Year in Review, 2006

Two thousand six began in a dingy bar just south of Erie, Pennsylvania. The frigid cold and last minute plans chased me and an old friend inside where a board was spread with sausage sandwiches, sauerkraut, potato salad and pickles. Small draft beers were a buck each and the crowd was unusually friendly. A few friendly faces joined us in the countdown and I spent the first half hour of this year discussing Blue Highways and travels with a washed up organic famer whose name I have forgotten. But it was a great random conversation destined to frame the theme of this year for me as one of strange new beginnings.

It was a year that started and ended with well organized plans for moving, again. First loading boxes from Bala Cynwyd to Downingtown and now prepping for a slide up Dickinson Street in South Philadelphia. I'm getting to good at this and it's time to buy a house in 2007.

A little cloud of anxiety followed me as I took a fancy trip to Las Vegas where the dice were mean but the food was incredible during an unnecessarily unnecessary $400 dinner-for-two extravaganza at Paris.

Northeast Philly isn't as mysterious anymore after my first real school gig at New Foundations Charter. I already miss the impossibly busy schedule of student teaching at Cynwyd and still working nights, oh nights, oh nights, oh nights. Room 4P and twenty-four 9- and 10-year-olds. I miss them all so much. I discovered a real love for teaching. This was the best new beginning of 2006.

I bought a car. Death of a Public Storage Locker. Sirius radio.Parents remain cancer free. Six Year anniversary at Penn earned me a briefcase. I think the leather is fake. Discovered Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary. Laughed at Rock Horror Puppet Show. Conneaut Lake Amusement Park and the nation's oldest coaster and a young friend's first ride. Box seats at Phillies, Flyers, Sixers, what did I do to deserve such a friend? Cell phone survives another year. Lost four cats in Seattle forever. Thankful for a handful of great friends from coast to coast. Ate bushels of blueberries in 2006.

It was a hot summer in Philadelphia and I think I fell in love. I know I did and 2007 holds so much wonder. Talk about strange new beginnings.

But the strangest new beginning is a welcome end. I finished grad school and became a certified elementary school teacher in 2006. Took long enough. Shit.

And everybody knows it's windy...

I lost my balance on the street tonight. A gust of wind down Spruce Street in West Philly pushed me to the ground. That was a first. Tonight's fierce windstorm is welcome in the city it blows around the city's flatulence and relocates tiny bits of trash from neighborhood to neighborhood. The wind unites neighborhoods in the true spirit of brotherly love.

Two more days of student teaching. It gets harder and harder to believe that the path is now so short. I have a full day to myself on Monday (Mrs. P is away) and then fun and games (science test review) on Tuesday. I hope I can fit in a game of "seven-up", I've been dying to let the kids play.

Play, play, play.