2010: The end of the "Oh-somethings"

My Dad was inquiring over the holidays how we would refer to this new decade. You just can't say "oh-ten," he said. "That sounds stupid." I told him it was being referred to as "twenty ten" and he seemed satisfied with that.

The end of the "oh-something" years has me thinking about how much has changed in the past decade. Allow me to sound like a 90 year old woman here for one second but I actually remember New Years Eve 1999 like it was yesterday. Laura and I had new boyfriends. We went to two parties. I funneled something from a cardboard party horn (there's a picture. It's epic). We drank Jungle Juice like silly teenagers and my Dad drove us to Tina's place around 12:30 where we ate muffins and acted like idiots till the wee hours of the morning. Tina rolled in the snow with no coat on. Laura and Scott had screaming contests and stair runs. I asked Laura what she thought would happen in "the year 2000" and she matter-of-factly said: "There's still gonna be snow on the ground." I thought it was the funniest thing ever. The world didn't explode. IT systems remained in tact. The hugely ominous Y2K came and went without too much disaster.

And now, it's ten years later. TEN!

I can't even possibly begin to recount the major milestones of the past decade with any sort of brevity.

What I can say is that for the first time in those ten years, 2009 was the only year that I actually wrote down my year's goals on a piece of paper and for all you skeptics out there, it's true what they say. By writing them down, I accomplished every single one. I ran my first 10 km race, I got a new job, I completed 10 speeches in Toastmasters (insert giant nerd joke here) and got my certificate, among other things. While I'm still contemplating the goals for the year ahead, I think this will become a new practice for me. It's certainly satisfying to look back on a page of check marks at the end of it all.

So, goodbye "oh-somethings." All in all, you were good to me.