On 12/12/12, and other nicely round dates

Yesterday was 12/12/12! Hooray!

Since I like fun dates, especially repeated ones like today's, and since I'm pretty sure this is the last one I will get for quite a while), I thought I'd dig through my brain and some social media archives to guesstimate what I was doing on each of the repeated-date dates of the past decade and a bit.

9/9/99
This was the first one I remember (I was a toddler on 8/8/88), and I'm pretty sure I remember it because MTV had one of their awards shows on this date. At the time (I was in the beginning of 8th grade), I didn't have MTV so I was likely actually out at Beth Or auditioning for or just starting Rehearsals for Once Upon a Mattress, the first time I was in it.

01/01/01
I was in the 9th grade. We had either just done or were about to have auditions for my first high school show, Fiddler on the Roof (this was the 2nd time I was in that show). I don't remember what I did that New Years, but I was definitely one of those odious kids intent on letting everyone know that I knew that the millennium didn't REALLY start until 2001 (while secretly feeling like all that mattered was the first number in the date changing), and that 2001 felt pretty anticlimactic.

02/02/02
I was a sophomore in high school. That year, I was in marching band for the first time, and remember being so relieved when it was musical season. That spring's show was My Fair Lady, and I distinctly remember most of my friends quitting because they were cranky about their parts. But I stuck with it ( because -- hello, My Fair Lady!), and as a result, my poor mother and sister had to endure four performances of not-the-best version of that show, with no cuts and plodding pacing (see: the time i still owe them deeply for 16 hours of bad HS musical).

03/03/03
According to my journal from the time, this was a Sunday in the spring of my junior year. I spent that morning helping run programming for the 1st graders at Beth Or. Alli and I spent the afternoon at the Philadelphia Flower Show with mom, helping her get her materials into the convention center for a talk on recyclable gardening materials, and then having a gallumph about the show. Apparently, I had also just gotten contacts for the first time and was cranky about my inability to get them into my eyes, and was nervous about the results of a trigonometry test. Ah, to be 16!

04/04/04
April 4th was a Sunday in my last semester of high school. My journal says I spent the day with Lauren G,. bouncing around Ursinus' campus (she lived on the border of it, and at the time, I thought I was going there). I wrote in vigorous superlatives about the day, but it mostly looks like we hung around her house, ran errands, and drank coffee at Horn and Hardart. I suppose that's the best kind of day, in a way.

Also amusing -- I wrote that I "walked the love of my life" that morning - clearly, I was referring to Harley, but it is a touch concerning that at 17 I thought a dog would be the love of my life. On the other hand -- he was a pretty great dog.

05/05/05
In May of 2005, I was in the middle of exams for my spring semester freshman year classes. The day before, I had my first experience with a double exam day in which one is a Kapelle class -- which is to say that on May 5th, I was likely nursing quite the hand cramp. My journal from the day also says that I had a Schutzy sandwich for dinner -- a wonderful comglomeration of tuna, hummus, spicy mustard, bagel and many other wonderful things which was Mat's speciality when he worked at Usdan. I can almost guarantee that the Octet also gathered for our then-traditional smoothie that night.

06/06/06
I spent the beginning part of the summer after my sophomore year of college working at the Abramson Center in their recreation department, so that's what I was up to on 6/6/6. (And yes, getting to play Bingo and sing songs with nice Jewish old people was a perfectly designed-for-me gig). That week, i wad also gearing up to staff a Rockwood Adventures trip with a bunch of crazy teenagers and my friend Aaron.

07/07/07
According to the social media, I spent the day visiting Jackie in NJ, where we made an epically amazing video because we missed Missy (who was in Australia at the time). A week later was Schutz's epic 21st birthday party, the last of our summers-in-between-college rendezvous in NJ, so I'm sure I was also spending the day getting ridiculously excited for that.

08/08/08
A hot summer day in Philly, working at my first job out of college at the Franklin institute. I likely spent the day dissecting sheep's hearts and cow's eyeballs, and telling people about the World's Cheapest Spacesuit. Also, the week before, Shaked and Will and I met Bradley Whitfield and Christine Baranski after their show Boeing Boeing, so I can guarantee that I was telling everyone who would listen about that adventure.

09/09/09
This was a great day -- it was when ACEEE released my first report as lead author. Oh, for the days when climate change legislation really seemed like it was going to happen . . .

10/10/10
I was home in Pennsylvania, visiting mom and attending a Rosh Chodesh training at Temple Sinai (site of many scout meetings as a child). Afterwards, we went to a bookstore to drop off many many books (Mom had me get rid of an entire floor-to-ceiling the day before, and then spent the evening having dinner with Bubbie.

11/11/11
Elizabeth was in town visiting, so Sarah and Elizabeth and I all went out to dinner together at this cute place in Logan called Veranda. I remember that the food wasn't so good, but there was a bachelor party or something going on, so we had excellent people watching time. Afterwards, we went to ACKC Cocoa Bar, which (before they closed teh 14th street location) was one of my favorite places in all of the DC.

And now we're back to the present. I assume this was interesting to absolutely no one, but it was fun for me to take a gander through my journals and the interwebs to find out what I was up to on each of the same date-dates in the past decade. 12/12/12 was a pretty fun day too -- I was in Portland, OR for work -- a totally new and exciting city/state for me!