The New Year is a more hazy concept for me than for most, I think, due to my acknowledging the winter solstice as an ending/beginning mark, and my birthday being wedged in there. Clustered in with the cultural meanings of new beginnings attached to Christmas and New Year's, this means I end up with a ten-day transitional period where I haven't quite decided whether a new year has started yet or not. The following is therefore a loosely organized braindump of things I've been thinking about for the last week:

2006 was notable for the number of growed-up milestones it included:

• I finished that last grad school project in February and formally graduated in April.