Columnist Melissa Schorr: Millennial New Year a nuisance

Happy New Year, everybody.

Now, the race is on -- by my calculations, we all have exactly 360 days to figure out exactly what to do this time, next year.

I've shortened this mind-boggling dilemma into a handy acronym which I've dubbed WTDONY '99, or "What-To-Do-On-New-Year's-'99."

Here is a situation where being young, fluid and mobile definitely has its disadvantages.

I envy the married folk, who can place their reservations for the Big Blast-off now, relatively secure about who they'll be with and where they're be. I, on the other hand, can hardly pencil something three months ahead into my datebook without a shudder, let alone slap down a deposit promising to show up somewhere a year from now.

So far, my New Year's plans, similar to the New Year itself, consist of a big fat 0.

But the most depressing thing about the coming Turn of the Millennium is that as we get closer and closer to it, my anticipation keeps getting downgraded faster than a junk bond.

Back in the '80s, the concept of the Big Turn had only positive connotations -- it sounded momentous, exciting, futuristic. We'd have flying cars and a cure for cancer by then, surely.

As an adolescent, I even made my first New Millenium resolution: I thought it would be neat to have my first-born in '00. ("What a great year to be born in" was about the gist of my thought process, in case you were wondering).

Older, wiser -- and fearful of excruciating pain -- I amended my resolution, realizing I was nowhere close to reproducing by the age of 27.

So I revamped my timetable: My freshman year of college, my roommates and I agreed that the ideal plan for New Year's was a huge New Year's Eve/Wedding Day blow-out -- solving the What-To-Do-On-New Year's-'99 (WTDONY'99) dilemma not only for ourselves, but for everyone we knew as well.

A nuptial evening surrounded by all one's friends and loved ones sounded so much better than the sorry excuses for New Year's Eve parties I've attended in the past anyway.

But now, with T-minus 360 days to go and no money down at the catering hall, I'm beginning to think that the wisest move is to spend the evening bunkered down at home.

Forget "NV2000" hype, the town's new millennium marketing campaign. The more I read about the Y2K bug and predictions of plane crashes, stock market plunges, blackouts, rioting and looting -- not to mention wackos indulging their doomsday fantasies -- the lower my expectations have sunk.

At this point, I'm pretty much hoping to make it through the evening alive.

My simple little WTDONY'99 dilemma has been trumped by TEOTWAWKI: the techie shorthand for the moment the computers can't compute, a k a "The End Of The World As We Know It."

How sad that it's come to this.

Once, I planned to savor bubbly champagne. Now, I'm storing purified water. Once, I thought I'd spend my New Year's squandering cash. Now, I'm planning on stockpiling it.

And I'm beginning to think it's for the best that I haven't a clue where I'll be that night. That way, when the wackos come out to play, they won't know where to find me.

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