Happy new year!

A new year has begun! 2009 is in the past, 2010 is the present and the future. Hopefully it's a good year filled with good health and happiness.

The New Year's Eve weekend was pretty good. My sister Jessica came down from Easton to hang out with Ileana and me for the night. Jess picked me up and we drove out to West Philly to meet up with Ileana and her roommate Jess. Ileana warmed up some dinner that she had cooked earlier in the evening: yellow rice with shrimp and vegetables. It was really good, although it would've been better if it had been warmed up more. The highlight was the sangria that Ileana made from a recipe that she got online; she used a bottle of malbec and mixed in a bunch of fruit. It was really good.

After that, the four of us walked the block and a half or so to a house party on 45th and Locust. Even though we didn't get there until around 10pm, people were still showing up around that time. We milled around for a while, chatting it up with a few people and eating some of the appetizers laid out on a table in the dining room. Mostly I just talked with Ileana, while Jess talked with this guy John who sorta looked like the actor Ryan Reynolds. Finally midnight approached, so everyone gathered in the living room, where a smaller television was set-up to watch the ball drop. At a few minutes before midnight, John and I psyched everyone out by shouting out a countdown "ten, nine, eight..."; everyone's surprise reaction at being caught off-guard was pretty funny. Finally midnight struck and I realized that there may not have been any couples there at all, which Jess told me later, made her happy. We all toasted small plastic cups of champagne and the new year began!

The next morning, Ileana and I cooked eggs with green pepper and onions for ourselves, with english muffins on the side. Then Jess and I drove back to my place so that I could clean-up my apartment while Jess went out to do reading at Cosi in the afternoon. Later, I walked over to meet her, and then Ileana took a bus to come meet us there too. From there, the three of us walked back to Jess's car and we drove to have a late lunch / early dinner at Bar Ferdinand in Northern Liberties. Because there was a happy hour special when we got there, we were able to have two carafes of sangria. And we all split 8 tapas and 2 bowls of soup. Overall the food was delicious; nothing like empanadas to hit the spot. After dinner, Jess drove us out to West Philly so that Ileana could pick-up her passport (to use as ID for the night), then dropped us off at Drinker's in Center City so that we could hang-out with my friend Mike and his girlfriend Christine. Before that, though, Ileana and I ran in to buy tickets for the movie Avatar, playing later that night. Ileana and I split a pitcher of Bud Light at Drinker's, while chatting with Mike and Christine, and then booked it just in time to catch a cab out to the Bridge at 40th and Walnut. The movie Avatar was awesome. Upon the advice of Ethan (who texted me earlier that day for new year's), we decided to pay the extra money to watch it in 3-D; so worth it! The special effects were amazing and the visual picture was just beautiful. Ileana and I really related to the storyline, especially as it paralleled the Conquest of the Americas, a topic that we had spoken a lot of while I read the book "Open Veins of Latin America" by Eduardo Galeano, which I had just finished reading a few days earlier. The only bummer was having to wait for 20 minutes on the corner of 40th and Chestnut for a bus back to Center City on a night when it was freezing cold and windy. Despite the cold weather, though, we were both buzzing from the after-effects of watching Avatar.

Saturday, we took our time getting the day started. We finally made it out in the mid-afternoon to take a walk to a coffee shop. We tried going first to Good Karma, but every table was taken, so we kept walking until we got to La Va Cafe, on 21st and South Streets. We got a table there and sipped our coffee while reading: she with Song of Solomon (by Toni Morrison) and me with Revolutionary Suicide (by Huey P. Newton). From there we stopped back at my place to pick-up a Trader Joe's gift card, which my mom had given to me for Christmas, and we went food-shopping together. We had a lunch of California rolls and crackers with Iberico cheese and salami. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching television, including some college football, which I tried to explain to Ileana. Later in the evening we cooked some organic spaghetti with spinach mixed into the red sauce, and then Ileana left to go home to get ready for the night. Although I was feeling pretty tired, I had promised Ileana that we would go out dancing. So when she texted to say that she was in a cab on her way down to the Walnut Room, I left my place and walked over there. There was a pretty decent crowd there and I took a few minutes to ease in to the atmosphere by drinking a couple PBR's and feeling the music, which was mostly 90's to more recent hip-hop. Ileana was dancing pretty much right from the get-go, and eventually I started dancing too. After a little while, I had gotten into it. Towards the end of the night, the dj played a merengue song, and I could see that Ileana was impressed that my dancing skills (at least when it comes to merengue) were better than I had let on. Even though I was tired throughout much of the night, the music energized me just enough and we had a really fun night dancing together.

Sunday was a very lazy day. We got up at 11:30am, only to migrate to the couch for breakfast and then a nap that lasted until around 2pm. After getting up and having lunch, we finally went out later in the afternoon for a coffee at La Colombe. I did a little more reading in my book, while Ileana read from Citypaper and Philadelphia Weekly. We went back to my place so I could drop-off my stuff before going to church, while Ileana stayed behind and did some reading. When I got back from church, we cooked a dinner of pollo asado (pre-seasoned courtesy of Trader Joe's), white rice with coconut milk, and black beans. It was a good dinner, enjoyed while watching episodes of Lost, season five. Our Lost marathon lasted until past midnight. And so, our long New Year's weekend finally came to an end.

And so now, it's back to the grind. In this new year, I'd like to do a much better job of getting to work on-time, getting to the gym more regularly, and keeping in touch with my friends more, all things that sound easy, but I find ways to make difficult. That being said, I wish you the very best in 2010!