December 31, 1999 – January 1, 2000, Las Vegas:

December 31, 2009 – January 1, 2010, Durham

I don’t have any editorial. There’s a whole ten years in between those photos. It’s been a blur. I don’t want to string together some words to label the whole decade. Ages 24-34…these would seem to be the prime of my life. I’ll never get these years back. They were not what I wished they would be. I thought I wasn’t going to try to do this…well, I’ll just let the stream-of-consciousness take over…

Big picture…I hoped I’d overcome my demons and be in a good place by now…I’d have that one relationship I’d yearned for…I’d be doing something useful with my life…I’d have stability and support before my kidneys failed…which I didn’t figure would happen until my late 30s…though I thought of ‘age 35’ as the time I better have my sh*t together by. (I suppose I’ve still got a year in that case, although, in that case, I still thought I’d have kidney health).

This is a bad idea, to try to compose on-the-fly what ought to be a well-thought-out essay…I mean, taking the whole friggin decade…well, it’s a good use of the last 28 minutes of the year/decade…I’m not even drinking…I bought some cheap champagne at Target earlier, and I’ve found that I don’t like it…so this is sober writing/rambling…

Let me fill in the ’00-’10 timeframe with some more photos. Photos tend to shine a far more positive light on things than a narrative. I’ll throw in some comments to ensure there’s some balance…

And I’m going to do this quickly, so I’m done by midnight, although I don’t plan to turn on the TV. If I’m going to be alone right now, I’m not going to watch revelers in Times Square (with the stupid local shot of the Raleigh acorn) and Dick Clark smooching his wife.

2000: Blizzard

2001: Duke wins Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament

2002: H & C wedding, Tupelo, MS

2003: I live in God-lovin’ Knoxville, TN

2004: Y & L’s wedding, Kauai, HI

2005: D & S’s wedding, Cincinnati, OH; always the groomsman…

2006: Herman!

2007: M & S’s wedding, Capon Springs, WV

2008: San Francisco

2009: Swapping hybrids

Oh…I turned on the TV and saw Ryan Seacrest and Dick Clark and about forty seconds is all I can take..where’s that champagne?