1/2/01

Yes, my diary has a new name. And a new, crappy 2001 index page. I'll make the page look better later. I was supposed to have my own domain by now, too, to go along with the whole new look for 2001, but there have been some technical problems so look for tight-science.com to be online sometime in the near future, but not right now.

So, the last few days have been pretty good. I spent the last couple of days of 2000 watching what were probably the two best movies of the year: "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" which I saw on Saturday night, and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" which I saw Sunday afternoon. Of the two, I think I liked "O Brother" better. For some reason the Coen brothers' movies always kind of stick in my head for several days after I see them. Ever since I saw it, little snippets have been running through my head and making me laugh out loud. This is not to say that laughing out loud at my own thoughts is anything unusual for me. I have a tendency to space out at times, and often talk to myself and stuff while I'm walking down the street or something. This tendency seems to be getting stronger and stronger as I get older, or maybe it's just that I've stopped caring that people think I'm strange for talking to myself.

Anyway, after seeing "Crouching Tiger," I rushed back home to get ready for the party. I was still in the process of cooking when my first guests, Lunesse and Atomicboy, arrived just before 9 p.m. They'd told me in advance that they'd be showing up a bit early, because they rode over on their motorcycles and had to change from their biker clothes into their party clothes. They cleaned up very nicely and even brought along a bottle of wine and a bottle of champagne.

My doorbell rang again a few minutes later, and it was another couple I knew...except that I didn't know until then that they were a couple. It was a guy who's another student in my graduate program and a woman who I know from back before I started grad school when I was working as a lab tech at UCSF and she was working in a lab that collaborated with ours. I had no idea that they even knew each other, and when I told them that they informed me that they'd been living together for a year and a half.

Soon afterward, Andy showed up, and then a bunch of other classmates. I made margaritas using Martha Stewart's recipe which turned out to be surprisingly potent, although I guess it shouldn't be so surprising considering that Martha Stewart is one of those wealthy Connecticut housewife types. Anyway, after a couple of margaritas, I was feeling pretty sociable, and spent the rest of the evening flitting around from one conversing group to another. I actually had a really good time, and almost didn't even notice when midnight struck. We watched the last ten seconds of the countdown on TV and then I went around the room and gave everyone a peck on the cheek.

Anyway, the party went on and on, and eventually people started to leave. However, at one point I wandered into the kitchen and realized that a couple of my guests had been drinking shots of the leftover tequila I hadn't put in the margaritas. I didn't have a problem with this until one of them started spitting something up while sitting on my couch and then ran to the bathroom to vomit, where he stayed for the next hour or more. Periodically, we could hear the shower running while he was camped out in the bathroom. I kept knocking on the door every ten minutes or so and checking to see if he was all right, and every time, he said that he was. But since I'd spent much of the evening drinking, it wasn't long before I had to use the bathroom myself (to urinate, not to vomit). I knocked on the door and announced that I needed the bathroom back, but after another ten minutes or so, my guest was still occupying it. I tried again, and then a third time, and eventually, I decided that I wasn't going to get into the bathroom any time soon, so I abandoned my one other remaining guest and went across the street to school and used the bathroom there.

When I got back from school, the bathroom was still occupied and it was 3:30 a.m. and I was really tired, so I pulled out my futon and started putting the sheets and blankets back on it. The one other guest got the hint and took off. I was still sort of worried about my friend who was still in the bathroom, but I was afraid that he'd be embarrassed if I forced my way in, and I couldn't think of anything else I could do to help him, so I took off my shoes and fell asleep with my clothes on.

I woke up about three hours later, when the sun came up. My puking guest had finally left the bathroom and was lying on the floor next to my bed, in fact, practically under the bed, asleep.

I got up and went to the bathroom, where I found my friend's pants, socks, wallet and sneakers, along with a red pen, and my bathmat all sitting in my bathtub completely soaking wet. Hanging on the back of the bathroom door was his shirt, which was dry. I hadn't noticed before, but my friend was wearing only his jacket and his boxer shorts. I threw a blanket over him and tried to give him a pillow, but he was asleep, so I just kind of put the pillow next to his head.

I then headed into the kitchen to start cleaning up, but apparently, my friend had taken it upon himself to clean my kitchen sometime between throwing up and passing out on my floor. He'd done a really thorough job--he'd washed nearly all the dishes and thrown out all the stray paper cups and plates, so there wasn't much to do. Anyway, I was impressed and quite touched that he'd gone to such effort in his incapacitated state, so I decided to pay him back by throwing his pants and socks in the clothes dryer so that he wouldn't have to walk home in sopping wet clothes. Unfortunately, I didn't notice that his student ID was still in his pants pocket, so when I pulled it out, it was all warped and faded. I felt really bad about that.

I didn't want to throw the sneakers in the dryer, so I stuffed them with newspaper (a shoe-drying trick I learned from a rafting guide in Colorado this summer) and sat them on top of my radiator to dry off a bit.

I had woken up still feeling a bit woozy, so I spent the next three or four hours waiting for my friend to wake up, drinking tea and playing Sim City. Eventually my friend woke up and quickly staggered home. He wouldn't even let me give him a glass of water.

I didn't do much else for the rest of the day. I didn't go running. I didn't even really leave the house until that evening, when, motivated by cabin fever, I finally decided to go for a walk.

Today it was back to work. It felt good to be back to normal. Strangely, I've had no trouble adjusting to writing /01 at the end of the date. I think it's because '01 seems more normal than '00 which doesn't seem to me like a year at all.

So, while I started the year with a man passed out on my floor in his underwear, it's been off to a pretty mundane start otherwise.

The forum: The best movie of 2000.