the choruses and orchestras and acapella groups, et cetera, perform Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa carols.
So why doesn't it feel Christmassy?
I haven't felt much of anything lately, but that's no excuse. I think I just need to watch Love Actually again; that always seems to put me in the Christmas spirit, even in September. Maybe I'll give that a try later on.
(In other news: Jump, Little Children at the Moreton tomorrow night! Get excited.)