Hey, You Guys!

It's Australia Day! Let's all use this day off work to get together at midday and get absolutely hammered. I mean, how else would you celebrate a bunch of Europeans arriving in a foreign land and claiming it for themselves while killing off all the natives, right??

See also: Columbus Day.

I Have My Reasons

I feel like 50% of my blog posts these days are me apologizing for neglecting my blog, which is a shame as I doubt that makes for compelling reading for anyone.

In any case, the reason (this time) is that I have ended up buying an apartment. Crazy, I know. Not something New Yorkers generally do. But there comes a point where the rent one pays on a luxury apartment is so outlandish that it just makes sense to buy one for yourself. And so I've bitten the bullet and done it.

Having said that, I'm still not convinced I will be able to bring myself to hand over all the money I've been saving for over a year to a real estate agent. While I'm sure it will be great to be a homeowner and all, I'm not looking forward to being broke in my thirties. Then again, maybe that just proves that I'm still a New Yorker after all.

The Economy Can't Be That Bad

Why? Because I have recently decided to venture into the real estate market, and I have yet to discover what possible value real estate agents add to the process.

So far not one agent has been able to answer a single question I've had about a property, and I've had at least one lie to my face about a rather important aspect of the home.

Now, I've finally found an apartment I like, and the agent has decided that not disclosing any of the offers to the other bidders is the best way to get a good price and keep things fair. Not only does that defy logic, but the fact that he doesn't recognize me after meeting me three times and talking to me on the phone repeatedly confirms that he is a complete idiot.

Having said that, if not knowing anything, lying, and opening an apartment door for 30 minutes each Saturday qualifies me to make tens of thousands of dollars in commissions, I may have found a perfectly reasonable second job.

That's What You Get

I didn't bother blogging because I just had one of the quietest weekends in my entire life. Other than a couple of drinks on Friday night and a couple more on Sunday evening, I basically stayed in my apartment to cook, clean, watch TV and continue to recuperate from a crazy holiday season.

And what happens Tuesday morning? I wake up feeling like I'm on my deathbed. Fever, aches and pains all over, exhaustion. For a little while I was excited because I thought I had the flu for the first time ever (I like trying out new things), but considering I felt almost normal by the time evening had rolled around, I'm guessing it was something else.

In any case, this completely reinforces my genuine belief that heavy alcohol consumption kills bacteria and prevents you from getting sick. I had previously based my theory on the fact that pretty much everyone I know who abstains from alcohol for a months spends at least part of that month feeling deathly ill, but now I've got my own personal experience to back it up. Vodka, I will never leave you alone in my freezer again.

A Time To Reflect

So it's the New Year, and while many people are reflecting on the year that has just passed and what they want to accomplish in the year to come, that all sounds a little overwhelming to the likes of me. So instead, I'm just taking a quick look at my blog over the years.

As anyone who comes back here regularly would notice, I blog less and less these days. I'm lazy, I occasionally get distracted by long vacations (or even work, less often), and I will admit that I have at times gone a week or two before remembering I even have a blog. And so, I charted the number of blog posts I've managed each full year since starting this thing, and it's not pretty:

I've gone to the great trouble of analyzing these numbers and forecasting the future, and it appears I will reach the rate of one blog post per year in 2019. Which will make them more valuable, right?

And by total coincidence, it turns out that this is the 1,000th post! Here's to many more. Or, 251 more over the next 7 years, if my calculations are anything to go by.