Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot...

New Year's day. Another year is over. Who can believe it?

I'm not going to get too reflective here. People do that at New Year's and I get why, I just find it all a bit contrived.

Instead, a few quick highlights from 2004. I'll restrain from philosophical musings about them, just give it to you straight. Tonight at your own various celebrations, I'm sure you'll get your fill of drunken waxing poetic, so Beaches is gonna play it cool.

1. Crown and I bought a house. Shit. That's nuts. Enough said, really.

2. Scarb and the Dog got knocked up and as a result are about to give birth at any moment. In fact, those crazy kids managed to conceive the SAME week that I bought my place, hence completely overshadowing my own exciting milestone by about, well, a thousand times. Not that I'm complaining. I can't possibly imagine a greater gift to come from this past year. The promise of a new little person. It's too cool for school and I can't wait to meet him outside of the womb. Looks like the arrival of little Pecker is going to be one of the highlights for the approaching New Year. Despite my gut feeling that the little tyke would show up early, he seems to be hangin' on for a 2005 debut instead. Little cutie -- already pulling the wool over Auntie Beaches' eyes. Got to love him.

3. Dings got hitched and moved all the way across the country. The first half is exciting and the second half sucks butt. I miss her. The holidays were not the same without her. But she's happy and so I'm happy for her! It's amazing that she could take so many leaps of faith in one short, action-packed year.

Seems 2004 kinda had that affect on all of us. Leaps of faith. Let's make that the theme for 2004.

4. Commie retired. Now him and Moms are both well on their way to settling in for a life of leisure. They deserve it.

5. Weirdo got a new job that he really likes. For those of you who don't know Weirdo, you might think, "so what?" Is that really worthy of making the 2004 milestone list? For those of you who do know Weirdo, you're nodding your head and going, "uh huh, that's a good one." His new hours are whack though and as a result I'm seeing very little of him. That sucks because he is a huge part of my life and a person that I really truly like a lot.

This conveniently brings me to my New Year's day wrap up. The resolution. Mine's simple this year. Simple but, I think, profound at the same time. Here it goes:

Spend more time with people who I really, really like.

Sounds obvious, right? Wrong. Think about it carefully for a moment. Consider the people in your life who you not only love, not only care about, but genuinely really enjoy spending time with. Now think of the people that you actually see most of the time. Do the two correlate positively? If they do then you're already there. If they don't, then maybe your efforts are in the wrong place? For me, it's not that I'm spending a lot of time with people I don't like, it's only that I'm not spending ENOUGH time with the people that I do. So there you have it.

I'm going to make more of an effort to see my loved ones. More of an effort to build relationships with people that I really enjoy, but don't currently make enough time for. And just learn to appreciate the people around me who have something great to offer, not just to my life, but to the world.

Happy New Year everyone. Much love.