New Year's

New Year's Eve rolled around again, as it tends to do periodically, and we indulged in a more recent family tradition. A few years ago, the fast food chain Chick-fil-a began selling calendars with coupons for their products inside. The coupons for December were for a free small brownie tray with the purchase of a large chicken nugget tray. As Chick-fil-a nuggets are very tasty, and my dad would not pass up using such a coupon once he had it, we got the tray of nuggets for New Year's. It lasted for at least a week afterward (roughly 250 come on a large tray). Despite the incentive turning from a brownie tray to a gallon of tea, we have continued to get a nugget tray for New Year's.

The nuggets this year, as usual, were quite enjoyable. My parents stayed in for the evening and caught the small fireworks display that appears annually at the top of the mountain. I rang in the new year with a large number of friends and acquaintances at a bar called the Metropolitan. It was a decent enough place. The garlic-chipotle stuffed olives made for an interesting flavor in the gin martinis. I also found out that I had won a friend over to the Ciroc vodka camp (If you're looking for quality vodka, Ciroc is where it's at). The hostess ended up being the waitress for our group, and she did rather well accomodating us. The night was relatively uneventful, except for Karl losing his phone and the guy who found it being kind enough to call one of the numbers in it to arrange its return, and around 01:00 we adjourned.

I got to work with Forrest again at kung fu class again on the first. He's a really good guy, and it looks like some good things could be lining up for him soon. If things work out, I'd be quite happy for him; they couldn't happen to a better person.

I've forgotten most of what I did between the first and the fifth, so we'll just leave that bit out. I think sudoku was involved in there somewhere though. Anyway, there was a get together to be attended on the fifth with more friends I don't run into nearly enough either online or off. It had snowed a little more in the mean time, so I wasn't taking any chances, what with being somewhat rusty at driving after nearly a year with no practice, and decided to make it a dry evening. It was fun seeing everyone and bonding with John and Christina over our displeasure that American cigarette packs lack the lovely pictures of diseased body parts to be found on cigarette packs in Canada and Australia.

Saturday was supposed to be a day to hang out with friends as well as family before flying out on Sunday, but a bit more snow said no to the friends portion. I spent the day with my family, doing various things around the house, including figuring out exactly what I could and couldn't fit in my luggage for the return trip. That evening we went to see Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.



In short, Perfume is the tale of a young man who, as a result of being abandoned to die in the fetid streets of Paris at birth by his mother, develops the ability to discern every element of a scent no matter how small. Something like being able to smell the difference between two different lichens residing next to each other on a rock 300 yards distant would be an effortless feat for him. Being an orphan, he is, of course, abused and put in any number of unpleasnt places, which he just takes as his lot in life. Then, one day, he catches the scent of a beautiful young woman, and becomes obsessed.

Hers is the most pleasant scent he's ever experienced, but he hasn't the words to express this to her when she notices him smelling her. Consequently, she gets severely creeped out and runs away. He, of course, follows her scent to where she went. She notices his presence again just as two people stumble through the alley. Covering her mouth to stifle a scream of alarm, he accidentally kills her only to find that the scent that had so intoxicated him fled quickly afterward.

That's the first bit of the film, the rest concerns his apprenticing to become a perfumer so he can learn the secrets of capturing scent. I'm sure after just reading the above any number of possible readings jump to the fore, but I'll not offer one. One of the issues most talked about with regard to this adaptation is how it would be possible to transfer the intricate discriptions of smell from the book into visual equivilancies. It seems they've done it well enough. I'd encourage anyone reading to give it a look. I intend to see it again, if only to get a firm grasp on my opinion. The only question is if I'll find it in a cinema or have to wait for Netflix.

Sunday, 7 January found me back in Boston before midnight. Now, I get to go to one class I'd really rather not be in, and I get to decide if I want to play the odds in the job market doing what-have-you to pay the bills, or if I'd like to go another $25-30K in debt trying to land some relatively low-paying job through BU's L.A. internship program in the Fall.

Decisions, Decisions.