The anticipation and build-up for the evening mean it’s never as good as you expect it to be. And no matter how much planning you do and how much money you spend, New Year’s Eve always fails to be an extraordinary night. Just because it’s the last night of the calendar year, doesn’t mean it’s going to be any more fun than any of the others. Trust me.

Reason #1 I Hate New Year’s Eve: First of all, it’s essential that you plan ahead. If you don’t make your plans well in advance, you’re risking having nothing to do. Parties get booked up, your friends make other plans, and you’re stuck watching the ball drop with your parents. I don’t like planning ahead. What if I’m forced into deciding to attend a party and then something better comes along? What if, in November, I don’t know what I’m going to be in the mood to do in December?

Reason #2 I Hate New Year’s Eve: Then there’s the expense. If you want to go out, you’re going to have to spend money, and probably a lot of it. Take last year, for example. A group of my friends made plans to go to a bar. We dished out the $75 that would allow us access to an open bar, bought fancy dresses, and got all decked out for the night of our lives. When we arrived, the bar was absolutely disgusting, the food nasty, and the people incredibly sketchy. It turned out we were only allowed to drink well liquor (when we could get near the bar). It also turned out that we could have paid $10 at the door and been allowed to attend the same party and order our own drinks. As if I would drink $65 in Grey Goose. The bottom line is that bars can charge whatever they please on New Year’s Eve and people will pay it. People like me.

Reason #3 I Hate New Year’s Eve: Midnight is just awkward if you’re single. When you’re single on New Year’s Eve and the clock hits midnight, you are left with only a few options. You can: a) Use this opportunity to hide in the bathroom and pretend you don’t realize it’s midnight, b) Participate in a group hug with all your other single friends, assuming you have any, or c) Kiss the guy closest to you, who may or may not be a huge freak. As you can see, none of these options are very appealing.

Reason #4 I Hate New Year’s Eve: It’s freezing out. You want to wear a cute dress and heels, but you’re going to freeze your butt off in the freezing, snowy cold. This is never fun. I’d rather be wearing sweat pants. In my bed. With a bottle of champagne.

This year, I’m giving it one more try. My friends and I made our plans in mid-November and are spending even more money this time. We have determined that by spending $110 to attend a party at a classy bar, we’re guaranteed a good time. Of course, we’re wrong. And it will probably be miserable. And next year we’ll go through the same thing all over again. Only it will be more expensive.

Pass the champagne, please.

If you can travel…

Hey, if you’ve got the funds, lucky you. Hit up another country and see how they do New Years. You don’t regret it. If you’re still underage, Canadian cities can be quite the hotspot (take it from someone who spent her last <21 New Years in Montreal, after a 10-hour road strip). If you’re loaded despite being in college during the recession, head on over to Europe. Hate the cold? Sing Auld Lang Syne in Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic.

Okay, those are nice ideas in a fantasy world… but let’s move onto options for those of us who can’t cough up the money for airfare.

If you want to travel but can’t afford it…

Throw a Chinese New Year’s party. Okay, so technically the CNY kicks off February 1, but who cares? Cater your party with Egg Rolls and Fortune Cookies (way cheaper than many food options), decorate with paper dragons, and serve Sake till the last Geisha’s standing.

Create Your Own Times Square. NYC is pretty much insane on New Year’s anyway. Hang a disco ball from the ceiling and buy skyscraper cut-outs for the walls. Have everyone dress up (because in college, the land of hoodies and sweatshirts, you can never have too many fancy-dress parties), and broadcast the Manhattan festivities on your TV in the background. It’ll be warmer than Times Square, and you probably won’t have any bums hitting you up for spare change on the way home.

Throw a Hotel Party…in the Next Town Over. Grab a room at the Best Western or the HoJo, and pretend you’re at the Ritz Carlton. Nobody will have to drive, you won’t have to clean up, and maybe you can work it so you share a queen bed with your crush.

If you really don’t care about traveling, and just want to have a good time:

Throw a “My Tie” party. If you can make a large quantity of Mai Tais in a punch bowl, more power to you. But encourage everyone to dress business-casual, and when the men arrive, have them remove their ties and throw them in a basket. The ladies then choose a tie, and the man who belongs to that piece of neckwear is her date for the night. Takes the pressure off of finding a kiss at Midnight.

New Year’s Resolutions parties can also be fun, because we all have them, and none of us stick to them. Wear a necklace made of empty Marlboro boxes if you plan to quit smoking, or wear some hot spandex if you vow to go to the gym more regularly. Things can get pretty effing creative here. Not into costumes? Have everyone throw their resolution into a hat, and try to guess who is giving up what this year.

Have a Blind Date. They say the way you ring in the new year is a prediction of how the next 365 days will unfold. Plan a girl’s night and go Speed Dating as a group, or see if any bachelors have posted on CrazyBlindDate.com. The key is to get your friends involved, so that at the very least, you can have a laugh. New Year’s Eve is all about letting loose isn’t it?

If you really don’t care about getting smashed…

Check out your city’s First Night. There’s bound to be fireworks, free live music, and tons of street vendors. Many cities across the US host First Night celebrations, and they are quite lucrative.

Host a Best-Of 2008 Movie Marathon. Curl up with some take-out and a stash of DVDs – just be sure to press pause for the Ball Drop at midnight!

Make Some Money. I’ve had my share of insane NYE celebrations. So last year, I opted to wait tables, since every weekend for me is as crazy as the novice’s New Year. The tips were good, and I was still out by midnight. And I made up for missing the big party by having several “No Reason” celebrations. Scour Craigslist and you’ll see tons of opportunities to work at private parties on the 31st. You never know what kind of adventure will actually unravel.

With less than three weeks before we welcome 2009, now is the time to do everything you said you would do in 2008. And if any of those plans go awry? You can start off with a clean slate in under 30 days. Now is the time to carpe diem, my friends, so see 2008 out with a bang.

1) Get a jump start on your New Year’s resolution. It’ll make January 1 so much less painful. Dead set on losing weight? Start out each day with a mere 20 minutes of cardio. You’ll lose a couple of pounds before the big par-tay and be motivated to keep toning up throughout January (and beyond). Want to quit smoking? Cut down now. Cold Turkey will be easier when you’ve already cut a pack-a-day habit down to 2 or 3 nicotine sticks.

2) Ask out that hottie from lab. What do you have to lose? The semester’s almost over anyway. And if he’s interested, you might have your New Year’s kiss all lined up.

3) Have a clothing-swap party. Clean out the stuff you bought in 2008 because you thought it would make a fashion statement. Encourage your friends to do the same, and then get together and see if anyone wants someone else’s duds. If your friends don’t want your fashion don’ts, donate them to the Salvation Army or another charity, and start off 2009 with some good Karma.

4) Buy some Obama memorabilia. Come on! Comemorate history in the making with an Obama t-shirt or button or novelty Barack condoms. You’ll be good to go for 2009’s much-anticipated inauguration.

5) Do something BIG. Has 2008 flown by too quickly? Don’t wait till New Years Eve when everyone’s going to be out and about. Grab tickets to a concert, a sporting event, a theater performance, or a comedy show. Get out of the house (and out of your normal weekend routine), and buy a ticket for something that you can file into your scrapbook under “2008.” If you can afford it, take a weekend getaway. If you can’t, try to find one of your city’s secret gems, like a free museum visit or a student discount pass to a local attraction.

6) Make contact. If you’ve lost touch with someone or had a falling out, this is the perfect season to reconnect and make amends. Reflect back on 2008. Should you apologize to your ex-best friend for having a blow out that really wasn’t that significant? Have you grown apart from your Spring ‘08 lab partner? Did someone make a difference in your life last year, and you never got to properly thank them? Why wait till “next year”? Do it now.

7. Have a “Best Of” party. Tell your friends to dress in their favorite ‘08 trends (even if they went out a couple of months ago), bring over their iPods and blast the best jams of the passing year, or have a 2008 movie marathon. Have everyone write down some 2008 memories, and throw them into a hat; then, read everyone’s contributions out loud. Nothing ends a good year with some damn good reminiscing.

8. Do something small. But still meaningful. Check out this blogger’s “45 Things to Do Before 2009″ List and see if you get inspired. Rent some of Hollywood.com’s “Must See” suggestions. Or, see what other peoples’ goals are, and see if you can relate.

The clock is ticking, friends, and you can’t make up for lost time. What do you hope to accomplish before we begin a new year?

So although it’s relatively warm here during the winter, there are definitely some changes that occur with the change of the “seasons,” and, as with everything in life, they come with their pros and cons:

Pros:

1. Cute scarves.

2. Better tea (Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride from Celestial Seasonings, anyone?)

3. Pumpkin and cinnamon flavored everything. Yesss.

4. I have an excuse for my Scandinavian chronic paleness.

5. Christmas lights in the palm trees.

6. Christina Aguilera’s “My Kind of Christmas” from 2001. I bust this out every year and it NEVER gets old.

Cons

1. The gym is packed. All the people who ran outside are now on my treadmill. Grr.

2. Flocked Christmas Trees. I don’t understand why Californians insist on this disgusting trend every year—WE LIVE IN CALIFORNIA. We don’t get snow. So buying a tree with FAKE snow on it, really? Tacky. Tacky and ungrateful. Let’s just take our 70 degree Christmas and move on; if we don’t have to deal with the cold that comes with the real stuff, we don’t deserve the fake stuff.

3. Remembering jackets. It’s just not in our nature to remember, and the nippy 58 degree weather is hard on our thin California blood!

But before I make the East Coasters too jealous, I will say that every California girl DOES occasionally pine for the hope of a snow day, a snowball fight and the ability to make snow angels.

What do you think? What are your favorite/least favorite things about winter?

[Photo courtesy of Flickr]

I can’t believe 2008 is only a week away. It feels like just yesterday that I was sitting in my brother’s garage shot-gunning beers and watching the ball drop with his good looking friends (when, in fact, yesterday did look like that minus the ball-drop). I am amazed by how quickly this year flew by. Yet, at the same time, looking back at the many experiences that I had in ’07 it couldn’t have been that fast, after all.

2007 was chock full of so many things: dates, life changes, moves, trips, career changes and the arduous task of staying in touch with my friends across the country and around the world. It was also filled with celebrations, good food, reuniting with old friends, some truly hilarious experiences and tons of fun new things.

Through my experiences, my writing and the endless internet surfing I do at work, I discovered some incredible things this year. Everything from new foods (thank you, HungryGirl!) to new music (who knew a girl with a beehive and a serious drug addiction could create such great music?). And I will share my Five Most Awesome Discoveries of 2007 with you:

1. Holey Donuts: I have a love/hate relationships with donuts. I love, love, love, them, but they do not feel the same way about me or my thighs. Until the Holey Donut came along. Not only are these things maaaaad tasty, but they contain 1/3 of the fat and calories of their full fat brethren. You can get ‘em hot if you live in the NYC, or you can order them (tons of flavors or a delicious low fat cinnamon bun!) online. I am not kidding; these thing will change your life.

2. The iPhone: I am sure everyone is sick of hearing about this super-hyped mega-phone, but I can’t help but thank the lord of technology (Steve Jobs) for bringing this wondrous invention to me. I recently acquired an iPhone and in the 7 days I have had it, my life has changed. This phone really does everything. I can even download new music from iTunes whenver I want. People can hate all they want, but the minute they play with one of these they too will realize how amazing it is.

3. Flat Boots: Being 5’10, my life has been filled with long and painful shopping excursions for the perfect pair of boots…that don’t have 4 inch heels. 2007 was the year of the flat boot and I am ecstatic! Now I can rock the boots without a) looking like a giant freak and b) looking like an old lady in the ugly flat booties. Even better: Target has the cutest pair and they are under $40!

4. The Sex Diet: This book gives new meaning to enjoying a workout. No more missing the gym and letting yourself go because of a new relationship. Let the relationship be your workout. I haven’t had the luxury of practicing much in this book just yet, but let me tell you…when I do I am going to have some seriously rock hard abs and sexy legs without the 5:30 AM trips to the gym.

5. Tumblr: Staying in touch with friends is hard. Sure, catching up on the phone or through email every now and then suffices, but it’s just not the same. It becomes more like a chore and less like a friendship. I was looking for a better way to keep up with my friends and I found Tumblr. This blog is unlike any I have seen before – it is more of a stream of consciousness sorta thing that allows you to update pictures, text, videos, links, etc. super fast. Even from your cell phone! So you and your friends can keep up with each other easily and still get that little day-to-day connection that doesn’t exist in a weekly email. Warning: Tumblr is highly addicting.