Happy New Year, folks. A few (appropriately) random things going on:

We drove down to NYC to have dinner at Babbo last weekend. It was me, July, July's brother Levi, Levi's friend Megan, July's college friend Linda, and a last minute roster change with my college friend Ryan in for Linda's husband, Ben, who wasn't feeling well but also had to work. Got that? (It was good to see Ryan who I hadn't seen in almost 2 years)

July's brother is a 2nd degree of separation from Mario (or is it 1st? Or 3rd? I also get confused with the whole first-generation/second-generation American when you're the first to be born here) and worked a reservation last year and they decided it was so good, they'd go again this year. It was most excellent, although I was informed that it was better last year. B-team in the kitchen that night?

I have to say, Mario looks much friendlier on TV. He had kind of a scowl on his face or something.

Maybe he was just unhappy with the braised beef, too.

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I don't generally subscribe to New Year's resolutions, but I decided to make one anyway this year. I'm once again trying to learn Chinese (Mandarin, despite my family mostly speaking Shanghainese because [A] I'm presuming that Mandarin will be understood by more people and [B] because I'm not sure where I'd exactly find places to learn shanghainese, outside of, say, Shanghai...Or at least anywhere near Boston), so my resolution is to learn at least one new word/character a day.

Today's word is "xingqi." Which really isn't so helpful without the tone markings. (For those curious, both i's should be first tones. It means "week." Add a number onto the end, and you get a day of the week: e.g. "xingqiyi" = "Monday." I'm sure you all knew that the "i" in "yi" was also a first tone, right?)

So far, so good. I've managed to study a little bit every day and have contacted a woman through the GBCCA to practice my speaking. (That's the Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association -- their URL is http://www.gbcca.org but don't follow the link if you're running Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird since the site seems to like to crash those browsers) I'm a little nervous about it because the arrangement is that she'll help me with my Chinese and I'm supposed to help her with her English. Only, judging by her email, she's way ahead on the vocabulary department, and I'd hardly consider myself a proper speaker of the English language. I guess we'll find out soon enough -- we're meeting next Wednesday at the library. I still haven't decided whether or not to try a class at the Boston Language Institute or to get a private tutor.

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Finally joined Friendster yesterday to see what all the fuss was about.

Initial reaction: "damn this thing runs slow."

Several months ago, a friend from my frisbee team kept asking me if I'd gotten her email. She said she'd been trying to contact me on Friendster and I had no idea what she was talking about. I'm still kind of wondering whether she was trying to send me email *from* Friendster (and had the wrong address), or if she did a user search and sent an invite to some random guy. Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this one day.