Here's the thing: I can't really write much about what really matters. A few veiled references, maybe, but nothing substantive. Maybe at the end of the year I'll become really reflective and pound out a tome about the good, the bad and the motherfucking ugly of 2006. But right now I still feel like most of what I'd like to say would either hurt/offend people or just make everything super awkward.

So what to use this SIX-YEAR-OLD blog for? Well, lots of little photo entries. Those are fun. An occasional meme. And right now, a little list. I was listening to music that reminded me of a friend and I started thinking about some of my favorite memories of her. So here's a handful of 'em. I think I'll do it for all of my peeps. But right now, five of my favorite moments with Allison:

1. Driving to Spring Valley (or somewhere near there) with Alli, Larissa and someone else (can't remember) to pick up alcohol for Allison's big hotel party during the second half of senior year (of high school). It was my first such soiree and it was fun. And eventful. Before staying up all night talking to Eileen and Jason, I talked lots of smack about a close friend, who heard all about it. A mostly silent but super dramatic war began and lasted the rest of the spring and beyond. But back to the drive to Spring Valley, I think that was when I realized Alli and I had become close.

2. Fifth grade! There's not one particular moment, but this was when I first met Allison. We weren't friends. I had only two friends, really. It was a terrible year. Good in a lot of ways, in retrospect. I spent just that one year in Upper Saddle River. It was seven years later when Allison and I really became good friends.

3. New Year's Eve, 2003. I had just moved back to NJ. My teary goodbye at Oakland Airport was still in my head as I walked around the roof of Alli's apartment with a bunch of old friends, eyeing the TV in the gym to find out when, exactly, to run around shouting "Happy New Year." I was back, spending the big night in The City (the only one) with my favorite people, but after three consecutive NYEs with Ben, it was a rollercoaster of a night.

4. New Year's Day, 2005. Back with Ben, we, along with Lauren and Alli, had done the Times Square thing. It was one of two perfect NYEs with him (the other three were spent at Minna with Terri, in a fight at our apartment, and in the midst of the strangest moments of my life in Berkeley). The best part of that trip, though, was waiting around to get into a fabulous brunch place on New Year's Day. Waiting on the stairs with Angela and Bryan, eating the best bacon ever, chillin' with my favorite ladies.

5. Rent (the movie) during one of my last days in NYC before moving back to the Barea at the end of last year. It was November, the scent of burning wood was in the air. I met Alli and Lauren up by Columbia, an area I had not really explored, for the perfect NYC diner meal and a movie that all of us were so geekily connected to.

Fin.