New Year's Eve is decidedly my least favorite holiday. Every year I silently decide to un-celebrate it by staying home in jeans and intending to be so engrossed in a book or movie that the stroke of midnight goes unnoticed. "Too much unnecessary self-reflection! Bad for your brain!", says the girl with the daily blog about herself. Besides, champagne gives me a wicked hangover.

So of course, around 9 or so, I always start itching for social stimuluation and decide that maybe I could put on some mascara after all. Maybe I could drink a beer or six. Maybe I would like to be with friends, to send the old year packing and make pie-in-the-sky promises for the new year. Because that's what you do.

The holiday season has a knack for collecting all my favorite faces from across the country and world and putting them in one living room. It's really wonderful.

2009 goal: Visit Mark and Michelle in L.A.

They've been there over a year now (can that be right?!) and I could use a change of scenery, even if only for a weekend. Especially in the thick of the corpse-like Ohio winter - some southern California sunshine on my eyeballs could mean everything in the world.

While stir-crazy in Tennessee, I kept thinking that I needed to get back to my "regular routine". As much as it makes my stomach flip to remember that I have to start being mostly in Athens very soon, school and structure is good for my brain.

After a couple days of wobbling across the family tightrope feeling hostile and moody and ineffectual, Leslie and Jon make me feel less gloomy and dark and backwards.

Also, should I be this bummed that Larry's closed? Because I am pretty bummed. That's the first bar I ever really went to regularly, and so many good conversations and people were shoved into those splintering booths with me over the years. While some parts of Columbus are getting very excellent these days, campus has become dreadful. It looks like a college campus ride at Disney World. But with neverending construction.

Fuck, how good was the jukebox at Larry's?!

When you're 82, you get toys for Christmas. Heidi, my grandparents' dog, wasn't terribly excited about my grandpa's new remote controlled car.

I've really only had four or five real visits "home" since my dog died in June, and I feel guilty how quickly I've grown used to cracking the front door without fear of a slippery little dachshund escaping. How thoughtlessly I leave food on once nose-able or lick-able surfaces. How no nails on tile greet me when I come home at an ungodly hour, and how no little warm friend finds me on the couch after everyone else has gone to bed. I can't really explain how this isn't a totally absurd notion, but I didn't know if my family could hold it together without her. Sometimes it seemed like the only thing we all had in common was how much we loved that awful dog.

I'm visiting my grandparents in Tennessee right now, people who talk almost exclusively to or about their dog. You know, everyone stands in a circle around Heidi while my grandma says "Oh, she says, I'm the center of attention now! I like this! I'm a good girl!", while we nod and thump the dog affectionately on the shoulder. I want to be able to not shut up about my dog, too. But I don't want another dog. I want my dog.

My mom found an exact reproduction of my dad's favorite childhood toy, a rubber frog named Kneedeeper, who was tragically snatched up in the jaws of a garbage truck on trash day during an ill-fated game of Hide and Seek sometime in Cleveland in the late '50s.

Merry Christmas.

My heart's in my stomach and my guts are in my throat and I felt like if I paused too long in reflection at any point today, I'd have to be scraped up off the floor. But, hey, at least I had to go to church!

Hey, Jon. The same old conversations with you in this big, empty house was the best part of my day by a mile.

Beers with my siblings in my hometown on Christmas Eve Eve.

Rita was saying how in most families, one of the kids ends up being kind of a religious nut. This didn't happen, thankfully, with us, but I feel like somebody has to get on the get-married-have-kids-buy-a-house train to Normalsville, so that my parents can feel like they raised regular, well-adjusted kids. Seems like the Jesusiest one in the family tends to do that first and no one is stepping up to the plate.

I guess it could be me, but, naw, rain check.

Shepard Fairey's now-iconic poster hardly scratches the surface. So much great-looking design inspired by the president-elect. Children's books, though? Maybe I just wasn't paying attention to this sort of stuff during past elections but a "My Mama Voted for Bush!" picture book seems unlikely.

Target was a war zone today, toddlers hollering injustices and middle-aged people slumped lifelessly over their shopping carts like the corpse cart in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I saw the local TV weather guy shouting into his cell phone, made quick eye contact, and looked away like he was an ex that I'm on ignore-in-public terms with. An old guy in a Santa hat was walking up and down the looted aisles, singing Christmas carols into one of those green and purple 90s Nickelodeon microphones. He'd pause at the end of his hymns to say things like, "We're all so worried about HAVING THINGS, that we can't enjoy LIVING. Everyone turn to the person next to you, the person standing next to you right now and wish them a merry Christmas. Hug them. Love them."

And of course, like good Midwesterners, we all looked down and pretended not hear.

Cousin's baby shower.

At 37, Jennifer is the oldest cousin on my mom's side; I'm the youngest at 22. Growing up, she called us "bookends" and always went out of her way to take an interest in me. I felt she wanted to have genuine conversations with me, not that I'm-talking-to-you-to-say-funny-things-for-the-benefit-of-the-other-grownups-in-the-room thing that I was often subjected to as the baby of the family. She and her husband have wanted kids for a long time, but she was stuck kicking thyroid cancer's ass for a few years and only recently was deemed healthy enough to get pregnant.

While I usually can't suffer the cooing over all things TINY and PRECIOUS that goes on at these types of things, this was a completely tolerable baby shower. Forgoing shower games, the host (also my cousin) printed images of cartoon characters from Jennifer's youth onto iron-on decals and we transferred the images onto 30 cotton onesies. There were fabric markers to sign or write messages on them.

I wonder if I'm the only one at events like these, who in the midst of the frenetic anticipation and excitement of something so wonderful and important, thinks, "God, I hope nothing goes wrong" - some irrational superstitious part of me gets nervous when things seem too good to be true.

So, hey, kiddo. There's a whole hell of a lot of us out here where it's cold and bright and loud - and we're rooting for you. See you in February.

Nick's brother and sister-in-law were in Columbus today on their way to Canton from D.C. for the holidays.

Mike is at once just like Nick, and uncomfortably opposite him. Bizarre-o Nick. His face is like a reflection of Nick in a pane of warped glass. They share a certain neurotic Woody Allenness, but probably don't agree on very much at all. Every once in a while I'd observe the two of them talking and it would make me shudder inexplicably.

I think in posing this photo I said, "Exchange gifts, but look pissed about it."

The photo I was going to post today was of a little vegetable man with a clementine orange for a head, parsley sprigs for hair, celery stalks for arms and legs, and a carrot torso, constructed from the raw materials readily available at the restaurant. I think I wanted to caption it "hardly working." Dicking around at work is enjoyable. I was so happy to have my research assistant job this fall because it meant that I wouldn't be on my feet for hours at a time, smiling falsely for strangers, coming home smelling like garlic and shawarma beef. I managed to forget that working at a specific place, with other people, has a normalizing effect. I forgot that having a job is a social outlet.

I lost my phone though, which means I also lost that picture. Nick recently gave me a keyfinder keychain. When I whistle, it beeps at me so I can recover my misplaced car keys. Really, though, I need that device for my house keys, my camera, my cell phone, my shoes, my driver's license..

I feel like an insipid, idiot girl-droid every time I see that commercial for Dior's fragrance Cherie. I get intoxicated by the Brigitte Bardot clone flitting around Paris in a party dress, adorably pointing out her frosted prize at a pâtisserie, coyly running through the Jardin du Luxembourg, riding her cruiser bike while the wind whips through her blonde mod coif. Finally, she flops on a bed, laughing. How exhausting it is to be idly cute all day! Whenever I watch it I sink into the couch, shielding my eyes from the glowing television. "Nick! Change the channel! It's working! I want to smell like a carefree Parisian model in the 60s."

When I was a French major, I was irritated by the scores of daffy female classmates seduced by the whole "All things French are beautiful and romantic" idea and wanted to do Powerpoint presentations on Coco Chanel and the Louvre but recoiled when it was time to talk about the horrors of colonialism and the problematic nature of French nationalism. How unpleasant! Back to Hermès scarves and making out under the Eiffel tower on New Year's Eve.

I looked up the commercial on Youtube and I guess it's directed by Sofia Coppola. Ha! I may be an airhead, but I'm a sort-of-erudite airhead.

And at the pâtisserie, I always pick the tarte aux framboises.

Before we took the gloves off in a cutthroat game of Spades, Ana threw together a fanastic tomato bisque to complement my fancy grilled cheese. Kurt, Nick, and I had our heads to our bowls like beasts at the trough.

She and I have been planning to open a restaurant for around a year now. Sometimes it's hard for me to give a shit about school or building my resume or co-authoring a big paper when all I really want is to pick out paint swatches for my new restaurant and write short stories.

I'm pretty sure this bisque could end wars. But bottomless hunger might have clouded my judgment.

Today my red car took me all around town, scooping up last minute Christmas notions in the bitter cold, swiping the magnetic strip of my credit card with irresponsible abandon.

While I am certainly not immune to a love of Stuff, I hate shopping. I think it takes me back to that dread memory of my childhood - Running Errands with my mom. Blinking at the fluorescent lights above from the pinching metal seat of the shopping cart while my brother and sister ride along like tiny garbagemen for what seemed like hours while my mother painstakingly consulted her list and her coupons for every single aisle - it was enough to ruin the "magic" of retail for life. I can only be in Target for twenty minutes before I get light-headed and want to close my eyes and click my heels and get magically transported to a sunny porch. With a book and a stiff drink.

Then, I drove to work. In the restaurant's parking lot, with the engine off and my hands still on the steering wheel, a narcotic numbness washed over me from the manic afternoon of shopping. Why must there be so many goddamn things to buy? How am I gonna bounce back in 2009 from all the things I fake-bought for the holidays? How am I gonna afford to travel next fall without any savings? Why must my grad school stipend be so meager? Why do I let money problems affect me so much?

For my Christmas gift, Ana took this old steamer trunk, painted it, and decoupaged the interior with vintage maps, because Ana and I share one brain. And not to get all George Bailey on you, but this gift reminded me what a wonderful thing it is to have an overwhelming number of people in your life that require Christmas presents. Every single one of them a flash of warm light in this tragic, chaotic place. No gift felt like an obligation - every purchase or handmade bullshit that I've wrapped in optimistic paper has been fraught with anxiety because I want that gift to be a year's worth of my appreciation for their being alive.

And this is exactly the sort of overinvestment that makes Christmas afternoon such a huge disappointment.

I have an uncommon name and an even less common nickname. In all the years of telling substitute teachers how to pronounce Evie, having absurd variations scrawled on my coffee cups by well-meaning baristas, and being the only Evie in my loved ones' lives, I can't help but feel that part of my identity is wrapped up in my old lady name. Who knows how I would have turned out if my parents decided twenty two years ago that I seemed like more of a Brittany.

So whenever I encounter other Evelyns, and on the rare occasion, other Evies, it's unsettling. A poem called "Beware of Things in Duplicate" by Dana Gioia comes to mind:

Beware of things in duplicate:
a set of knives, the cufflink in a drawer,
the dice, the pair of Queens, the eyes
of someone sitting next to you:
Attend that empty minute in the evening
when looking at the clock, you see
its hand are fixed on the same hour
you noticed at your morning coffee.
These are the moments to beware
when there is nothing so familiar
or so close that cannot betray you:
a twin, an extra key, an echo,
your own reflection in the glass.

How can I possibly trust someone who knows what it is to be named Evie? We shouldn't be in a room together. Being Evie should be nobody's business but mine.

I waited on a girl tonight whose name was Evie. She was about ten, her brand new adult teeth much too big for her head, her confidence and comedic timing impressive for someone so young. Instead of feeling threatened by her, I was excited for her. I wanted to tell her, it's gonna be so great! You're gonna fall in love, and see the French countryside from train windows, and ride your bike through the city in dresses and heels, and break into swimming pools in the summer, and never sleep, and always sleep, and have your heart broken by every stupid, little thing in the world.

And it made me feel like maybe I like being myself, and being alive, and all the bullshit that comes with it.

I've been decking the halls, creating mental top five lists of Christmas movies and Christmas songs (would you consider The Apartment a Christmas movie?), and making plans for indulgence and excess with my family. My shopping is finished, my gifts folded and creased into blood red paper and puking curlicued ribbons. But I just can't help but feel like I skipped over the cheer of the holidays and stumbled into mid-February listlessness. Looks like somebody could use a midnight visit from the Ghost of Christmas Sack-up-and-be-a-person.

Ana and I watch Stand Up or Die at Lauren and Jimmy's holiday party.

Some holiday party advice: The key to successfully eating one's weight in cheese products and crackers undetected is to participate silently in smalltalk around the kitchen island. It's all about misdirection - your hands never stop moving to load up your plate with goodies but up top you are nodding and grinning mischievously in agreement with a story whose beginning you missed. Occasionally, punctuate a raunchy line in the other party's story with a "hey-o!".

I got to experience Stand Up or Die for the first time. I was impressed by my friends' ability to get behind the mic and tell jokes that are funny because they are bad on purpose. Even from behind the protective shield of irony, I could tell they were nervous. Maybe next time I'll have the stones to give it a shot.

Nick's work holiday party was tonight. Oncology nurses gone wild.

He put in our names to do a song for karaoke without telling me and pulled me up to sing with him. He is pretty lucky that his girlfriend is a lush and an extrovert otherwise there would have been Words later.

Nick has been so busy the past few weeks. Coaching OSU's debate team at tournaments on weekends, regular 40-hour work weeks and a sociology class that ate most of his scant free time. Selfishly, it has been pretty unfun for a bored girlfriend in a freezing cold house with no motivation or energy to do much of anything except watch Law & Order marathons. And even I can grow tired of Jack McCoy's Moral Outrage. By the fifth hour or so.

So tonight was date night. Dining out always produces the best, funniest, most important conversations. No distractions, no television, no roommates, just you and a table and another person.

The plan was that everybody would bring holiday beer and we would watch A Christmas Story.

We didn't get to the movie.

My lovely former roommate, but forever roommate-of-my-heart, Jenn, and I ate a shit-ton of sushi and saw Milk. And sobbed our faces off.

Then I went home and stared at the wall for a few hours.

Hey, Nick, why don't we just get you Flash footie-pajamas at this point?!

Winter Science Reading Club this Sunday dealt with video games and narratology, but mostly, I was excited to hear about Matt's band, Tin Armor's, creepy stay at a bible college in Indiana.

Matt and Ana differed in regards to the future.

"My anarcho-primitivist group is gonna cut your cord!" -Ana.

Charlie's birthday gathering culled old/new/close/distant friends from all over.

I was glad to give him my birthday well-wishings, but goddamn if it wasn't unbearably smoky in that house. I used to hang out in smoke-filled bars, diners, venues, houses without even realizing it except for the reminder of stale smoke in my hair and jeans the next day. Since Ohio enacted its smoking ban in early 2005, something I voted against but privately hoped would pass, I am rarely exposed to indoor tobacco smoke except for the occasional house party.

And now I can't stand in a small enclosed space while my beautiful friends smoke like fishes without my eyes burning, my throat getting raw, and my head starting to spin. The latter may just be the booze though.

O'Reilly's. There's no way to say this without sounding like a snot, but I am sort of bummed that all the ipsters-hay found out about this cozy, neighborhood bar.

After we left, I got face-down on the floor at Erin's house and she aligned my stubborn old spine with her tiny but powerful hands. Is there a greater sound than the sound of a back cracking?

Back at the farm.

Kate and I became friends when we were hired at the Restaurant at the same time and went through training together. During our last training shift, she waited on a man that we dubbed, uncreatively, Creepy Guy (if only we knew how many creepy guys we would come to encounter..). Exerting no responses save for neanderthal grunts during the meal, as she dropped off the check he suddenly jolted to life with an unctuous smile and asked for her number. Like the other wackjob regulars that showed their face several times a week at the restaurant, Creepy Guy would enter the cast of irritating, imposing characters in my Columbus life. One time he hit on me at Target while I was shopping. With my mom.

So it makes sense that Creepy Guy would show up just a few minutes into my first shift back, chomping on a stupid toothpick, smirking his stupid smirk. As I rang up his carryout order he mentioned that he hasn't seen me around in a while. And because I often forget that I'm under no obligation to run my mouth at all times, I geared up for the dialogue about how I moved, blah blah, I'm back temporarily.

But I paused. And just offered a dismissive, "yeah".

Ana and I made dinner at Kurt's tonight.

Besides being a good guy, Kurt served in the army in Iraq, spent a year in Washington state mastering the craft of wooden boatbuilding, and is leaving in a few months to study agriculture in Africa through the Peace Corps.

I suggest he list these things on his resume under the heading, "Pantydropping".

I found a disposable camera among the precariously stacked mountain of things on Nick's desk. Since he's not much of the picture-taking type, and I'm very much of the picture-taking type, I was sure it was mine. I carried it carefully in my purse for a few days, so that the next time I passed by the camera store I could get it processed. It seemed so delicate, some lost weekend wedged between 2006 and 2007, a forgotten party spent laying across a couch in a pile of people, some throwaway shots of my dog before she died in June. These quick moments had long passed, and now were just light on gelatin. They hardly existed at all.

Unfortunately, the camera that very well could have been mine belonged to Nick's ex-girlfriend. I flipped through the photos of beach vacations, uninspiring costume parties, smiling strangers; these memories were not mine. Feelings of foolishness, disappointment, and jealousy settled in my gut as nausea. But the last picture on the roll was vintage Nick, smiling with his whole face, and that made it worth paying for someone else's film.

I went on a visiting-friends-at-work tour of Columbus today. I have some literate, pretty lady friends. Priterate. Literetty.

I shake 'em down for handouts. Free shit tastes better.

Tin Armor show at Chop Chop.

Is it ever possible to talk frankly about your friend's/boyfriend's/sister's band without sounding clouded by the cataract of your own squishy fondness for them?

New songs sound great, guys. I'd say that even if I hated your guts.