December 31, 2013

Once again I didn't do much with my day. It all pretty much happened without leaving much of an impression on me. The only thing I really remember is lighting the candle I got for Christmas. It made my room smell pretty freaking good.

Tonight I went over to my friend's mom's house for dinner. They made vegetable soup and separated out a portion in a second pot for me before adding in the hamburger to theirs. It was really good soup. After dinner we all played Scrabble. I started off the first game really strong but then started sucking. That game ended up going on a lot longer than it should have because my friend had included too many letters in the bag. At one point I ended up with four E's, two U's, and an A. It was rough but I never had to skip a turn. In the second game my friend's girlfriend bowed out to work on a jigsaw puzzle but we had the correct number of letters and the game went a little faster. In the first game I think I end up last but in the second game I moved up to second. My friend's mom won both games by a lot. In the second game she beat my score and my friend's score combined.

After that we sat around and watched TV for awhile after his mom went to bed but they ended up calling it a night a little after eleven o'clock. So I drove around town listening to a '90s music countdown on the radio. I texted my sister to see if she was up and she was and said I could come over but her husband was also there and I'm not a fan so I decided to stick with the solitude and good music of my car. Later on she suggested my dad so I texted him when I finally had to go to the bathroom and no place was open, and he was still up. He had taken a late nap and my brother had just gotten home from a movie, so he was up listening to the scanners. I learned that the ambulance that pulled out in front of me on the way over was headed to a nearby town for someone who had pretty much already died, code black, but the person on the scene had to do CPR on the person until the ambulance arrived so they could hook him up to the machine and verify there was nothing there. That is a long time to do CPR. We sat in the living room and talked about a bunch of stuff but a lot of the conversation focused on his fellow firefighter with PTSD and then the multiple calls over the years my dad has gone on over the years for fires and EMS that still stick with my dad. It was a really good conversation. I have mentioned how those have been lacking in my life and I've had several recently. That certainly won't be something that is maintained unfortunately, but I have been enjoying the opportunities.

I didn't plan on staying over there very long but ended up leaving just before three o'clock in the morning. Those three hours flew by. The only thing I was looking forward to tonight was seeing what was going to happen in Animal Crossing because there was a big standee in town with a countdown. The townsfolk all came out and there were fireworks and it was pretty cool. But I got to hang out with my friend. I also got to see the fireworks over Bristol via an iPad via a livestream. Quality-wise it was a bit crap but technology-wise it was incredible. I saw the New Years fireworks for a country six hours away through the wonder of the iPad and the internet. When you really stop to think about it, that is freaking incredible. I also got to have a really good conversation with my dad. I didn't really plan on doing anything with the end of my year beyond playing my video game. Turned out to be a pretty good last day of the year.