"It's alright, 'cause there's beauty in the breakdown...."

I just watched the movie "Garden State" again, and it was definitely very good again. I really loved this movie. Natalie Portman defines what it means to be adorable, and I'm once more impressed by Zach Braff's writing. The ending killed me, though. The other week I was talking to my friend Molly about music and she said that she can't enjoy listening to U2 as much as she used to. "You know how sometimes you just associate certain music with certain periods of your life or with certain people? I associate U2 with an ex-boyfriend and their tunes just bring back some bad memories." This movie had a similar association with me. When I saw it in theaters I felt like I completely related to Braff's character, partly because I was going through a similar situation with a girl. But at the end (*SPOILER! Don't read the rest of this paragraph if you don't want to know the ending...and this film is definitely worth a watch.*) when he runs back to be with her...that part was hard to watch, because watching it now I compare it to my life again. I think that my situation was 50-50. We could have run back to each other or we could have just let things go and enjoyed the few memories of our time together with bittersweet nostalgia. We didn't run back. I'll probably wonder for a long time what would have happened if we had.

That was another downer of a post. I've gotta stop doing that. Cyber-Byron is apparantly quite a bit more melancholy than real Byron. Alright, in cheerier news: the semester ended, it's winter break, and I'm now one semester from graduating. Actually, I don't know if that's cheerier, because I'm still terrified of the "real world" and clueless about what I'll do when I get there, but at least I completed (well, mostly completed) finals. The last two weeks of the semester were probably the most stressed I've ever been...although that's not saying too much. I don't stress. Still, that two weeks sucked. Hard. Winter break has been great so far though. Christmas was fun; I saw a bunch of relatives and had a great time. I got a violin to annoy my roommates with and some nice poker chips to cheer them up with. The violin is going to be a lot of fun - about six months from now. Until then I'm sure everyone on my floor will be permanently wearing headphones and wishing that the strangled cat would stop crying.

Tomorrow (or today, technically) is Dec. 31. I'm heading to Seattle with a bunch of my friends. I'm excited to do something different. We've been in the Yak every year, and we've been heading to the local bars here a lot this break - I need a change of scenery. It'd also be cool if I can meet up with any of my school friends there. We'll see. Anyway, it's three a.m. and I've gotta be up fairly early to hit the road, so I should get to sleep. I should have gone to bed after the movie rather than writing this, but I felt like getting that first bit off my chest after watching the movie. Besides, now Zack will stop bugging me about never posting. Happy Holidays to everyone, and may this next year be amazing for all.

"A long December, and there's reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last...."