New Year's Eve 2020

Yet another New Year's party I was not invited to.

2020 was not a good year. For anyone.

Here's to hoping 2021 will be better--for all of us.

New Year's Eve 2014

This will be waiting for me when I get home tonight. I hope something festive awaits all y'all tonight. Have fun and get home safe.

Holidaze 12/31/14

New Year's Eve 2013

This angel candle will be lighting my way safely into 2014. I'll be at home tonight, drinking a bottle of wine, eating something yummy and watching film noir classics. May your New Year's Eve be safe and yummy, too.

Holidaze 12/31/12

New Year's Eve

You all know how much I love lighting candles. You may also know how much I love angels. Put the two together? Awesome sauce.

May this lovely pine-scented angel candle light you (and my) way to a (hopefully) brighter New Year.

New Year's Eve

I don't go out on New Year's Eve anymore, mostly because I never had that much fun when I did. But whatever you do this evening--whether it be go out, go away or stay in and curl up--I hope you are safe, happy and looking forward to all the good stuff that could, should and (hopefully) will happen in 2011. Happy New Year, everyone.

Holidaze: 12/31/09

See you in 2010, cool kids.

Happy New Beer...Er, Year!

I spent New Year's Eve quietly at La Casa del Terror, with a shepherd's pie, a bottle of inexpensive (but tasty) white wine fished out of the discount bin of one of (many) neighborhood liquor stores, Olivia curled up at my feet (something she's done a lot more lately) and some incessant channel-flipping from one network celebration to another. (The local coverage on Chicago's ABC affiliate featured two of the hosts shivering out on a deck at the still-under-construction Trump Tower--at one point, they were huddling together for warmth, and I'm not so sure they were kidding.)

At around ten minutes after midnight, after replying to JB's text-message New Year's salutation, I went to bed. Excitement! Given how disastrous most of the New Year's Eves spent out and about have been, though, going to bed early wasn't such a bad thing.

New Year's Day was arguably even quieter, with little more accomplished than straightening up La Casa a bit (it needs much more than "a bit" of straightening, but this will take time and effort) and packing up items I wanted to send to either storage or the Dumpster out back. I unearthed my exercycle (which had become a de facto coat rack) and weight set in the hopes of using both more frequently in '09 and put away all the Christmas decorations for yet another year.

I haven't made any resolutions for this year--since, in years past, I've broken most of them before January is over, I don't see the point. I just want this year to be an improvement over last year. Given how hard 2008 sucked, that shouldn't be too difficult.

If the Fates Allow

2008 is nearly over, down now to less than 48 hours.

About. Fucking. Time.

It's no state secret that this has been a pretty lousy year. The high point? When Red Secretary won an Oscar--I don't think I've ever been happier for someone else's good fortune.

After that? Pretty much all downhill.

Overstatement? Oversimplification? Yes and yes. 2008 wasn't all pain and sadness, all heartache and loss. There were good times with good friends. Fun was had. Not enough fun, to be sure, but is there ever enough fun?

It could be that the year seemed much worse than it actually was because I came into it full of hope. Hope for creative projects that continued to percolate, but never reached a rolling boil. Hope for friendships that had lain dormant for years and were showing signs of life, but now appear to have died entirely. Hope for good things for the sweet, wonderful people around me that just didn't happen in the abundance that they should have.

But now, 2008 is almost in the rear-view mirror where it belongs. I'll spend the last couple of evenings at La Casa del Terror, petting Olivia, watching bad horror movies and sipping cheap...um, inexpensive wine.

Most importantly, I'll move into the New Year with the knowledge that it'll be better than this year was. (Yes, I know--that's setting the bar pretty low. At this point, I'll take whatever improvement I can get, yo.) Or, as one of my MySpace friends put it, "If you don't have a happy new year, I'll beat you up. In the least sexy way possible."

If you think I'm going to argue with that, you're crazier than I am.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Light the Way

When I was unemployed from September 2005 through February 2006, I did the usual things to try and change the situation. I sent e-mails. Made phone calls. Answered want ads. Networked.

Toward the end of that dark period, I also did one unusual thing--unusual for me, anyway: I lit candles.

In whatever apartment I've lived, I've lit candles, usually of the scented variety and usually appropriate to the season at hand. (Pumpkin Spice for Halloween; Evergreen for Christmas.) Sometimes, I light only one or two. Occasionally, I light enough that I don't need to turn the lights on. Once, on my 40th birthday, I lit 40 candles atop the kitchen table that once belonged to my great-grandmother--and, in the process, singed most of the hair off of my right forearm. (I would have made a lousy pyromaniac.)

My point? Lighting candles is, for me, part of daily routine anyway. What was unusual was that I was lighting the candles not for fragrance, illumination or celebration, but for the sake of sending word out to the world (and beyond) that I needed, at the very least, guidance.

I'm not particularly religious. I didn't grow up in a worshipful household, and the few church services I went to as a child bored me stiff. I do, however, believe that something watches over what we do and how we do it, though I'm not entirely sure what role, if any, whoever (or whatever) is watching over us plays in our daily lives. Maybe he/she/it/they guide every step we take, every decision we make. (I sure hope that's not the case, because that means that the Great Whatever has a pretty sick sense of humor.) Maybe there's no guidance at all, but merely observation--the ultimate reality show. Or maybe there is participation, even intervention, but on a more selective basis. Who's doing the selecting? And how? Or why? Beats me.

At first, I just lit the votives I already had hanging around La Casa del Terror, putting the flame of the short, slender, metallic green Zippo to the wicks in the kitchen and saying to myself (and whoever/whatever might be listening), "Please, help me." I later switched to actual devotional candles--the long, tall glass jobs one can find in many grocery and drug stores (in Chicago, anyway). The first ones I bought had guardian angels on them, more because I like angels than because I believe they watch over me. I even found a little Hispanic grocery store in my neighborhood that sells vanilla-scented guardian angel candles, so I could say a prayer and hide the smell of the cat litter at the same time.

Later, though, I switched to candles devoted to St. Jude, the so-called "patron saint of lost causes." (Not that I ever really believed that finding a new job was a "lost cause"; it just sometimes looked that way through the veil of despair.) I'd light the candle, watch the light flicker behind the sticker with St. Jude's face on it, and ask for whatever help I could get.

And help did eventually arrive--first in the form of a part-time, short-term warehouse gig, and then, a month later, in the form of a full-time job downtown.

Now, do I believe that my prayers (if you can even call them that, given my lack of formal religious faith) alone made things happen? No. There were many friends praying for me as well, and that wealth of positive energy may have had an effect on the fabric of the universe. Or maybe lighting the candles altered my frame of mind, made me more hopeful, and maybe that changed the way things were. Or maybe it was just one big honkin' coincidence.

Whatever the case, I got a job and have stayed employed throughout the remainder of the year. But that doesn't mean that I stopped lighting candles. I still flick the Zippo at least once a night, no matter what time I get in, for a variety of reasons:

Sometimes I light candles for friends or family who are in ill health, like VB and Dee, both of whom have spent time in the hospital this year, and also Embee, who had a stroke in July and is still on the mend. I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on television. There isn't jack I can do for them medically, and that's a pretty helpless feeling. I can, though, light the candles and hope for the fastest, most complete recovery possible.

Sometimes I light candles for friends who have gone through a romantic breakup. Sometimes I hope that they get back together. Sometimes I hope that they don't. (Some breakups are for the best, for both parties.) Either way, I'm usually friend to both the splitter and the splitee. Breaking up with someone you loved (or may, in fact, still love) is never easy, and it's worse during the holidays. I know four couples that have recently split or are in the process of splitting. I feel for them all. At the very least, I can wish them peace of mind and heart; when I light the candle for them, I do just that.

Sometimes I light candles people no longer in my life, like Red Secretary, whom I haven't heard from in more than two years and never expect to hear from again. Why, you might reasonably ask, would I bother lighting a candle for her, especially given that her life is pretty fabulous right now, what with the memoir she got published earlier this year selling well enough to merit a paperback reprinting that hit bookstores this week (I saw it in Borders Thursday night) and the screenplay she wrote due to start filming early next year under the direction of that guy who did Thank You for Smoking (which was probably the best movie I saw this year, so this new movie stands an excellent chance of being not just good, but damn good)? Because I hope her life stays fabulous. Just like it always should have been.

RS and I aren't friends anymore. Maybe we will be again; maybe we won't. I can still wish the best for her, though, now and always.

Sometimes, I even light candles for people I've never met and likely never will.

One of my favorite blogs to visit is written by actress Pauley Perrette, one of the stars of NCIS. It's not about her job, but about her life and the lives of those around her (friends, pets, significant others, etc.), and even though she writes everything with line breaks (like a poem), it's still all pretty entertaining.

Recently, she wrote a post about her friend Katherine, who had unfortunately been on the pedestrian end of an automobile-hits-pedestrian accident, and was not doing well at all. "She has been in ICU for days," Paulie wrote. "It does not look good right now."

"Sorry to impose," she continued, "but I know there are so many readers from around the world here who pray. We need a miracle. We need prayers." So I wrote an e-mail to Pauley, told her about my candle-lighting ritual and promised to light a candle each night for Katherine, her husband and their families. (I did not get an e-mail back, nor did I expect one.) So I added a candle for Katherine to the group I was already lighting and hoped for the best.

Les than a week later, Pauley posted the following: "I got a message today saying that Katherine's improvement was "nothing short of miraculous" in the last few days. Yup, that's right...I KNOW EXACTLY what it was...All of you beautiful people praying around the world. Thank you so, so much." A couple of weeks later, Pauley reported that Katherine had gone home from the hospital.

I'm not going to break my arm patting myself on the back (or, as JB's Dad would have said, "pinning a bouquet on my ass") over Katherine's recovery. After all, I was just one of many people in many places all over this big, sometimes beautiful globe of ours who was sending best wishes her way.

But I can light a candle. Or two. Or five. I can send positive vibes out into the ether and hope that's enough. Maybe I'm wasting my time. Maybe nobody's actually listening. But do I really believe that? Do I believe that sending all this positive energy out into the Great Whatever is just a colossal waste of time?

No. I do not.

Tonight, it's New Year's Eve. As has been my custom for the past few years, I'm staying in, ordering a pizza from Marie's and drinking a few cans of Red Dog. I'll pet the cats (at least until the gunfire starts at midnight, when they'll both disappear, likely for the remainder of the evening), watch vintage movies (usually something with Fred and Ginger or Groucho, Harpo and Chico) and wait for 2007 to arrive.

And I'll light candles. For friends. For family. For people I don't even know. For myself. And their light will keep me warm.

Happy New Year, everybody.

No More Tears

I could spend this entry--and many, many more--expounding on all the reasons why 2003 was an evil, foul, vile year.

But most (if not all) of those events that made last year suck so hard (and not in a good way) have already been covered on these pages. It would be a massive waste of my space and your time to dredge any of them up here yet again.

Let's just say that every time I thought I'd cried myself dry, I found a new reservoir of tears, a new reason to cry; every time I thought things had gone as low as they could go, the elevator sped down to a new sublevel of pain and the sprinkler system went off yet again.

I made it through the year, though. I survived. Like always. But rather than merely survive, I'd like to live a bit more. And since I have no great desire to be redundant--not today, anyway--I prefer to look ahead. 2003 is nothing but a memory now, and a mostly bad one at that.

(Though, to be entirely fair, it wasn't all bad. It's just that the worst in life always overshadows the best. It's always easier to bitch about what you don't have than to appreciate what you do.)

But the old year dies quietly, with a Reggio's pizza, a bottle of fine Champagne left over from this year's HMB (courtesy of Sailor J), a Bela Lugosi movie or two, and a large white cat curled uyp in my lap as the fireworks exploded over Monroe Harbor and guns were emptied into the air just a few doors away in all directions.

And the new year is here. A fresh start. A clean slate. Mostly symbolic, it's true. My credit card bills still need paying. My rent is still due. I still have to go to work tomorrow. And my bed remains nothing more than a place to try to sleep every night.

But 2004 has finally arrived, a year fairly lactating with great promise. Beginnings. Endings. New directions. Challenges. Changes for the better. In direction. In career. In health, wealth and mood.

And, more than anything else, hope. For better things. For happier times. For dreams. For life. For living.

Any day that makes me feel this good--this hopeful--can't be all bad.

Happy New Year, everybody.

Nothing Changes on New Year's Day

...Except, as it happens, this Web site.

Welcome, my friends, to the NEW Adoresixtyfour. Thanks to extraordinary, substantial help from Red Secretary, who created the new template for the pages of this site, I think I finally have this thing set up to the point that I can update it easily and do what I want with the pages, like create links wherever I want (like above or on the Links page, which actually has LINKS on it now) or upload pictures with greater ease.

So look around at the new pages. I'll post some real content here next week.

I stayed in last night--just me, a DiGiorno Four Cheese Pizza and a sixer of Hornsby's. I hope you all had a safe and warm New Year's as well.

Later...

(NOTE: The old site was subsequently redesigned at least once more before shifting over to Blogger, but all later designs incorporated the design elements Red Secretary introduced, and all employed the HTML knowledge RS imparted to me way back when--Adoresixtyfour, 11/30/09)