Party Party!

Drinking vodka cranberries and emailing old girlfriends. I have a feeling I will regret at least one if not both of those decisions in the morning.

We typically don't do anything on New Year's eve beyond a little champagne with dinner. But at midnight we haul out a 9" gong a friend picked up for us on a visit to China a few years ago. We take it outside and close the door (so the cats don't go completely batshit insane at the sound), and bang loudly and wish our neighborhood a happy new year. Then we go back inside and calm the cats down.

I live within a 1/2 mile of our nearby golf club, and they host a nice New Year's Eve party in the bar area. About 150 people, and casual dress. $40 all you can drink and appetizers from 8 til 1. That'll work.

And since it's only a 1/2 mile away, we'll do rock, paper, scissors to see who has to stop drinking early and haul us home. If it were just my brother and I (which it normally is), we'd ride our bikes, which we often do. But we're not gonna get the womenfolk to do that in 14 degree weather.

We're loading up the RV as we speak. Heading over to a friend's home, along with about 10 other RVs (they have two acres). We'll play cards, drink beer, play guitar, and sit around the firepit. It's going to be fun! No driving home tonight, we'll just crash in the RV.

Then egg burritos and bloody marys in the morning, and head back home. (Mrs. Inscrutable will be driving. Gotta love that woman. :))

Web porn.

No, seriously, there's a small town nearby (Saratoga Springs) that has one of those massive First Night events where singing and stuff happens in a dozen different places, and you can wander around town enjoying all of it, for one ticket price.

But I've also been invited to the New Year's Eve Party at a biker bar.

But then again, it snowed today, and I don't HAVE to go out. So I just may stay home. I might go out for a bottle of Irish Creme, and come home and start a fire and just sit in front of it. Make some phone calls to friends.

And maybe do the web porn later.

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I'm saving up my partying energy for January 20, when that bloody diarrhea president of ours is at last flushed from the White House and scoured with cleanser and bleach out of national politics.

National columnist EJ Dionne:

What we call "The Sixties" in the United States, with its ethos of reform and protest, ended with Richard Nixon's landslide reelection in 1972 and the winding down of the Vietnam War.

In the same way, the outcome of this year's election means that 2009 will, finally, mark the beginning of the 21st century.

That's worth celebrating more than some arbitrary calendar date.

For a fair part of the evening, I'll be freezing my ass off, going to different venues to see a variety of music, including reggae and Irish music. Annapolis has what I think is a great idea, having fireworks at 7:30 and at midnight, so if you have a yearning to see artificial displays of destructive firepower, but not spend the whole night freezing, you can get that taken care of, then go on to the more engaging cultural activities. Then we'll go home, have a drink (champagne that somebody gave me a while back), and go to bed.

That's about as exciting as it gets.

Frank Moorman, skeptic

Getting plastered, while not as appealing as when I was younger, is still almost certain to happen for me tonight. My wife and I will go to my partner's house, and whenever he and I are together we drink more than either of us would individually. (Don't worry, the wife is the designated driver.)

Fortunately, should "making a big mess" become a necessity, well, as I've already explained, we'll be at HIS house.

Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.