New Year's Day

so.. its 2005. not really all that special. so the earth has made it around the sun once again. 2005 cars and video games have been available for months. the rest of the world has finally caught up.

sure, its anew year, but i think whats really important is that the old year is over. i think everyone can agree that 2004 was generally not a good year. it certainly ended on a sour note. the scale of what happened in Asia is just mind boggling. the sheer loss of life is just so overwhelming. i cant even fathom how devastating it reall is, i can only imagine as i watch the numbers grow. howevet, there is one number that i am disapointed by. and thats the amount of money that the US is pledging for the relief effort. the first pledge was for 35 million dollars. thirty five. wow. much smaller than many other countries sending money. especially given our size and economic power. so small in fact, that even after increasing it ten-fold (to $350 million) it is still one of the smallest pledges per-capita. meanwhile we are spending somewhere in the neighborhood 80 BILLION dollars on the war in Iraq. cant spend money on saving lives, too busy taking them. *sigh* happy new year indeed.

ANYWAYS, as for my new year, it was spent doing nothing. just watching people all over the world have a blast. yep. good times. as for today, after a morning of mostly sleeping, i came into the city to hang out with everyone. went to natahan's sisters house for a little board game action. such simple fun. i had a great time. also, while i was there, we exchanged christmas gifts. i got natahan and crystal Gift Certificates for thinkgeek... since i really am not sure what size either of them are, or what tshirts they have. i dunno, im just not a very decisive person, anyway, at least they can get exactly what they want. i got ken a month of netflix for him to add onto his current subscription. they got me Half Life 2 and a Led Zep tshirt respectively. thanks guys, btw, i really appreciate the gifts. and heres to what will hopefully be a better year than the last. cheers.