Year!
The 2009 Procrastination Edition!

By Dave Fox
January 12, 2010

Greetings Earthlings!

'Tis I, Dave Fox, here to bestow upon you yet another one of those self-absorbed year-end round-up thingies that people write at year's end. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, "But Dave, 2010 has barely started! How can you write a recap of your year just two weeks into it?"

Yeah, well you would say that. You are jealous of my procrastinational skills. 2010 is not the year I am talking about.

So anyway, without further ado (because I am not exactly sure what "ado" is) I present to you, "Year! (The 2009 Procrastination Edition)"

2009 began with a horrible cliché — a month called January. Seriously, do we have to call the first month of the year "January" every year? I think one of these years we should mix things up and call the first month something else. "Herman," for example.

Anyway, in so-called "January," I didn't do very much, so let's just move along.

Next, with eye-rolling predictability, came a month called "February." In February, some exciting things did happen. For example, my girlfriend, Kattina, made another attempt at killing me. She did this by dragging me up to a cabin in the snowy mountains, several hours away from Seattle, and trying to brainwash me into believing that beautiful snowy wilderness can be a pleasant experience. She strapped planks — sometimes referred to as "skis" — to my feet and took me to some trails, and promised me she would not let me die, as long as I quit whining.

Something funny happened on that trip. I discovered that I actually enjoy cross-country skiing on trails in the snowy wilderness, as long as those trails eventually lead to quaint, small towns, and as long as those quaint, small towns have quaint, small bars.

In March, I caught the flu. I'm not talking some wimpy 24-hour bug that some people would be inclined to call "the flu." I am talking full-blown, knock-you-on-your-derrière influenza. Apparently, this is what happens to people who plan insane 24-hour stopovers in Tokyo, in which they intend to stay awake the entire time and run around the city and write some goofy article about the experience. That was my plan, but my body wouldn't let me.

Due to the aforementioned flu, my aforementioned 24-hour stopover in Tokyo was canceled. I instead boarded a flight from Seattle to Asia a day behind schedule, and screeched through Narita airport, cursing the fact that I was in Japan for the first time and was not going to get to see anything other than departure gates, duty free shops, and a public restroom. Four hours after that, close to midnight, my connecting flight landed in Saigon.

It was my second trip to Vietnam. I spent my first hundred hours working on freelance articles and riding through the Mekong Delta on the back of my friend Phúc's motorbike. Four days into my stay, Kattina caught up with me, and we headed north to Mui Ne, a split-personality town on the South China Sea that is half tourist resort, half untouristed fishing village. We splashed. We rode bicycles. We ate dragonfruit, which are like giant, fluorescent-pink, psychedelic kiwis.

So this one night, we were walking along the beach, noticing that the constellations look different as you get closer to the Equator. For example, in Vietnam, the Big Dipper is kind of upside down, which makes no sense at all because everything just spills out of it. No wonder Vietnam has a rainy season. We sat on some steps by the shore, waves lapping at our toes, and Kattina was all like, "Hey! That constellation looks like President Barack Obama!"

Wait, no. That is not what she said. But she might has well have, because… have you ever thought it is a little weird that astronomers pick these random splotches of light, quadrillions of feet away from Planet Earth, and they're all like, "Yeah! Those five random splotches look like a bear eating a cantaloupe! Let us name that constellation Hermanicus in honor of Hermanicus the Cantaloupe-Eating Bear from Lithuanian mythology!"

Anyway, Kattina did not say, "That constellation looks like President Barack Obama." She said, innocently enough, "That constellation looks like a question mark." And it actually did look like a question mark.

So I took my cue, and I was all like, "Well, actually, I have a question for you."

And she was all like, "Eek!"

And I was all like, "Well?"

And she was all like, "Yeah!"

And I was all like, "Yeah?"

And she was all like, "I just said yeah! Weren't you listening?"

And that's how it happened.

So the next thing we needed to do was kiss each other, because that is the kind of sickly-sweet thing people do immediately after getting engaged. So we locked our lips together in a passionate embrace, and our lips began to tingle with excitement. Our lips began to burn with desire. Our lips were on fire with red-hot passion. It began to get painful. We stopped kissing. Kattina looked at me, and said, "Dave, are your lips on fire with red-hot passion?"

It was at that moment we both realized it was not actually red-hot passion we were feeling. It was mosquito repellant with a 40-percent concentration of Deet, which is poisonous, and will cause your lips to burn and then go numb in a very non-passionate manner.

Here is a helpful romance tip for anyone planning to propose marriage in the mosquito-infested tropics: Wash your hands after slathering your body in bug-killing poison, because otherwise, the bug-killing poison gets all over everything and into orifices, such as your mouth, where it could potentially kill you if you swallow enough of it.

Kattina and I sprinted to our hotel room. We scrubbed our lips with bottled water. Luckily, we did not die. The next evening, my foot was devoured by fire ants, but that's another story for another time. This is getting long-winded, and we're only in March.

Next came April, which was a month in which I verified the truth in old adage, "April showers bring irritating questions." Here is some more extremely useful advice for anybody out there who is thinking about getting engaged: Do not tell anyone. Ever. Probably not even after you're married. Kattina and I flew home to Seattle where we began revealing our plans to a few random family members and acquaintances. I found myself bombarded with a barrage of questions, asked in the same tone of voice one might expect from a hyperactive poodle humping one's leg, if poodles could talk.

'"When are you getting married?" (I don't know.) "Where are you getting married?" (I don't know.) "Is Kattina going to take your last name?" (I don't know!!) "Are you going to take Kattina's first name?" (I DON'T KNOW!!!) What is the square root of 17?" (I DON'T FUCKING KNOW!!!!)

I couldn't take all the questions. I needed a distraction. In May, I found a new part-time job.

Bill Speidel's Underground Tour is a tour in which people actually pay to go visit the disgusting, rat-infested tunnels beneath Seattle's streets. It turns out people are willing to pay good money to see squalor and hear a story or two, which is why I am now considering replicating these tours in my condominium.

In preparation for this new job, I had to study. I had to be able to answer different kinds of questions — about the rats, about the Great Seattle Fire, about the lifestyle of prostitutes in the 19th century. These were all questions I could handle. They intimidate me less than the square root of 17.

In June, flew to Europe to work at my other tour guiding job. In July, I flew home to Seattle. In August, I flew back to Europe. In September, I flew home to Seattle again, at which point Kattina threw her arms around me and exclaimed with glee that if I left the country anymore in 2009, she would kill me. This made for an awkward follow-up discussion when I humbly sought her blessing to go back to Vietnam so I could set up a journaling and essay-writing tour there in 2010. Kattina agreed this would be okay, as long as I really followed through and did adult things such as obtaining business licenses, consulting attorneys, and replenishing our supply of Vietnamese rum, which — don't let the $1.50-a-bottle price tag fool you — is pure deliciousness.

In October, you forgot my birthday.

Again.

I turned 41, which, for the benefit of my canine readers, is 287 dog years.

I'm getting old.

In November, I flew back to Vietnam for the aforementioned whirlwind research trip. I spent eight days screeching around the southern part of the country, checking out hotels, restaurants, cooking schools, and other stuff. On my last night there, people were celebrating in the streets and waving big Vietnamese flags. I am not sure how much of this was because Vietnam had just defeated Malaysia in an important soccer game, and how much of it was in celebration of me leaving the country. Nevertheless, I spent a fun and boisterous night with my Vietnamese friends, drinking beer and eating chicken feet at a restaurant whose menu translator needs to learn the difference between "feet" and "legs.".

In December, I began writing this article.

December was not a very productive month.

And that pretty much sums it up, Earthlings! Now, here we are, already two whole weeks into 2010! I have already changed a light bulb, eaten some toast, and pulled 97 muscles on a new cross-country ski trip. As it turns out, I was in better shape on last February's ski trip than I am now.

My goals for the rest of 2010 include teaching writing classes in Botswana, eating a taco in Mexico, guiding more groups around Europe and Seattle, and creating the coolest travel journaling and essay writing tour Vietnam has ever experienced. You are invited. I also plan to change three more light bulbs, eat more toast, and take some Ibuprofen, not necessarily in that order.

Also, I plan to figure out the square root of 17.