It was a strange day today. The first crisis came when the year-end wrap-up I’d been working on for two days turned out to have been autosaving a very, very early version (I am 99% sure that rather than being a WordPress problem, it involved my pathetic AT&T internet connection, which disconnects itself every 5 minutes or so). It was totally comprehensive and multimedia, too.

After that I got lost for over half an hour trying to get to the local Trader Joe’s, somehow badly strained my right shoulder getting out of the car (I am aware this makes no sense), had a borderline panic attack based on too many people + forgotten shopping list, and on the way home, almost mowed down a waiter in a crosswalk.

So once home, I thought I’ll bake some potatoes, that’s easy enough. And the handle fell off the oven door.

I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that all this mischief and borderline catastrophe was caused by a gremlin. A gremlin who came to bring us these glad tidings: “STOP FREAKING THINKING ABOUT 2008!”

That gremlin is correct. Even though my essay was about the good things the year brought, I kept finding myself drifting into angry rants about the OTHER stuff. Before 2008, I was not even capable of angry rants. It was only the second-worst year of my life, but the first worst was merely crushingly sad – no rage. I used to wish I was capable of getting pissed off, but now I’d like a refund on that, thanks.

So it’s time to forget that and talk about what’s coming.

I have one official New Year’s Resolution, which is one more than I usually have: Attempt to do 90% less this year, and do the remaining 10% really well. I know – it’s a good one, right? You can totally borrow it.

That said, here’s some stuff I’d LIKE to accomplish this year:

Actually post to this blog regularly now that it’s all fresh and sparkly.

Move back to LA proper (this is almost a done deal).

I would like to start a massive cult-of-personality movement around Senator Russ Feingold. I didn’t know you could do that with politicians who weren’t dictators, but now that that glass ceiling’s been busted: This guy’s brilliant, charming, funny, handsome AND has rock-solid progressive ideals that he actually – get this – stands by. Join me?

Get a smart phone of some kind. The time has come.

Find a new job as a proofreader. I did it for years, then I did other stuff for years, and you know what? I should’ve stuck with my first idea. I’m absurdly good at it and I find it weirdly satisfying. What more can you ask from a day job?

Build a long-planned website (this is what I was test driving Joomla for) that’s a hub for information on feeding people with dietary restrictions, targeted to people who only have to do it occasionally and don’t want to stock up on specialty ingredients or become experts. The goal is to show people it’s not that big a deal; out there on the internets I’ve heard people ranting up a storm because some asshole with a severe food allergy is coming over for lunch, ya know? The holdup is that I can’t come up with a good name. My latest idea was Feeding the Masses but one hates to get too Biblical.

Oh, right: Do something about my health.

Also, I want to tell you what was cool in 2008 – shh! Really fast!

• Pushing Daisies
• Old 97′s
• Murry Hammond
• Passing Strange
• Duke Special
• Hawksley Workman
• The Magnetic Fields
• Russell Brand (video link)
• Of Montreal
• The Solipsistics
• The Greg Proops Chat Show
• Andy Prieboy

The above people and projects should, by the way, not be associated in any way with the horror that was 2008. They existed on a plane above it.

So what are you planning to be up to this year?

I’ve been cleaning out old drafts that were brought over from the MT blog; most of them were crap like “Does it show up when I do this?”

One, though, had me curious. It was entitled “The Zoo: Things I Have Learned” and began:

The first attempt to go to the zoo was on Easter Sunday. The theory was that it was a major holiday, and one that people spend with their families eating ham and disturbing “salads,” so it would be sparsely attended at best.

This was when I learned that despite having moved to California nearly 20 years ago, I still occasionally make plans based on assumptions based on my upbringing as a white chick from the Northeast. Because as it turns out, the zoo was jammed to can’t-get-near-it proportions; clearly, the hottest spot in town, followed closely by the many nearby offshoots of Griffith Park, which were packed with people who’d brought their upsetting springtime cuisine out for picnics. It looked like it’d be a lot more fun that way, actually. Semipredictable weather is a beautiful thing.

Then there was a little nubbin about how the kid who never napped DID nap, which was clearly leading to a whole big story, but didn’t.

So it’s rattling around the back of my brain now. What did I learn from not being able to go to the zoo? Was it something that would change the way I live my life? If so: Have I internalized it, or merely forgotten it?

I’ll probably never know. The lesson here: Finish your blog posts, kiddies.

Also, I’m rather happy with the phrase “upsetting springtime cuisine.”

Yesterday, my husband finished rereading Donald E. Westlake’s “What’s The Worst That Could Happen?” Saturday, I’d picked up a reissue of Westlake’s long-out-of-print “Somebody Owes Me Money,” which I started reading today.

So naturally, there’s been a lot of Westlake-related conversation around the house.

I wondered, for instance, why he doesn’t seem to be a household name. In the unfortunately segregated-in-bookstores crime-fiction genre, he’s massive, but I personally haven’t met anyone who wasn’t pretty heavily into that genre who knew who he was. Which is unfortunate, because he’s one of the best writers I’ve ever read. Unbelievably funny (you know all those internet acronyms, like Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off With Tears Rolling Down My Cheeks and Sudden Difficulty Breathing? Many of Westlake’s novels bring those to life), and with a gift for plotting that often makes whoever I read next seem as if they’re working in crayon.

And I don’t know if I said this out loud or merely thought it, but my brain definitely formed the thought, “I’m going to be incredibly bummed out when he dies.”

And my next Twitter check informed me that, in fact, he had.

Sigh.

So instead of JUST being incredibly bummed out, I thought I’d put some energy into encouraging you, if you haven’t already, to read his books. He’s written so many that it’s hard to come up with a starting place; my personal favorites, Drowned Hopes and Dancing Aztecs, are both out of print. So I’m just gonna go with: Buy the first title from the Dortmunder series you can find.

Really. You’ll thank me. I love being thanked.

RIP, Donald E. Westlake, 1933-2008. You’ll be missed, sir.