I finally got around to uploading the pictures I took around New Year's, which means I can get around to writing about what we did for New Year's.

Obviously, I spent Christmas with my parents, but after spending a couple of days at home I went to Sweden to spend a few days with some friends in a house they'd rented. The place was huge and is usually used for school trips, but friends of mine go there on occasion to relax and they'd rented it for New Year's and invited us to come join them.

I spent five days there doing nothing but eat, sleep, read, watch movies and shows, play games, talk, go for walks, play poker, and listen to music (we listened to The Postal Service a lot and decided that Dizzee Rascal kinda sucks). My phone didn't work, we couldn't get online, and because all the stuff we watched was stored on harddiscs I didn't watch television for five days. So I had no idea what was going on in the world, which was nice for a change. Obviously, we had to go into town to get food and snacks, so we would've probably noticed if something huge had happened, but we didn't buy papers and like I said my phone didn't work, so I wasn't in contact with anyone during those days. It's funny, because we think we so desperately need to check mail and get text messages all the time, but it's actually very relaxing to just chill and tell the world you're not around.

A main theme during our trip was No Limit Texas Hold'em Poker. Recently, I mentioned poker in another entry and since then some of my friends have caught the poker bug. So we watched several episodes of the Celebrity Poker show and a couple of other shows about poker tournaments and obviously we also played a few games. At the same time I started reading Stefan Fatsis' excellent book Word Freak about competitive Scrabble players, so that week I learned more about people obsessed with games than ever before.

New Year's Eve itself was very low key and nice, because nobody really felt like drinking a lot, so we made dinner, listened to music and just talked, which was cool. New Year's has a tendency to get built up so it has to be the party of the year and then it always disappoints. So just hanging out and relaxing was a nice change of pace.

It's not like a lot of other stuff is going on right now. According to the news unemployment is at the highest it's been in five years here, so there aren't a lot of jobs to apply for right now. However, I did get around to finishing my submission for the Coupland Award Contests, so that was a little exciting. In case you have submitted a story or never got around to it you have until February 3rd to submit or resubmit an entry. Turns out the discs with all the submissions were stolen and everyone has to resumbit their entries. Just thought I'd pass that info along.

I hadn't written a fictitious story since high school, so it was a little weird trying to make up a story, but as soon as the framework came into place it went okay. I like to tell myself the reason I haven't written a book or a screenplay is because I haven't thought of the right story yet. I'm convinced I could write interesting and funny dialogue if I just had a plot to tie it to, but because I don't want to write about a bank robbery or a murder I just haven't done it yet.
So when I actually got an idea around Christmas it wasn't too difficult to write a 1000 words, because I knew how to start and how to end and working on the stuff inbetween was the fun part. I very much doubt I'll win, but it was fun to write in a different way than usual, so I'm just glad I did it and sent it in.

The next project I have to work on is preparing a lecture on Andy Warhol, which I'll be giving later this month. I've been asked to hold a lecture to about 130 high school kids, so I have to figure out what my focus will be and which paintings I'll use as examples. I haven't really studied Warhol lately, so I'll actually have to seriously hit the books, so I get quotes, facts, dates, places, and people right, so I don't feed them incorrect information. It's going to be an interesting experience though and I really hope there'll be time for a Q&A as I find that more interesting than just rambling off facts for hours. But the lecture isn't for another two weeks, so I should have plenty of time to prepare and I'll be sure to let you know later how it went.