Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, but at the moment I'm happy to be back at my own flat, with my own cat (who appears to have gone completely mental in my absence), and a car full of stuff that I need to unpack, right after I clean the hell out of this place because it needs it quite desperately.

But I thought I would jump in here with what will likely be the last entry of this millennium (and remember, as Mulder said to Scully not so long ago, nobody likes a math geek).

I don't have anything particularly noteworthy to say about it, but I feel like I have to say something. Getting freaked out about 2000 seems to have become passe (there's an accent on that e, of course), but I have to admit to a certain amount. I'm not worried about the end of the world, but I do think it's going to be very, very strange, not to say "19" anymore, to start getting checks with the first two digits of the year preprinted again, to not know what the heck to call the decade anyway.

It's very, very strange to look back to the days when I was young and had first figured out that I would be alive for this once-in-fifteen-lifetimes event. I had worked out how old I was going to be -- and my, did it seem unfathomably old then -- and dreamed about the husband, the house, the kids. (Funny, I never dreamed about the job, which is what will likely be the momentous marker of 2000 for me.)

And now it's just around the corner, and in true American fashion, we have hyped it to death. I heard Prince's "1999" over and over again in the first few days of this year, and haven't heard it since. It's no big deal anymore, to the point that my friends and I could barely agree on what to do, and in the end there will not be as many of us together as there was last year.

I still want it to be a big deal, but I'm realizing that I'll have to take care of that myself. I can make it mean something. I'm just not sure what, yet.

I'll get back to you on that.

In the meantime, I want to say a big fat hello to Elise, Tara, Mary, and Kay, since this is probably the first entry they'll be reading. (Don't worry, you guys, it isn't always like this.)

And that is it. Happy New Year, everyone, whatever it means to you. I'll see you around that big millennial corner.