It’s December 31 again, and I distinctly remember digging through my photo archives this same time last year to find a photo where we looked cool and I didn’t look fat, and I spent most of the day fretting over what I was going to wear because we were going to a bar with a dress code and it was cold and all my dresses make me look slutty. It was a fretful day, and at the end we did our best to hold on until midnight and left immediately after, rushing the hell out of that downtown club because what each of us really wanted all along was to be comfortable, to be able to talk to each other, and to not have to pay inflated bar prices for cheap rum and watery Coke.

Tonight we’re going to a smaller party, at our friend Paul’s apartment. Paul is getting oysters and carving some of the salmon he caught this year into thin strips of perfect sashimi. Grace will be there, and Laraine – the whole team from our clam-digging expedition this past September. Paul’s girlfriend will be there, and who knows who else. It will be small, relatively quiet, and there will be so much food. And wine, which we’ve already paid for, and which we can drink without first buying over-priced tickets. And I won’t have to wait all night long to hear that one song I like, only to have the fifteen-year-old DJ mash it up lamely with that one song I really don’t like.

I’m glad that we get to celebrate the new year with the people we spent the best parts of the past year with. It will be an appropriate conclusion to 2010, which was notable because largely absent from it was the tumult of previous years, which for the past many have been filled with hasty moves to new apartments, panicking over debt and employment and graduation, and getting engaged and then married and then adjusting to being married so quickly. We hit our stride this year, both finding ourselves in jobs we really like, going on vacation, paying down that always present debt, and settling into an apartment that is mostly pretty awesome. And we got Molly Waffles, who we treat like a child, which we do not feel the least bit weird about.

It’s been a good year, and I have no complaints. And I am looking forward to this evening, and to the food. And to tomorrow, and all the days after it, and all the meals that will go with them. The photos in this post are from a party Grace hosted a few weeks ago, an oyster feast filled with lusty foods and sparkling wines and Rhianna songs; I expect this evening will proceed in much the same way, with sharp implements and soft shellfish and sriracha and dancing in slipper-socks on a makeshift dance floor in the living room and too much wine (and too many incriminating photos).

Happy New Year. I hope that the next 365 days are filled with wonder and opportunity and quiet moments in amidst the madness, and that you get to do something you really love. Writing here is the thing that I really love, and I hope you’ll continue to visit, and to every so often say hello. I wish you all the best in 2011!