30. Now legitimately a day or two behind in posting...

...but I am SO glad to be in Vancouver! Such a stunningly beautiful city. I'm definitely falling in love with this place.

I'm incredibly glad to have come here for a different sort of New Year's. Because, truth be told, I'm not much of a New Year's person.

See, I've always kinda hated the idea of celebrating the end of one year and start of another. Don't get me wrong--I pretty much love any excuse to celebrate--but the idea of celebrating the passage of time always kind of depresses me. I have a very acute (and perhaps unhealthy) sense that time is fleeting, and so celebrating the end of a given year fills me with a bit of existential dread.

That, and I've always found New Year's Eve celebrations to be utterly predictable and pedestrian--the idea of going to another boring New Year's Eve house party could very well be considered my fifth level of Hell.

So on January 1st of the newly-completed year past, I made a decision: I would forego the traditional New Year's Eve celebration, and in lieu of the ball-drop-watching / champagne-sipping / charades-playing / party-blower-blowing monotony, I would focus on New Year's Day. That, too me, was where the real potential lay. I decided that something exciting should take place on the first day of the given new year; for me, that something would have to involve doing something I've never done before. What better, more symbolic way to kick off the new year than by embarking on a brand new adventure, if even just for the day?

My trip here to Vancouver--a city which is winning me over like crazy, by the way--is that inaugural adventure. Last night's prime activity involved going to a hoppin' restaurant (with, if you'll allow me, a ridiculously gorgeous--and super-friendly!--waitstaff) for some amazing food and drink. Our main conversation over the course of the evening was regarding the details of a bet that Austin and I were making for ourselves in 2009. Fairly chill--kinda the way I like my New Years' to be.

And on today--the first day of 2009--the adventure, the never-done-before activity, involved jumping into the freezing cold water of the English Bay wearing but a pair of swimtrunks. It's Vancouver's New Year's Day tradition: several thousand people strong braved the near-freezing temperatures and residual snow to take part in the city's 89th annual Polar Bear Swim.

It was invigorating. It was a bit comical. And it was definitely something I'm glad to have done, if only because it's something I've never done before.

It wasn't a long adventure--the entire ordeal took about 20 minutes (which gave us enough time to catch the second half of USC's resounding victory in the Rose Bowl). And it wasn't particularly adventurous, at least not for me. But it's a start: a great start to the new year, and the start of what I hope will become a long-standing tradition for myself.