New Year's Prong

This year, I'm going to write "09" and like it. Years ending in nine are more exciting than others, anyway, because they foreshadow the end of the decade. I've always enjoyed foreshadowing, even though in literature it's usually in the context of imminent death or chaos. I'm not feeling any foreboding yet, (what could possibly go wrong?) except for the imminent psychological trauma of the big changeover of the second digit. That change can be a bit anticlimactic (remember Y2K?), so it pays to enjoy the "---9" year. I, for one, am going to party like it's 1999.

So, in the spirit of newly inaugurated President Obama (and I must say I mentally joined the happy dance that my colleagues did at work when NPR announced that Dubya was no longer prez) and his call for change, I have decided to no longer paint boring pictures. Who wants accuracy anyway? And watercolors? So 2008. No, 2009 is the year of the bigger and better pronghorn. One that refuses to blend into the prairie, who will no longer be upstaged by the sagebrush. I give you a vibrant, powerful new prong who isn't ashamed of being done in pastels.

Happy new year.