Anywho, its a new year and all that good stuff, so I feel as though I should share my resolutions with you.  I assume you’re terribly interested.  Its an exciting one.  Are you ready?  This year I resolve to… something or other.  I’m struggling to come up with a resolution.  Or at least the kind of resolution you can share in polite company when asked by some stupid acquaintance, “What’s your New Year’s resolution?”  I’m think my REAL resolution, which is to catch a wild moose then castrate it then watch it develop devil antlers, would confuse and horrify some of my more uptight friends.  So, I feel like I need another resolution, one that is more pc.  But I still want this resolution to be something I can accomplish.  Here are some ideas I’ve been bandying about:

• Play tambourine in a garage band comprised exclusively of 14 year old boys.
• Conquer my fear of throwing up (this one may require me becoming bulimic, but I’m open)
• Mail Stone Philips one love letter a day for 365 days
• Teach Coco Spanish so that she and I can have secret conversations in front of Ben

That’s all I’ve come up with so far, so I was thinking it would be awesome if you could share your resolution and if any of them are any good I’ll just do that.  We’ll be resolution buddies!  Our bond shall be unbreakable.

Next topic.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation New Year’s Eve

I am old and like to go to bed early, lets just start with that.

When discussing what we would do for New Year’s, Ben and I agreed that we wanted to keep it fairly low key.  Something fun, but not too raucous.  We decided on the Boston Pops Orchestra.  I love classical music, I love Symphony Hall, done and done.  I bought tickets for New Year’s Eve without looking too closely at the program for the evening.

Fast forward to last night.  Ben and I arrive at Symphony Hall, we look like this:

Almost everyone else looked like this:

Clearly something was amiss.  See, what I had failed to notice when I bought our tickets was that Amanda Palmer, from The Dresden Dolls, was going to be accompanying the Pops.  And as such, the audience was full of teenagers dressed as homeless people from the 20s?  Or something.  I’m not hip, so I could be getting it wrong.  Mixed in with the Amanda Palmer fans were some frightened elderly, who also thought they were just going to a nice classical concert, but were in fact walking into something entirely different.  Something that involved performance art.  And a silent film where some old guy has a baby, then feeds his baby a watch, and then the baby explodes into light, and then the old guy drinks vodka.  That shit totally happened.  I saw this silent film IN REAL LIFE and was unable to stop laughing.  The people sitting next to me did not appreciate my lack of appreciation.

There was a variety of openning acts, some confusing (see above) and some awesome.  April Smith and The Great Picture Show played one of the smaller lounges in Symphony Hall and they were awesome.  So awesome that I wanted to have my picture taken with them, but I chickened out and just took a picture in front of their equipment while they were on break:

Side Note: Please excuse all the blurry photos.  We weren’t supposed to use our flash and neither Ben nor I could figure out how to take a non-blurry photo without a flash.  We finally broke the rules and took this photo from our seats:

This was also not appreciated.

I will say that the evening was wonderful.  Great music, great people watching, and I got to kiss a hot piece of ass at midnight:

The end.

Unrelated note: I am a finalist in the 20sb Bootlegger Awards for Funniest Blogger.  BLOWS MY MIND!  For anyone who nominated me, I really appreciate it.  You guys are awesome, and it makes my day to see my name in the same category as Lilu, Maxie, Nicole, Matt and Cheryl.  Its an honor just being nominated, etc., etc.

You know who has taken over my site?  JOHN!!!  DUN, Dun, dun!  Actually, John’s not scary at all.  I’m just trying to create some drama.  Truth be told, John’s a doll.

Now you may be asking yourself, “Self, why is this mysterious John taking over Pilgrim Congress?  And is he as offensive as the wench that usually runs this piss poor excuse for a blog?”  Let me answer those questions for you, friend! 

1.)  John and I are both members of 20sband we are participating in a blog swap.  John will be doing a guest post here, and I will be doing a guest post over on his site.  Please come and check it out. 

2.)  John is not at all offensive.  He is quite a writer though.  Also, he’s knows a ton about baseball.  My husband was very impressed.

3.)  I am not a wench, I’m a vigorous milk maid strumpet.  Please address me properly from now on.  Thank you. 

Enough tomfoolery!  Lets get down to business!  I now present to you, John of College Grad Real World:

First of all, thanks to Jill for allowing me to write on the blog. I certainly don’t have her Paint skills – heck I don’t even have Paint since I switched to a Mac last week – and I’m not nearly as funny, but I hope this does the trick for a day. I thought since Jill was talking about relationships, I’d talk about mine!

I have to say, I have really brilliant timing. Like down-to-the-second unbelievably amazing timing. For instance, I went to graduate school last June a single, carefree guy. And for a year, it stayed that way. There was this one night in March when I started talking to a girl from the program that I’d never met. (Who ironically went to the same high school as my father – talk about small worlds.) Of course the conversation that night probably didn’t paint me in a particularly flattering light. Also, I ended up calling her “bouncy.” (Not like a tennis ball bouncy, I meant vivacious – I was just a little drunk.)

Well, talk about a rocky – you might even say, “bouncy” start. So in June – when we finally started hanging out and playing Taboo with friends – I didn’t have the nerve to act on it either. I took until after we’d graduated and until just 60 hours before she left for London for 10 weeks. Yup, that was the perfect moment I’d been waiting for.

The impetus, as much does in life, came from a joke. It was moving day for my friend to her new apartment. As we pushed the dolly down middle of the street I said, “It’s our last game night. My last chance to corrupt Laura.” It gave us both a good chuckle – but as they (It turns out “they” are pretty smart.) say, “Much truth is said in jest.” Of course, nothing actually happened that night – besides me actually getting up the nerve to at least flirt with the girl – I’m shy!

The next night, after watching “Princess Protection Program” – on DVR no less – it was 3 a.m. when, over lovely conversation and a bottle of white wine, I – said to myself “schedules be damned” and finally got up the nerve to kiss Laura. We went to see “The Proposal” on our one true “date,” spent Saturday night talking and then on Sunday she was on a plane to London.

Since then, this is nothing like I’ve ever experienced. The emails are like books and the conversations are always amusing. I’ve never been one to talk on the phone, but I find myself spending hours talking to her on Skype. (And wishing that the 9.6 million other people who are online would get off so the connection would be smoother.)

Now, I guess we’re still in the part of the “relationship” – for lack of a better term – that people write sonnets or ballads over. Still, I find myself wishing I had things like time off, or plane tickets to London. And I find myself counting down the days until Sept. 9. (Of course, I should probably be counting down until like Sept. 11th? 12th? There’s that time off problem again.)

I’m pretty sure my timing could’ve been better. But sometimes you just have to make the most of the moment.

If you enjoyed this, well I’m glad, but I can’t promise anything similar on my blog, College Grad Real World. It truly is a collection of whatever I’m thinking about at the moment. That said, I hope you’ll take a moment to stop by and check it out.

Thanks again.

-John