I’m not going out tonight. I kind of wanted to, but I don’t know anyone to meet up with, so it’s going to be a quiet New Year’s Eve at home with my family. Probably the last one, anyway.

I’m going to copy everyone else and do a sort of Year in Review. I’m not going to do it all fancy-like, reading back through my archives and making helpful links and stuff. I’ll just make a list, good and bad. If you want to know more, you can hit the “random” link over there on the left and catch yourself up.

Stuff That Happened in 2003:

• My boss got a new job and moved to South Carolina.

• After much stress, I was promoted to her position and embarked on a 5-month whirlwind of all work and little play that’s finally beginning to pay off.

• My sister and my mom got new jobs this year, too.

• I went to: Atlanta, Virginia Beach, the mountains, and South Carolina.

• I went to band camp as a staff member.

• I reconnected with some old friends, made some new friends, and started going out more.

• I tried (in vain, really) to get dates. But I was ballsy!

• Five of our cats were poisoned and died.

• I got my family lost in the backwoods on Father’s Day.

• We had a hurricane and an earthquake.

• I changed my hair a bunch of times.

• I got a new laptop, woo!

• And last but not least, I started this little page.

Last year I made exactly one resolution, and I didn’t share it with anyone. That resolution was to make a space on the web, and start writing there regularly. I got off to a slow start, and I’ve had some ups and downs, but I’m completely thrilled with myself for sticking to it. It’s been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done. Because of this page, I’ve gotten into the habit of writing again. I’ve learned HTML. I’ve met people that I now consider friends and acquaintances. I’ve been exposed to some brilliant writing, some fascinating points of view, and some very beautiful souls.

This is the only New Year’s Resolution I’ve kept, and I’m happy that I did. Thank you, all of you, for reading and for making it so worthwhile.

I’ve made a couple of goals for myself for 2004. Most of them I’m keeping to myself; I’ll let you know next year if I’ve managed to achieve them. But here’s the one I’ll share: I will move out of my parents’ house. To be safe I’ll let April be the deadline for that, but the sooner the better. It involves a lot of saving and planning and cutting back on spending – stuff I’m not good at – but it’s time. You know I’ll keep you posted.

Happy New Year, guys. I hope it’s a great one.

So I had a hair appointment today, and Closeted Jonathan and I made the Big Decision.

I am now Officially Growing My Hair Out.

It went like this: I flopped down in his chair and sighed, “Jonathan. I’m having a dilemma.”

“You’re at the crossroads, aren’t you, honey? To grow or not to grow?”

He is so right-on. And so very very gay. So I shared all of my concerns: it would be too flat, it wouldn’t move around my head, it would make my face look fat, it would be a pain in the ass to style.

“No, no, we can take care of all of that. It’ll be great. Let’s grow it. You only live once, right?”

He’s absolutely right, as usual. So Jonathan and I, we entered a new era. I told him to go for it.

He tapped his scissors thoughtfully. Messed with my hair. Flipped the parts around. Finally, he announced, “Okay. I have a Plan of Action.” And away he went with the scissors.

End result? Tres cool. I have this Gillian Anderson circa Playing by Heart/X-Files thing going on that I’m sure I’ll never be able to recreate on my own, but for today it kicks ass.

But before that came the trauma.

See, The Salon (which is actually called that – “The Salon”) has a new shampoo girl, whose name is Algae or something similar. Denise, the former awesomely psychic shampoo girl of the gentle hands, is out on maternity leave. So now we have Algae. She’s very nice, but-

Algae makes conversation while she’s washing your hair, but she hasn’t learned to project over the water yet so you can’t hear anything she says but you sense that she’s speaking so you just say “uh-huh” a lot. Algae pronounces Aveda like “A-VEE-lee-a” but thinks that the rosemary conditioning treatment is just aces. Algae uses about two handfuls too much of the A-VEE-lee-a shampoo and wonders why it takes forever to rinse out, blaming my thick hair. Algae worships my stylist and says all the ladies want him. “Yeah, to cut their hair,” I say, knowing that Algae hasn’t caught on to Jonathan’s sexual preference yet. She laughs. She tells me that she’s going to try to squeeze most of the water out of my hair to make Jonathan’s job easier and proceeds to viciously YANK my sweet tresses through the towel numerous times while I actually cringe in discomfort.

But this was all nothing compared to the weirdest thing Algae did while she was shampooing my hair.

See, Algae accidentally smothered my face with her large left breast while she was shampooing me.

I’m chilling. My eyes are closed. Under normal circumstances I adore having my hair washed and use those few minutes as relaxation time. So I’m relaxing, right? And then I feel pressure on my face and I can’t breathe so well any more.

I open my eyes to find that my face is entirely covered by Algae’s voluminous breast. Her boob is on my face. Her BOOB is ON my FACE.

I don’t know what to do. I’m lying there very very still, trying not to like breathe on her tit or anything, because I don’t want to freak her out.

But then the absurdity of what I’m doing hits me and my greatest urge is to giggle uncontrollably.

But I’m trying not to do that either, with little success.

Finally Algae finishes her extensive head massage and straightens up, removing her boob from my face and I seriously just sit there for a second and start cracking up.

And she apparently thinks it completely normal for a chick to sit giggling in the shampoo chair after a possibly-accidental boob smothering, because she never once asks me why I’m laughing.

Beware of shampoo girls (is there a more PC term for it?) named Algae. Seriously.

So the other day everyone in my family was ripping on everyone else, as we have a tendency to do, and the subject of Christmas gifts came up. And a certain memory came flooding back.

It was the mid-80s, I suppose. I want to say that I was 7 or so and Ginny was about 5.

Somehow we had gotten the idea (possibly from something our parents had said) that making Christmas gifts for each other was a sweet and touching thing to do. So we came up with ideas and got busy.

I decided to make Ginny a shirt for Frannie, her beloved Cabbage Patch Kid, to wear.

*Note: My sewing skills developed quite early, which is to say that I’m as shitty a seamstress now as I was at age 7. I can’t even sew a button.

I worked for a really long time on this fugly-ass shirt. I sewed the two pieces together (out of pillowcase cloth, of course) and “embroidered” some sort of design on it which may or may not have involved trees and flowers. I sewed that bitch with love. And then I wrapped it up and put it under the tree.

It looked like this, except more hideous.

I thought it looked lovely, of course, because I was seven and quite possibly vision-impaired. I couldn’t wait for Ginny to open it on Christmas morning.

Meanwhile, she was working on a little handmade gift of her own.

At seven, I was a voracious reader, and particularly keen on Nancy Drew mysteries. I read almost everywhere except in the car, because I’ve always been horribly affected by motion sickness when I read in moving vehicles.

Ginny decided to make me a book-on-tape of one of my Nancy Drew books.

She worked for hours and hours on it, hiding in her closet or behind the couch in the family room with her red boom box and a supply of blank cassettes.

The problem?

Ginny had barely learned to read.

So while the effort expended was commendable, imagine about twelve cassette tapes filled with the stumbling stops-and-starts and poor enunciating of a five-year-old reading a book way out of her league.

Despite all that, when I opened the shoe box full of tapes on Christmas Day, I said “thank you” and hugged her and did all that stuff you’re supposed to do. Mostly because I was a perfect child. I was also especially aware of the fact that my parents were videotaping every moment of our present-opening with their brand new size-of-a-truck RCA camcorder. Each time we opened a present they made us go stand in front of the camera and say what it was we got and all that good stuff.

So Ginny’s reaction when she opened the box with the fugly doll shirt lives in infamy.

Thrusting out a skinny hip to the side, she held it up in front of the camera and said, AND I QUOTE:

“What is it? Great. I hate it.”

And THEN she threw the fugly shirt on the floor and STOMPED ON IT.

Of course at the time I think I was crushed and horrified, and my parents forced her to hug me and thank me or some similar parent-y thing, but these days it’s one of our funniest Christmas memories.

Besides, I totally taped George Michael songs from the radio over her 900-hour epic Nancy Drew cassettes.

I am a horrible human being, because every time I go Christmas shopping I end up buying something for myself.

Yesterday I took my sisters Christmas shopping in the afternoon after sleeping for awhile.

I’m a terrible, disorganized Christmas shopper. Unlike some people (ahem, Sammi) who walk into a store knowing what they want for each person and where it is, I wander around aimlessly for hours looking for something that “speaks” to me.

Well.

What “spoke” to me first yesterday was the $9.95 sale tag on The Polyphonic Spree CD at the Record Exchange.

So I had to buy it. For me.

Then we went to Target and Wal-Mart and I picked up a few things, but I also picked up the Christmas spirit, finally, if “Christmas spirit” is synonymous with “murderous rage and hatred for all mankind.”

After several more stops and a driving pattern around town that made no logical sense whatsoever, I think I’ve finally finished my Christmas shopping. Maybe. If I don’t decide in the next few days that all the stuff I’ve chosen sucks and go get more gifts to make my sucky gifts look like part of a bigger plan, which I have been known to do on more than one occasion.

Now I just have to get it all wrapped. And I totally suck at wrapping gifts so I shall be enlisting the help of my wrapping-gifted sisters on this matter.

In other news, I feel like crap and I may go home early today. But not before lunch, because lunch will be good.