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.