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I knew I’d be doing a lot of walking on New Year’s Eve. So what did I do when I left work that evening? I twisted my foot, and it was all my fault.

I was using my phone to send a text message, glancing up periodically to make sure I wasn’t about to run into anything. I was still composing this text as I exited the elevator, crossed the lobby, and started down a set of 5-6 steps that lead out of the building. I thought I had only one step remaining as I neared the bottom of the stairs, but it was actually two steps — so when I stepped down heavily on my left foot, I twisted it. It hurt, so I had to hold onto the banister for a minute, but I could tell there wasn’t anything seriously wrong. I was limping for the next few hours, and it hurt my foot to bend it, but as long as I kept it straight it wasn’t too bad. Even though I did a lot of walking that night, my foot was back to normal by the next afternoon.

I wandered around Old Town Alexandria on New Year’s Eve with two female friends. We’d paid the entrance fee for the city’s First Night celebration, but I’m not sure I’d do that again. We stopped in at a few of the venues where there were different types of music playing, but we ended up leaving each one after a short time. Unless I was planning to check out more of the venues, I don’t think it was worth the price we paid (it wasn’t too bad, though — $10 if you paid before Christmas, which we did, and $15 afterwards). We spent a lot of the time talking, and we had dinner, stopped at a few random places for drinks, and walked up and down King Street a few times (like I said, there was a lot of walking involved that night).

We stayed to watch the fireworks display at the Masonic Memorial, and at midnight when I tried to send a “Happy 2008!” text message to someone (this time I was standing still), it wouldn’t send. Verizon’s service for both texting and calls was down for hours — my phone went off at 4:38am with the messages that had come in after midnight. (Which woke me from my slumber, I might add. I’d gone to sleep a few hours before.)

So now I’m back at work today. Most of the people in the organization I work for were on vacation during the week of Christmas, all the way through New Years Day. (I like to save my vacation time to go somewhere fun, so I decided not to take a lot of time off during the holidays.) The thing is, it was actually kind of nice having the office to myself, with only a small amount of people walking through the halls — I’m the type of person who prefers working where it’s quiet and with few distractions. I don’t mind having certain people back in the office, but I’ll miss the peace and quiet.