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.