Looking ahead — and for a fork

I realize I'm supposed to get all contemplative at this time of year. 2007 is almost over. People everywhere are compiling lists of their favorite music, movies and celebrity scandals of the past 12 months. Well, phooey on that. Here, in no particular order, is what I'm going to remember from the year that's about to wrap up: I bought a house. That's pretty much it. I realize there was some other stuff going on. Some of it was fairly important. I keep hearing things about a Presidential election. I know one of the candidates is a Mormon, one used to be mayor of New York City and one used to be an actor on Night Court or something. I suspect at least three or four of them are just plain nuts. But that's all about that I can tell you about the campaign. I'm sure someone will let me know when I need to start paying attention. I'm fairly confident we celebrated Christmas recently, but I can't be sure. People gave me gifts. I gave some wrapped packages to other people. There were family members in town I hadn't seen for a while, and I kept hearing annoying, Christmas-related songs on the radio lately. For the past month or so, though, I haven't thought about much besides buying and moving into my first home. I'm sure you know that, though. I keep writing about it. Don't worry. I promise I'll stop soon. For weeks now I have been surrounded by boxes. I'm awash in cables and cords. I've got so many wires connecting my DVD player to my TV and my TV player to my speaker system and about a dozen other audio-visual components to each other that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to puzzle them all out. I'm a little afraid I'm going to push the wrong button and trigger a situation right out of WarGames, the 1983 classic in which Matthew Broderick nearly causes a global nuclear war while playing a computer game. I'm not sure how that would happen, but I'm not taking any chances. Slowly but surely, I've put away most of the bags and boxes I used to move my possessions to my new house, which has simultaneously made the house seem both cleaner and much emptier. I'm not sure if that's better than cluttered and full. I hauled the final load from my old home on Tuesday night — a fan, a jar of gumballs and four sheets of wood I'd been using in place of the box spring that didn't fit down the stairs to my bedroom. It was an odd collection of stuff, I'll admit. I still can't find my silverware, though. And pretty soon I'm going to run out of things I can eat with my fingers. I have cable TV (finally). I have an Internet connection. I have done dishes in my new dishwasher and laundry in my new washer and dryer. Sometime this week I'll have to write my first mortgage check, although I'm kind of hoping the bank will kind of forget about it. That happens sometimes, right? I didn't sleep very will my first night in the new house, but that's gotten better. I've had to shovel a couple of times since I moved in. It wasn't bad. And it was certainly better than the two times I had to shovel before I had a single possession in the house. I'm not sure the house feels entirely like a home yet, but I'm sure that will happen. The heck with looking back, then. I'm looking forward to that.

International relations

Dear unidentified Venezuelan woman, Please stop calling me. Seriously. Enough is enough. It was actually kind of funny when you called the first time last Thursday and tried to speak to me in Spanish. But when you left a voicemail message that consisted entirely of you singing unintelligible words to me, I started to worry I was in some bizarre Spanish-language sequel of The Ring. I spent the next few days waiting for a creepy girl to come crawling out of the TV at me, only in this case I imagine she'd be dressed like a bumblebee or something. When you called me 15 more times over the next four days, I started to feel like I was the victim of the least efficient stalker ever. Honestly, you called me two times as I drove from Farmington to Rosemount and three more as I sat in McDonald's trying to eat my lunch. It just seems like overkill. I hope you don't take this personally. It's not that I dislike you. How could I? To the best of my memory, the sum total of our intelligible conversation would, if transcribed, look something like this: Unidentified Venezuelan woman: Do you speak Spanish? Confused Minnesotan editor: No. UVW: What ... city ... are ... you? CME: Farmington, Minnesota. UVW: What ... city ... are ... you? CME: Farmington. UVW: I ... am ... Venezuela. It goes on like that for a while, but you get the idea. I can hardly claim I know you well enough to form an opinion of your personality. For all I know you're perfectly pleasant when you're talking to people who understand you. It's just that I'm not one of them, and I'm starting to question the value of continuing this long-distance conversation. I have no idea why you're calling me so much. I know everyone in your country is very excited about Twins pitcher Johan Santana, but I promise I don't have any inside information for you on his status with the Twins. Even if I did, what good would it do? You don't speak English, remember? We're kind of at a stalemate there, you understand? Of course you don't. As I write this it's been two days since I've heard from you, unidentified Venezuelan woman. Maybe you've grown tired of trying to figure out what city I am. Maybe you've finally figured out the intricacies of international dialing and are finally calling the person you've been trying all along to get through to. I hope that's the case. If I've heard the last of you, unidentified Venezuelan woman, I hope life treats you well. I hope the weather is nice in Valencia, which according to the city code in your phone number is where you're calling from. We've had a lot of snow here in Minnesota (That's a serious chubasco to you, if about.com has that translation right.). I can't say I'll miss you, unidentified Venezuelan woman, but you certainly made four days of my life a little more interesting. Seriously, though. Stop calling. Sincerely, Nathan Hansen