twenty eleven sounds weird.

Well good evening and welcome to 2011. Hmm... twenty eleven. To be quite honest with you, andiepants readers, I find this year to be awkward. In general, I dislike odd numbers, which is ironic because nearly all of the important events in my life happened during odd years. For example, 1985 was the year of my birth, in 2003 i graduated from high school, 2007 marked my year of graduation from geneseo, in 2009 i graduated from stony brook and in 2011 the universe and a bunch of people will witness my marriage to mike. But 2011 doesn’t sit well with me yet. Hopefully it will grow on me. I think that’s why I kept telling everyone I would be married in 2012. 2012 just has such a nice ring to it. You can say it with ease, it looks nice written out, its the year of the possible apocalypse.. etc.. 2011 is so awkward. But again, we’re only five days in, so maybe i'm just responding to the novelty. sometimes i don't handle change so well. 

Friends, I’m not sure that I’m able to blog extensively about my New York trip.  There were so many great things that happened during that two week period of time, so many cherished times with family and friends, so many events that i want to expand on on my personal sounding board, that I fear beginning such a blog could overwhelm the internet at large. I don’t want to be responsible for a major internet crash due to a seven thousand page blog post. Could you imagine? People across the globe waking up to an "internet error" message because the poor internet was not able to withstand such a literary behemoth. so I have resigned myself to give you, beloved readers, only the super awesome highlights of my journey.

• dec 19^th- trans Siberian orchestra with the cousins. Please consult post “andie in the arctic” for more info on this one
• dec 21^st- winter solstice celebration with my parents involving gifts, traditional buffalo cuisine (heart attack on a plate) and merriment.
• dec 23^rd- mussels in white sauce at la villini’s restaurant on long island. Enough said.
• dec 24^th- traditional Italian Christmas eve complete with seafood extravaganza

• dec 25^th- Christmas with caggianos, the major highlight of this evening being the family video’s that we repeatedly watched involving a six year old mike, a microphone and the most awesome rendition of “happy birthday” known to man.
• dec 26^th- blizzard/engagement party…. But more blizzard. boooo..At least we got ice cream cake! Yes!

• dec 28^th- Alvin ailey ballet in the city with lee and jess. . I’d like to share some andiethoughts on this one. Andiepants just might be morphing into more of a country mouse than previously thought. Regarding the ballet itself, it was amazing! I have felt passionately about dancing since about the age 5, when I so skillfully led my tap class in our performance of “pom pom march.” So witnessing this amazing dance troupe every year is such a treat. The Alvin Ailey company performs three very different acts during their performance, which really displays the range in their abilities. The first act was a hip hop performance, which just looked like so much fun. I had trouble restraining myself from hopping out of my seat and joining them. I’m not sure how much they would have appreciated that, but hey, a girl can dream. The second was a very modern, abstract piece involving a lot of partner work, in which the men repeatedly threw the ladies into the air and caught them in various positions. The third chronicled the African-american cultures relationship to spirituality and church, and provided a really upbeat, positive note to end on. However, can I just say how much I disliked my experience in the city? Holy crap. Looking around at all the buildings, I became anxious, claustrophobic, the people were too close to me, too fast, too brash, the lights were too bright, etc. but this kind of displeases me. I used to take pride in my transition from small town buffalo girl to big city andie. But now I’ve been living in tiny town new mexico for 4 months and all of the sudden I’m country mouse? I might exaggerate a bit, but really, I did not enjoy myself in the city at all. The weather certainly did not help my irritable disposition. The blizzard had left large snow drifts that made crossing the street a potentially lethal ordeal. The cab drivers were losing their minds as they had to make do with the loss of several lanes to the snow and had to navigate people walking in the road instead of the snowy and icy sidewalks. Further, giant puddles had begun to form at intersections and scattered along the sidewalks, so what looked to be a benign pile of slush and ice actually turned out to be a seven inch deep puddle that gleefully sucked your non waterproofed boot in and froze your horrified little foot. Ugh. Not fun. moving on....

• dec 29^th- mike and i visited potential wedding venues.ooooooh
• dec 30^th- booking a wedding venue and date and going shopping for wedding dresses. shopping for dresses was surprisingly much less stressful than i had anticipated (rock!), however, these events took my wedding planning from lackadaisical to mach 5 and quite possibly led to the events of the next day.
• dec 31^st-super crazy intense migraine which resulted in a very peaceful new years eve with my maid of honor and future sister in law. The three of us had a pretty crazy time, let me tell you. It involved one glass of wine, the couch and the movie “avatar.” Top that.

• jan 1^st- annual caggiano new years day party filled with fun, friends and food
• jan 2^nd- inadvertently flying first class from ny to new mexico. Oh you didn’t know? Andie flies in style. Ha! This actually turned out to be a comedy of errors as I kept getting into the wrong lines everywhere I went. 

Mike and I finally made it back to our southwestern home late sunday night and promptly fell asleep. The past few days have been full of trying very very hard to convince myself to go to work, working, coming home, watching crappy tv on the internet, and going to sleep. i'm definitely in recovery mode, both in activities and diet. my body was beginning to hate me for all of the deliciously unhealthy crap i had been putting into it. we're beginning to be friends again.

happy new year, readers. even though it's awkward and odd (ha! get it!), i have faith in twenty eleven. 

until next time,
be thankful,
andie.