The Round Up

I was going to go to a club to ring in the new year. But I'm not really the club kind of person, so now I have a stomach bug. No need to dwell on that though, let's sum up the year in a pithy fashion. As one does you know.

• Favourite Album: Mark Ronson, Record Collection. Possibly one of the best albums I've heard in a long time, Mr. Ronson proves with Record Collection that he can in fact write and produce original music without it sounding crap. Save for a couple of tracks I'm not particularly fond of Record Collection really is a brilliant album.
• What I Actually Listened to For Most of the Year: Glee. The thing about Glee is that they pick songs that are basically comfort food for ears. They aren't terribly adventurous and for the most part very well known. So when you want something simply to listen to Glee is an excellent option because the artists are talented and songs are comfortable. So that's mostly what I've actually been listening to.
• Favourite Film: Tie between The Social Network and Inception. The odd thing about this years is that I've seen a lot of great movies. It started in London when going to see a movie was a cheaper way to spend a couple of hours in central London than say, seeing a play or something of that sort. And while I could go to a museum might seem even cheaper, a movie is far more entertaining. In any event I became accustomed to going to a movie by myself, so I decided to do that. Multiple times. So I got to see a number of really great movies. But of all the movies I saw, my favourites were definitely Inception and The Social Network. Both were brilliantly devised, directed, and acted. However I can't really pick just one, so I suggest you go see both. Or you know, rent them when they come out on DVD.
• Best Book I Read This Year (That Really Wasn't Published This Year): Amongst the Thugs. Not only did it cover a topic I'm interested in (football hooligans) it also held within its covers the most disgusting scene I've ever read (which I won't commit to electronic paper for my more sensitive readers.) Thugs is an elegantly written book about a very inelegant topic that gives the reader an insiders prospective on a culture that is very hard to get involved in. Do yourself a favor and read it. And look out for descriptions of eyes.
• Thing I Hope Will Happen in 2011: That I get into law school. I may not be sure that I actually want to practice law, but I do know that I want to at least get into law school. Everything else is just frosting on the cake. Though I would like one of the following bands to start working on an album: Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, or Arctic Monkeys. That would be very nice.

So that's the round up. I haven't done the best job of writing this year, but I think making resolutions is stupid so I won't do that. However I can promise that I'll be updating more, simply because I'm going to be taking a class that involves blogging. So whatever I write for that class will be posted in this blog (as well as the one I keep for school which gets update even less than this one.) So here's to 2011, may it go more smoothly than this year.

The Bi-Monthly Update

All bullet points. Such is life.

• I miss London. I suspect that I will say that from now until I get back there, when I will immediately stop missing London and start missing DC. Right now though I miss London and I miss it with every fibre of my being.
• The situation with my roommates is just below civil. There haven't been any out right confrontations, largely because I hate confrontations but also because it's a week until we all go home. My hope remains to be that when we get back things will settle into a civil living arrangement that I'll be able to stand and that the ill-will which currently exists will have dissipated. A month away from each other should help, or at least I hope it will help. And if not then I'll do what I did second semester freshmen year which is stay away from the apartment as much as humanely possible. Which will be made easier by the fact that...
• I'm going to be doing a credit overload next semester. My adviser (and the school really) have failed me again and so I will be taking 20 credits next semester. One of these credits (quite literally 1) will be weight lifting. And here I thought I had finished with PE junior year of high school. Still I'm only taking 3 upper level classes and none of them are history. So it shouldn't be too bad right? Right. Optimism, always optimism.

Did I mention it's finals? Yes, I've got exams Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. I leave on Saturday in the morning and then a month off. So until next time, don't panic.