magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

2003 wrap up.

with the exception of the last couple of weeks, 2003 was a pretty good year. quite possibly the best year of my life to date. since updates here have been a little sporadic over, well actually, the last couple of years, i thought i'd try and recap/recreate the last 365 days for myself at least, or anyone else who may care.

new year's day began with a ride out to hartford with daniel and jeanette. we were smoking pot. i had gotten stoned for the first time the previous afternoon (one year ago today), having only smoked once in my life before to no effect. in hartford we met stef, who had dragged herself out of bed with very little sleep and a hangover, to pick me up and return me to providence. stef and i had been back together for two months. we hooked up after risd's 2002 artists' ball, and by the first of the year were pretty well re-cemented as a couple.

my wintersession 2003 class was my last real elective at risd. the freedom of my year in rome was amazing, but it left me with a lot of requirements to catch up on during my last year. in theory, half of my wintersession time was supposed to have been spent on my degree project and the other half on my wintersession course. i didn't really do any work on my degree project. but i had a lot of fun finally taking a filmmaking class.

i did a decent job of writing during the first half of february. valentine's day was probably the highlight.

on wintersession break stef and i drove out to chicago. there was a big winter snowstorm brewing, but all the predictions had our route at the very northern edge of it. we went straight, it veered, and we got stuck in pennsylvania in blizzard-like conditions. we managed to get off of the highway and to a motel. we got up early the next morning, made it about ten miles down the road in an hour, and decided to spend another day snowed in. on the third day we got to chicago. we had a great time. we didn't fight. we saw lots of cool architecture. we saw chris. was saw my dad and annette on the way back home.

a day or two after we got back stef's car was broken into. the passenger window was broken and her discman and my lomo were stolen. the lomo still had a roll of film with half of our chicago pictures on it. that was sad.

on her birthday i gave her a pair of tiffany earrings. little silver beans. they were just too perfect.

i didn't write anything during march, and only posted two pictures to my website. my roommate at the time, shannon, got a really cool tattoo. for spring break stef, amy, jeremy and i went to maine for a few days.

in april, in the midst of working on my degree project, i started posting again. stef and i were both stressed and fighting some, but started planning for moving in together in june. towards the end of the month, stef pointed out that she felt i was 'always unhappy', even though i was feeling happier than i ever had in my life.

it became clear in may that my degree project was turning out to be a disaster.

lots of other architecture kids got engaged, it scared stef, but if i hadn't been thinking about our future before then (i had, of course), i started. i told her about how when my dad was visiting in the fall he sometimes called annette his girlfriend, sometimes his fiance, and sometimes his wife (they weren't yet married). she said the same was true when she talked about me.

i eventually managed to bring my degree project to some degree of resolution. it was no where near the project i had wished it to be. my final crit went alright, but when i found out that four people in our year had failed i was almost certain that i could easily find myself on that list. as it turned out i wasn't, but stef was. i'm still not sure how. she certainly didn't put 100% of all possible effort into her project, but in the end she had a building that was relatively well developed and her crit went fairly well. she made an agreement to spend some time during the summer refining her project, and did eventually bring it to a much better level of completion and a passing grade.

and speaking of the summer.. on june 4th stef and i moved into our first apartment together. while we had basically been living together in her apartment for the previous six months or so, it was now official. we were subletting an apartment on benefit street from a junior in architecture who was going home to korea.

we graduated from risd. our families met eachother for the first time: we all went out to eat at the garden grille after the graduation ceremony. i applied for a job at oop, but was never hired. (i had applied to brown university's graduate program in computer music and composition earlier in the year, when stef was still thinking about spending another year at risd to get her master's in teaching, but didn't get accepted into that either, after which we began talking about leaving providence and where we would go.)

on my birthday we adopted a cat. stef's little sister olivia came to stay with us for a week.

july just sort of flew by. stef got a job hostessing at a fine dining restaurant a couple nights a week. on sunday nights i would come and pick her up and we'd go to xo and drink martinis or mojitos and talk about what our wedding was going to be like. these are some of my happiest memories of the year, of our relationship, of my life.

we named out cat 'flora'.

having not found a job all summer (half way through i had pretty much given up on looking, knowing that we were leaving providence in early september), i figured i needed to do something to get myself out of the house, and in august decided to take a bartending course.

in september i got a new cameraphone, and so i have pictures to guide me through the month in memory, even though i didn't write at all. we moved out of our sublet and into stef's mom's house. a week later we drove out to kansas where i officiated over daniel and jeanette's wedding, the first wedding i've preformed. it went well. and then back to stef's mom's for another week (including painting and general helping out) before setting off for texas.

we found an apartment, a nice one above a garage, in early october. we drove to houston and bought furniture at ikea. three weeks later, stef got a job. alex came to visit. on halloween stef made a cardboard cutout 'little stephany' whom she placed in my shirt pocket.

during november i did a decent job of writing semi-regularly on my sight. i attempted to participate in national novel writing month again. i never got more than half a paragraph written, although my mom completed a 50k word novel.

sometime in november stef must have begun to sour on our relationship. at the end of december she told me she had been unhappy 'for a month and a half'. on the 9th i was unhappy, although i don't recall specifically what caused it. the picture for that day was made up by layering three separate pictures that i took while were were out at the annual downtown bookfair, which we had a good time at together.

we had thanksgiving dinner at the bitter end, stef's place of employment, which was nice. she had the green plate and got to take home a free bottle of wine.

i finally got a job in december. doing graphic design work part time for a small architecture firm. unfortunately it never really became as much as i was expecting it to be.

stef started staying out later more often with people from work, and i started getting more and more upset over it, eventually leading to a day during which we didn't speak at all. it sucked. but i really didn't have any idea how bad things had gotten. i was still so happy to have her in my life, and knew that these were things we could work through.

the drive home for the holidays, as i've mentioned, was strained. i've been miserable this past week and a half. and now stef is back in austin and i'm suffering from the seasonal affective disorder of a new england winter for which i was in no way prepared.

i really think that 2003 was, for the most part, the best year of my life. but right now, given the last ten days, it's very hard for me to appreciate it as such.

regardless, i want to extend my best wishes to anyone reading this for their own life in 2004.