2006 Already?

Ji-in of Twice the Rice has a cool idea on her blog -- what were you doing 10 years ago, 5 years ago, 1 year ago, and yesterday? It gets you thinking how time can fly -- and the importance of living each day fully. I can't believe 2006 is almost here. With music, poetry, and activism in mind, here is a little random history:

10 years ago: in grad school studying composition and rhetoric (up to my ears in Aristotle) hoping I would someday get a full-time job/ heavy into the Beastie Boys, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana/ reading people like Frank O'Hara, Margaret Atwood, Alice Walker poems/ read my first Korean novella, Kang Sok kyong's A Room in the Woods/ digging the Clinton-Gore years/

5 years ago: almost tenured/ publishing and editing In the Grove and having some poems published here and there/ got married in Hawai'i/ reading Li Young Lee, Timothy Liu, Sherman Alexie/ live shows by Beck, Fugazi, Built to Spill/ disgusted over Wen Ho Lee/ living in Fresno/ spent a summer teaching in Qingdao, China/ wishing Gore had more campaign savvy

1 year ago: happily tenured/ moving along in our adoption plans/ reading Tina Chang, David Dominguez, Amy Uyematsu/ live shows by Sparklejet, Grandaddy/ our cats started rapping/ returned from Cayos Cuchinos, Honduras and Belize/ wishing Gore had more campaign savvy/ trying to exercise more/remembering Phnom Penh/ had never visited a blog

Yesterday: Led Zeppelin in the morning in my iPOD grading literary analysis essays on Loung Ung's memoir First They Killed My Father/ taught three classes, followed by a department meeting/ saw The Squid and the Whale (thumbs up, by the way)/ trying to imagine how it's already been five months of blogging/ wondering what happened to November/ ITG 14 just out