2003: A Look Back

If nothing else, 2003 was an interesting year, a whole lot of good things happened. So did some bad ones. Nevertheless, keeping with tradition, here is my “Year in Review” for 2003.

PS: as sad as this is, it’s also strangely appropriate that my first post of the new year has the ID 666 — I guess this will be an especially evil and devilish year! Woo!




JANUARY:
Without a doubt, the highlight of January was the unveiling of UnofficialCKI.org — the best Circle K site in existence. Manny, Amy, and I ran the site in secret for a few days before going public. I had a good time at Holiday Embrace where Kim and I realized “You can’t help what you think, You can’t help what you feel, and you sure as hell can’t help what you’re interested in.” How true.

UCKI drama heated up as the month went on and I decided that I was sorry for a lot of things UCKI related. My now former roommate made his “internet radio” debut with this gem where you can hear the largest concentration of profanities since Andrew Dice Clay.

Late in the month Casey Keller and Nick Borghardt, in their never ending struggle to… ummm… be powerful… threatened UCKI’s webhost with a lawsuit and UCKI got shut down. It eventually came back up.


FEBRUARY:
The first of many very insightful posts on the War in Iraq was made. There was, of course, more UCKI sabre rattling — largely on account of people like Womando who think far more of themselves than is healthy. A week of February hadn’t passed before UCKI was down again (if you like posts where I make fun of people, read that one). I also got a job being a nerd — which I still have.

By mid February the CKI Board had basically kicked us out of Circle K. They did so in blatant disregard for policy. Luckily, not long later the UA Circle K club cleaned house at district convention, ‘all your base,’ bitches. CKI demanded that we apologize for the horrible things we did to Circle K.


MARCH:
The apology came on the first day of March at 6:00am. On my front porch. Once again proving… something… maybe that I’m a giant pain in the ass? That fact was proved again later when I poked fun at the CKI dues increase… which the sheeple ended up passing at International Convention a few months later.

The war started and a great many of my posts were War or Politics related. I did find time, however, to try my hand at being a cartoonist. The cartoons sucked, however, so I dubbed them craptoons.

The end of this month saw the end of my term as Club President… in browsing through my archives I was reminded what a heinous tool Jody Harlow was.


APRIL:
SPRING BREAK! I started it out by making fun of the CKI Board again, but quickly moved on to more entertaining things… like a few days at Panama City Beach and a few more in the Nation’s Capitol. Oh, and my brother got elected I-I District Secretary for Key Club.

Oh, and the alleged sexual harasser Nick Borghardt finally got his wish and I was put on a fictional membership status. There was a lot of grassroots support for my reinstatement, but it never happened. President Rupert also spent the last three months of his term in blatant violation of his service agreement.


MAY:
‘Bama got May started the right way — by firing our head football coach. DOH Having not been in the press in a while, Jesse Jackson (the nation’s most racist citizen) called on Alabama to hire a minority. We hired Mike Shula instead. Roll Tide.

Fanblogs got kicked off and has done amazing well since then registering several hundred thousand page views along hundreds of posts and comments. Woo! The semester ended and I moved back to IL to work at State Farm again.

Much of this month was spent studying for the LSAT, hanging out with State Farm peeps, and not having internet in my apartment.

JUNE:
Leading up to the LSAT, UCKI (which was being run by other folks at the time) got a Cease & Desist from KI’s Attorneys — the lawyers said I did a good job researching the issue, so I gave it another shot. Oh, I also made fun of Steve Werner again.

All within the span of one week I took the LSAT, Kecia graduated from HS, and Abby got in to UAB Med School. As I was waiting to hear back about my LSAT score, I created the big list of Law Schools to which I might apply. In Circle K world, Shea resigned for allegedly stealing money from her club.

On the last day of June, I was pleased to find out that I scored in the 97th percentile (a 168) on my LSAT.


JULY:
CKI drama swirled back up again in July as we hit convention — at which Hilary and I made a random cameo. It was also revealed that in Steve Werner’s spare time, he’s a character on The Simpsons. Amy had more to say about Steve in a guest post.

A big bunch of storms came through central IL and tossed a 5,000lb tree limb into our apartment building. Around mid-month I took over at UCKI again and it finally got it’s first troll. Toward the end of the month the Internship started winding down and Tess came to Chicago, which was cool.

AUGUST:
Having done a lot of thinking and talking about law, I wrote about how attorneys can prosecute and defend when they know they’re on the “wrong” side of the case. At the very end of the summer I went with Kecia to see John Mayer and the Counting Crows. It was awesome. Oh, and the “new” official Circle K and Key Club were down for a day and a half because Steve was too lazy to come in on a weekend and reboot the server. Oh, and who can forget the great blackout of 2003? Not Canada.

I got back to Tuscaloosa to prepare for the start of school and move in with my new roomie. I also spent a good bit of time without internet.

SEPTEMBER:
‘Bama lost a heartbreaker (what turned out to be the first of many) to Oklahoma, but Auburn lost two straight. In my boredom I implemented “private posts.” I also designed my first ever flash animation.

I launched PeteHoliday.com and an experiment in blogging turned out quite well. In other news, Fanblogs got press coverage by Forbes.com. Oh, and I did some more making fun of Womando.


OCTOBER:
October saw the start of an increased flurry of Political Posts. I went to Georgia to watch Alabama get spanked by UGA, but when I got back Nick, Ricky and Jason got a special message. Aside from talking a lot of politics, I also decided to test out my theme song… Ten Rounds of Jose Cuervo. The sum total of my banter finally reached the big 1 Megabyte mark.

Do y’all remember Nintendo? I do.

In the first ever PeteHoliday.com poll, The 02-03 CKI Board was voted this site’s official moron. This sparked a lot of drunken, worthless rednecks (friends of Joan’s) to come and troll the site. A classy group, they were.

NOVEMBER:
In November I went to my first Ultimate Frisbee Tournament with the ‘Bama Ultimate team: Harvest Moon. It was a great time. Ultimate Frisbee Winter League also got started.

My brother and sister scared the trolls away, and my post about Auburn’s racist DFO and the site’s official Moron stirred the pot. I declared Ender’s Game to be the best book I’ve ever read and my Video Card died. UnofficialCKI also came down for the last time.

I also started thinking about practicing law in the military. A heated campaign to be a guest blogger took place, which Nicole won handily. Her resulting post, which some have called ‘the best thing ever written on this crappy site’ can be found here. This site may be boring tripe, but Amanda thinks I’m hot and satisfying.

BlogMadness, which is now underway, got started here.

I also turned 23, but that wasn’t worthy of a post because, as Dave Barry says, “There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11.”


DECEMBER:
December didn’t go far before I found some drama to stick my nose in. Are you surprised?

At a Med School Christmas Party with Abby I embarrassed myself, much to everyone else’s amusement. There were a LOT of posts about politics in December, but I posted about other stuff too. Like what?

Like Auburn’s Academic Probation. Oh, and becoming addicted to ISketch. And the site had it’s 2,500th comment!

I spent Christmas Day working on Law School Apps and got to hang out with Dan and Heidi.

Probably the most note-worthy news of December, however, is that I finally submitted an application. One down, four to go!



And that… my friends… was 2003. What a year! It’s behind us now, however, and it’s time to make much mischief and merriment in 2004. Who’s with me?