I spent the first few hours of the new year blissfully swilling champagne, and, when that was gone, vodka. Bedtime was 4am, and at 7 someone’s iPhone alarm went off.

By 11 we were all awake, drinking tea with honey and lemon to ease our colds and hangovers. It occurred to me how lame this was – eight twentysomethings sipping lemon zinger, chewing Zicam – and my friend replied “this is 2008. it will be comfortable, yet boring.” After a solid five days of overdrinking and undersleeping, this didn’t seem like a bad thing at all. I looked out the window, and it was snowing.

Our New Year’s hosts had just brought back a puppy from North Carolina, and we spent an hour or so oohing and aahing and letting him nip at our fingers. Just before we left for brunch, the puppy was dropped from a height of two feet or more onto his right front foot, which buckled underneath him as he started howling in pain. “Hm,” I thought to myself, “things are off to a lively start.”

While driving to the restaurant, the light fluffy snow turned to dime-sized flakes, always a bonus with highway driving, and traffic slowed to a crawl. Then my check engine light came on.

Our waitress was one apple shy of useless – our drinks took 20 minutes to arrive (20 minutes!! for a bloody mary!! ETERNITY!!) and by the time we got our meals I’d actually chewed off my own hand from hunger while two of my friends waged a deadly battle over my celery garnish.

Katsumi napped during our return trip to Boston. He’d given out at 12:30 the previous night, a victim of too much Sudafed and too much beer, and he didn’t even get a cocktail with breakfast. Lucky for him that our 40 mile drive took nearly two hours – he got a nice little rest for himself while I shifted back and forth between second and third gear.

Once home, he went to bed, I did the dishes. And drank wine. And wondered how such an objectively shitty day could feel so nice.