-Hey all!  Well, it’s been a while.  I spent the summer writing my new book, “Ruminations on Twentysomething Life,” which will be published next year, but now Ruminations is back!  One small change that I hope you’ll like – the column will now come out every other Monday morning as opposed to only once a month.  Yeah, I knew you’d like that.  I also turned twenty-five over the summer, which was, you know, a bit depressing, but now that I’ve snapped out of it, let the ruminating begin!

-Five of my closest friends are in med school and they are all now entering their fourth years.  Which means the whining never fucking stops.  Because apparently this is the time to choose a specialty and basically decide the course of the rest of their lives.  The worst part about it is that no one has chosen anything useful…to me.  I remember sitting around with my buddies having some beers after they took the MCATs, and they were all like, “Some day, Karo, all this work will pay off and I’ll treat you for free.”  Yeah, except you just decided to become a gynecologist and totally screwed me.

-The other night I was at a party and pulled an Amstel Light out of the fridge.  Like six of my friends whipped bottle-openers out of their pockets.  And not sophisticated bottle-openers mind you, I’m talking about the big, round keychain ones with half the paint chipped off and a University of Michigan logo on it.  I thought that was kind of pathetic.  I mean, we’re twenty-five years old.  What’s the cutoff for carrying bottle-openers these days?  Next thing you know, my dad will be doing kegstands.

-There was this chick at the party who was so annoying.  Why?  She’s an abbreviator.  These are the girls that give everything an annoying little nickname.  Like they call the show with Sarah Jessica Parker “Sex and” or refer to the island east of Manhattan as “LI.”  You can spot abbreviators at a young age.  They’re the ones that watched “Melrose” and “Bev” religiously.