List on the 3s: Shiny’s Day-End Retrospective of December 31, 2008

List on the 3s — if a day has a 3 in it, I write a list. Get it? Got it? Good.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been seeing a lot of year-end recaps of the best and worst of everything somehow connected to the Internets.  It’s especially interesting to see people reflect on their own lives throughout all of 2008 — especially those whose blogs I haven’t read very carefully. All I need to do is wait until the last few days of the year and watch them summarize th important plot points, and *Boom!* I’m all caught up.  As someone who doesn’t blog nearly as regularly as I should, I felt that summarizing 2008 in a list for me would be a tad unfair to you, the Shiny’s Takeout viewers and listeners.*  Especially since I started blogging here well into 2008 — how could I summarize something which, according to the vantage point of the Shiny’s Takeout universe, hasn’t happened?

But I realized I could do something better a retrospective not of this year, but rather of this day in my life.  Hopefully you’ll join me and look back alongside me as I think back to the high points and low points that were December 31, 2008. (Or at least the day so far. There’s still a few more hours left to go.) And that, today, will be my List on the 3s.

Top 8 Momentous Moments of December 31, 2008

Personally, I think December 31, 2008 will be a day to remember due to the many ways that my life was affected during those glorious 24 hours. Remembering back to the beginning of the day — it’s hard to believe that gas prices were as high as $1.57  –quite a hike compared to the $1.55 I saw driving home today!  Remember the wacky articles in the newspaper about the rejected cease-fire in Gaza? About Blagojevich’s pick for the vacant Illinois Senate seat?  And throughout the day more news occurred: We saw Paris Hilton talk about a shopping trip in Australia. And how about that Dow Jones? Up today from yesterday! There was also an extra second added to the day at around 7:00pm Eastern.

It was certainly a day of days.  Here are some of the things that happened to me:

8. Free pizza at work!

Because, you know, it’s New Year’s Eve.  One of the supervisors got some pies delivered from Papa Johns for those of us who were working there. I had a slice of plain cheese.  Free pizza is yummy.



7. I was up to date this evening.

I did a random check to make sure that everything was in order. To ensure that I was totally prepared in every way. To be absolutely certain that no new surprises were lurking behind a corner ready to get me.

And you know what? Everything was in its proper place. And I could breathe a sigh of relief.

6. I made the decision to wear my red Maryland sweatshirt this morning.

Working in a relatively casual environment is nice — especially when it’s the day before New Year’s and you can pretty much get away wearing whatever you want.  And today it was Terrapin red.  For a very good reason: Maryland reigned victorious at the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, ID last night, beating Nevada 42-35.

I didn’t watch a single moment of the Bowl game. But I wanted to — the artificial turf on the field is actually blue, and passing birds often mistake it for a lake. So that would have been fun to watch. Except for the fact that it was a very obscure bowl game.

Yay Maryland!



5.  I shopped at the supermarket on the way home from work — and used one of those handheld scanner things!

I was one of those people who thought “self-checkout” at the grocery store was neat. But this! This was something extraordinary.  You see — you can now walk into the supermarket and scan your “bonus card” and get one of these handheld scanners which you take with you as you shop. Before you drop something in the cart, you scan it.  You keep on doing this until you’re done. Then, when you get to one of those special checkout lanes, you simply check out in a breeze because everything’s already been scanned.  It saves a lot of time and energy!

In theory.

I seemed to trip the system in two ways:  I scanned my bonus card before I scanned the “finished” bar code at the check-out station, which apparently is too much for the scanner to handle, so everything had to be reset. And then — it flipped out on me when I tried to purchase alcohol and no human was there to check my ID. Keep in mind that this is one of the busiest supermarkets in  the area — usually a 24/7 store which was closing down within the hour for the holiday. By the time I finished there were a good seven people in line behind me. Oops…

But hey! Smirnoff Ice. Green apple flavored.



4. I taught my co-worker what “REO Speedwagon” is.

I sit next to a wonderful guy named Mitchell. Mitchell was born in the mid-1980s –and it’s been interesting seeing the world through his eyes as a young man coming of age in the world of December 31, 2008. Since things at work were lighter and more casual than usual, he started playing some music — which I didn’t mind. It was Coldplay’s “Yellow” album.  But soon after, his tastes changed a bit. He fired up YouTube and started playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana.

It was then that he asked me if I had heard of Nirvana. (!)  I told him I had. He made some reference that Kurt Cobain was his generation’s John Lennon. (I was surprised that he knew who John Lennon was.)

I also told him, in a joking manner, that I really disliked Nirvana — because they changed the landscape of MTV in the early 1990s.  had it not been for Nirvana, grunge would not have caught on nearly as quickly — and we’d still be listening to bands such as Poison, Warrant, Winger, Color Me Badd and REO Speedwagon.

He then asked me that holy grail of questions: What or who is REO Speedwagon?

And I directed him to this YouTube video, warning him that he would probably hate it, but to give it a chance for at least 30 seconds.

Direct YouTube Link

And you know what? Something magical happened. Mitchell did, indeed, listen to the first 30 seconds of “Roll With the Changes,” every over-enunciated word.  And then he turned it off and asked me if I had heard of “Rage Against the Machine.”

Good times…



3. Dan B. confirmed me as a friend on Facebook.

This may not mean very much to many of you — and that’s because you probably don’t know Dan.  Nice guy. Went to elementary school all the way throughout high school with the guy.  He made his way to Duke Law School, but I don’t even hold that against him.  He has three adorable kids, and his parents are wonderful people who were very hospitable to my family when my mom died. I haven’t seen Dan since 1992, but that’s okay. Because we’re Facebook friends and nothing can come between us. Oh — I remember that we used to make fun of his mom’s accent a lot. Guess that was kind of mean of us…



2. My kid greeted me at the door when I got home, gave me a big hug, looked at me funny, asked what that sound was, confused us both, and told me that it was just me farting.

I think this one stands on its own without needing any further explanation.



1. It was really, really, really windy outside.

If anyone asks “What do you remember the most about December 31, 2008?” I think anyone and everyone in the Washington, DC area would come up with the same answer: “Huh?” But if someone were to remind them about the wind, well — it would certainly not be dismissed.

We just simply haven’t had as fierce winds for at least two weeks now. The past two days, in fact, the temperature was well into the 60s. Today the area was plagued with power outages due to tree limbs snapping and falling on electrical lines. There’s a junction close to us called “Seven Corners” where one smart-ass decided, 150 years ago, to have seven roads come together at one intersection. Seven.  Because life wasn’t difficult enough. Anyway, power was out at that large-scale intersection at Seven Corners. Do you really think that people would voluntarily treat this as a seven-way stop?

Apparently the wind was so bad that it knocked the “U” off of the USA Today building here in Northern Virginia. Crews continue to work on repairinit because they don’t want to have it say “SA Today” for longer than they need to.

Anyway — it was windy. And cold. Still is, in fact.  All we need now is some snow…

Well, that’s my take on December 31, 2008. I hope your day was wonderful as well. I wish you the best for a happy and healthy January 1, 2009!

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* The podcast version of Shiny’s Takeout should be available in mid-2010.