There’s a lot to complain about right now. There are wars going on overseas, and the PI cut the New York Times crossword from their paper. There are finals and deadlines and stress coming up, grades to worry about, we haven’t seen the sun in months, the radio plays bad music, and I think I’m being phased out of my job because the restaurant has so few customers. I could go on and on and list the factors for a somewhat lengthy period of time, but for reasons that I don’t really understand life still just seems so unflinchingly good.

We’re halfway through the year and we have spring and sunshine and beaches to look forward to. There’s delicious food and feta cheese and the always classy “Just Dance” that makes everything better when it comes on the radio. There’s that dumb daily crossword which is still inferior to the New York Times one but it is better than nothing. There are things that are yellow and cross country skiing on snow days and Aretha Franklin on the radio. However tedious school can be, however ready we all are to graduate and get on with our lives and do things that are new and exciting and different, there are still many ways, approx, that I’m enjoying my life right now.

Things I’m excited about:
 – three day weekends
 – watching the inauguration instead of taking a final during 2nd period
 – second semester and spending those delicious twenty minutes of break any way I want
 – Cultural Relations in a few weeks.
 – basketball games
 – going to the waltz this weekend!
 – planning my summer
 – having time to watch movies again
 – heifers

As this is my last article for the venerable and esteemed Garfield Messenger, I probably should be writing something startling, something inspiring, something that exemplifies the uncompromising conviction of investigative journalism for which the Messenger stands, uncompromisingly. But what it really comes down to is I’ve got nothing else to say, I’ve been writing for three years and now I’m leaving it up to all the newer, fresher, less jaded staff, of ‘010, ‘011, and ‘012, respectively, to take up the “mantle,” so to speak. So I’m happy to be replacing my fifth period with creative writing second semester, I’m ready to move on and do something different. I’ll go listen to “Just Dance” (which has a twenty percent chance, approx, of being on the radio right now, as it is one of the five songs currently in circulation within popular culture music) or Atmosphere’s “Sunshine” (the two songs which always, unfailingly, make me happy) and I’ll do the crappy crossword in the Seattle Times, and I’ll be happy just to read the paper for the first time in a very long time.