new year’s eve – hannah ananas

What are you doin’ New Year’s Eve?

First off, I love the little video (from almost ten years ago!) and version of this from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. It is adorable and beautiful, and they are both adorable and beautiful in it. Anyway, to answer the question, I will be staying with my mother in a little beach-front-ish hotel on the main little island about an hour southeast of Houston: Galveston. Many people complain about it being dirty or something of the sort, but it is merely the clay soil we have that makes the water not-clear and brown most of the time. The sand is also brown, but it is much softer than any white sand I have ever crossed. All-in-all, I really like Galveston. It is a wonderful connection to the ocean for us here in Houston, and my mother and I tend to remember it and visit it and appreciate it greatly often. New Year’s Eve will be yet another of those many occasions.

The reason we are going is that 1) I like to watch the first sunrise of the year, as is customary in Japanese culture, and 2) my mom wanted to go do something adventure-y somewhere not-at-home recently, and wasn’t able to go do that. So, I offered for us to combine the two things, and handle both our goals, and together. I booked the hotel room this morning, and I even got a little extra discount, because I had signed up for a rewards program thing back when I lived in Japan, and I was getting a hotel in Korea for the weekend I attended a dance even there. (Fun fact: I had to change the currency from Korean ₩ won to US $ dollars when I logged into it. [Double fun fact: The $ is technically the Mexican peso symbol. The US dollar symbol has two vertical lines through the S.])

So, that’s what I’ll be doing. I also may or may not be going to bed around 8pm… like I am right now… 😛

Post-a-day 2020

Happy New Year!

Thus begins the actual longest year of my life!

Cebu, Philippines, has begun the new year, the year that seemed so absurdly far away when I first considered it that it felt as though it would never come… 2020.

The music was actually really great at the celebration here at the hotel, and we all kind of fell in love with these two songs called “I love Cebu”.

My brother kept calling, unintentionally, the adorable little boy an approximation of the Japanese word for “tuna”, instead of his actual yet similar name.

We all talked and played and then, just after midnight, danced on the beach.

It was a good night, and now I am beyond ready to pass out, hard core.

Akemashite omedetou, everyone – I wish you all a happy new year.

🙂

Post-a-day 2019

Tick-Tock

Well, the omiyage are almost all gathered – just missing two magazines (and maybe another box of graham crackers… I need to count those) – and the rough list of packing and pre-departure to-do’s is made.

Accountability partner for tomorrow has been obtained.

Now, just to get to sleep, so I can get up early tomorrow and get to bosse-ing*!

I am beginning to grow nervous, and not exactly from excitement.

I think I am at that point of ‘when the pressure is on you, start, and the pressure will be off,’… so it is just pressure of being unprepared so late in the game for something so big.

So, I suspect I will feel much better by tomorrow noontime, when I have handled already a good hunk of the tasks on my list.

To be fair, I had a whole lot more packing and organizing that needed to happen the last time I was preparing for a trip to Japan, so it is only normal that this feels like Way too late to be only just packing clothes tomorrow.

Also, if all the organizing and cleaning up I want to do before I leave doesn’t happen, everything still will be okay… it just would be great to get it all done, and to come home to a lovely, organized, and clean home in just over a month from now…, so I want to make it all happen. 🙂

Fingers crossed!

*From the French word bosser, meaning “to work”.

Post-a-day 2019

Hello-Goodbye

The Beatles sure do have a song for every occasion.

Tonight, we say hello to the new year as we say goodbye to the one that’s been here for a while (for a year, to be exact).

And it really has been a year, this one… life has looked little like how I might have expected.

And yet, the good and the bad, the ups and the downs and the plateaus, have all balanced out rather nicely for this year… it kind of even has me terrified for this next year, because of how wonderful these unexpecteds keep turning out.

Kind of like the beautiful Marianne Williamson quote, where she says that ‘it is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us,’ and that ‘our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,’ but ‘that we are powerful beyond measure.’

This year has been an even more clear example of that entire quote for me in my life, as each year has been progressively showing me, more and more… and so this next year definitely has me on the edge of my seat in slight but giddy and delighted terror. 🙂

P.S. For those who want to read the full and fabulous quote (which I didn’t even have to reference when writing this, though I haven’t seen it in probably years – I just know it so well) from Marianne Williamson: a link.

Post-a-day 2018*

*The Last of its group

Longest and Shortest Years

Okay, please exclude February 29th from existence for this reading and any further conversation on the topic. Kay, thanks. 😉

……………………………………………

Thus ends the longest year of my life. It began in Tokyo, Japan and ended in Houston, Texas, thereby making it 13 hours longer than any regular year in my life. Last year, 2016, was the shortest year of my life by 13 hours, because it was reversed: It began in Houston, Texas and ended in Tokyo, Japan.

Before this year, my shortest year had been 2012, beginning in Houston and ending in Vienna, Austria, making it 7 hours shorter than usual, and making 2013, which ended in Houston, 7 hours longer than usual. Those years are now in second place for the shortest and longest years of my life.

Fun, huh? 😛

When I was little, I made several lists of things I wanted to do in my life. I remember writing into one at some point that I wanted to live the longest and shortest year possible one day. That means spending one December 31-January 1 in the first time zone, the following in the last time zone, and then the third in the first time zone again. I now actually have friends in both locations, so it is totally possible. Let’s see if I can pull it off, shall we?

…………………………………………..

Just to drive me nuts, these had to clash with leap years, instead of working with them. I’ll get there some day, I imagine. I’ve gotten so close without even putting forth a conscious effort already. I can only imagine what I’ll pull off in the future. And I know it will begin with the January first of a leap year, whenever it happens. 🙂

Post-a-day 2017