I was reading about the life of Congressman Robert Matsui, who passed away on New Years Day.  He leaves our district without a representative, and an election will take place in March to find a person to take his seat.  According to the Constitution of the United States, to be a Congressperson, you must be twenty-five years old.  I am eligible to run.  Could this be the opportunity that I have been waiting for?  Is it feasible?  Anything is feasible.  Is it realistic?  I have to do more research on it.

I have to mention one more time that I love the show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition".  The episode last night was really touching, in that the recipient family consisted of two deaf parents, a fourteen-year-old son, and a younger son who was born blind and diagnosed with autism.  The father worked on a car assembly line, and the mother worked with deaf people.  The show this week hooked the family up with necessities to help their autistic child develop and make the lives of the whole family easier, including video monitors so that they can sign to each other, computers that print in braille, a tracking device in case their youngest wanders out of the house, fire alarms that have flashing strobe lights, and even a $50,000 scholarship for the fourteen-year-old, who has taken on a role of interpreting for each member of the family his whole life.  It's an amazing thing.

During the show, there were commercials for "The Bachelorette" and the featured bachelorette said that it's so hard to date all of those guys at the same time, but she'll do it to find the person she's supposed to spend her whole life with.  It's like hard core speed dating.  Maybe that's the right concept though.  Maybe we do have to go through a lot of people to find the one with whom we'll be truly happy.  Then again, I can think of a couple of couples who in their first relationship have found marital bliss.  So again, we come to the age old answer of "It depends".  It depends on the people, the circumstances, the time.

One of the best feelings in life is the emotional response of causing someone to smile.  Hopefully I've been the stimuli to cause people to smile more often than not.  If not, I apologize, and I'll just have to work on it. 

I received another engagement announcement this past weekend.  I'm not sure how public the announcement is, so I'll have to keep their identities protected.  Ironically, I was shopping for airline tickets to San Diego for Chi and Charlene's wedding in June when I heard.  This is going to be great.  I'd like a date to this one.  Anyone interested?  If not that's cool too.  I'll have fun either way.  I mean two of my friends are marrying each other!  It doesn't get much better than that.

Out with the old and in with the new.  Some of the new will probably be the same as the old too...unless it's not.  New year's eve meant good music, good dancing, and lots of drinking for other folks and lots of me making sure they were okay.  The tally - no casualties, two vomiters and one victim of the vomit.  On the one's and two's were 3SA, Three Style Attractions, bringing it home of the brothers of Chi Rho Omicron for years now.  It wasn't an XPO party, but it was fun nonetheless.  In fact, I probably had more fun sicne I didn't have to worry about knuckleheads messing with "our" party.

I danced, and danced, and danced.  I danced alone, I danced with girls, I danced in groups.  I danced to my car when it was over.  It was fun.  Everyone was just there to have a good time.  Nobody I invited came through, but I ended up seeing some folks there I knew and also met a few people that were with them.  I didn't really get their names though, because the music was overpowering.  You could feel it in your chest.  I love that.

They stopped the music for the countdown, and passed out the alcohol or the sparkling cider for those of us that don't drink, and we did the thang.  Couples celebrating all over the place, and people just enjoying themselves.  It was awesome.

So bring in the new year.  I expect it to be exciting and new for all of us.