what is life if not a learning process?

edUcAtiNg juLiA. today i'm feeling reflective, so let me take a moment to share with you a few of the many lessons i have learned over this past year:

* when a friend of yours is trying to set you up with someone, this someone being a virtual stranger to you, and that someone's friend responds to the idea by saying to your friend, "that's great. i was just thinking how that's what ________ needs right now, to settle down & get a girlfriend who's not crazy and somewhat stable," you might want to take that as a warning sign.

* when you accompany a friend while she gets a tattoo and somehow at the end of the adventure you two are rewarded with a small mystery bottle of tequila from the kind of nice but predominantly just sketchy guy doing the estimates, sketches and appointment scheduling at the tattoo parlor, you deserve to end up passed out wherever you end up after drinking it.

* when you drink an amount of whiskey that might actually put a strain on certain distilleries in tennessee, on the 2nd floor of a bar, and you then attempt to descend the stairs to leave the bar, you are likely to end up with a sprained ankle.

* when you get too fixated on the composition of a text message, you may very well walk past the front door of your apartment building without noticing and end up at the entrance to the identical building next door, for which your vestibule key also works, and enter that building, climb the stairs, and find yourself in front of not your apartment 4 with a lock that looks unfamiliar and in which your key will not fit, thinking "how the hell did they have time to change the lock in the short time i was out? and why did they use one that looks so old? wouldn't you replace it with a new lock?" and knocking on a total stranger's door looking to be let in.