Happy New Year

I probably shouldn't post this, but...

Happy New Year! The most uneventful New Year celebration ever. I tried to be festive but had no enthusiasm for it, and ended up snoozing and watching bad T.V. By way of contrast, the best New Year celebration I had was in Seattle in 1995 (to be 1996).

I was in Pioneer Square for the countdown, which was packed with the merriest of folks, cheering beyond all reasonableness. I remember lifting the champaign to the sky and counting down with hundreds of my suddenly closest friends. What fun, that night.

Later I lost my leather jacket in a bar, and ended up staying with a woman named "Gretchen" details about which I'll omit. In the morning I awoke to a new year, in a new bed, and by noon was walking in rare sunlight (I remember it was sunny in Seattle) back to my apartment, which was across town and I guess at least three miles away. Gretchen didn't have a car. It was, I think, a New Year to remember, loosely stated.

In my old age and married with kids now, I just sort of nod off, watching Andersen Cooper in ear muffs and a bunch of now silly looking revelers cheering and whooping and hollering. Many have Gretchen stories, by now, too. They will, some day, many of them, recall with great fondness the first moments of 2009.