Odd places to spend night of New Year's Eve

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

With only 24 hours or so left in 2005, I began to reminisce about past New Year’s Eves and, in doing so, it occurred to me that I have been in somewhat odd places at midnight on Jan 1 in past years…

2005: I was eating at a Waffle House. I imagine it became quite crowded there later on that night when drunk people were leaving parties at the many nearby hotels.

2004: I was partying at a funeral home of all places. Well, it was the living quarters of a guy who worked in a funeral home. I had to walk past a couple occupied caskets to get to the party. :eek: I hadn’t planned to be there that night. A female co-worker asked me if I wanted to go out with her that night, so we went to a bar and listened to some band she liked. Then she asked me if I wanted to go to a party…it was at a funeral home. How odd!

2003: I was sitting at my now-ex-gf’s computer shortly after posting my list of 13 lucky people on the SDMB Celebrity Death Pool 2003.

2002: I was at a small party on a riverboat.

2001: No place odd…I was a friend’s house. <snore>

2000: I spent Y2K on a remote part of Cape Sable in The Everglades. We canoed 6 miles (Dec 29) to get there and camped for 5 days. I was nowhere near civilization during the climax of all the hype of Y2K.

As far as I know, I spent all previous New Year’s at home or at a relatives house. I was only 16 years old in 1999.

For 2006, I’ll be at the heavily secured, seldom visited Wildcat Lodge where the University of Kentucky basketball team resides. From there, I’ll likely post my picks for the Celebrity Death Pool 2006.
Feel free to share your stories, my fellow dopers…

2

Most years I spend with a few friends. This year was going to be much the same. Then my friend called at 8 this evening and asked if I had plans. She didn’t want to spend her 50th birthday (Sunday) in town so tomorrow we’re flying to New Orleans. Yay for that impetuous streak we both have.

3

Tibetan monastary in 1988. They don’t celebrate the gergorian new year so it was nothing out of the ordinary. That is, if you count several hundred monks doing tatric chanting while dining on yak butter tea, yak soup and barley bread ordinary.

4

A hiker’s hut in Mt. Aspiring National Park, New Zealand, in 1984. There were about a half dozen other people there.

5

Oak Bay Lodge, Victoria, BC, December 31st 2005

An old folk’s home.

6

I spent Y2K at my then-boyfriend’s extremely Quebecois family in Sainte-Sophie, a tiny town at the extreme northern limit of what can practically be considered Montreal exurbs. I would like to emphasize that this was before I lived with said boyfriend, i.e. before I came to speak fluent French. Quite the experience.

7

New Year’s, 1999-2000–Buffalo, New York. A friend of mine took a road trip to Buffalo to go to a New Year’s performance by a band called “Moxie Fruvous.” We met up with fun people and danced all night. For whatever reason, I still have a shakey egg (this little egg-shaped thing with pellets of some sort in it, that you could shake like a maraca) and a couple of Buffalo subway tokens. I was starting to get sick as the night went on, though, and we weren’t really welcome at the place where we were staying. (Our host was perfectly cool with us being there, but her roommates were less than pleased.) We took off for Ohio that night and made it back sometime the next day, IIRC. By that time, I had full-blown flu, so I really don’t remember much about the trip back.

New Year’s, 2000-2001–a glatt kosher Argentinian restaurant in Jerusalem, on Ben Yehuda Street. We toasted the new year with a little kosher champagne.

New Year’s, 2001-2002. I don’t remember. I was really sick. My guess is that I was sleeping, lying on my side with my eyes closed and trying not to puke. Very glamorous and festive, I know.

New Year’s, 2002-2003–Mérida, Mexico. Shared a roast chicken, some bread, and a delectable bottle of red wine with this English guy with whom I was having a crazy affair of love and lust. We sat by the hostel pool and looked up at the stars. We cuddled and fed each other bites of chicken and bread, which was luscious. We discussed life, the universe, and everything. This was followed by much vigorous snuggling, long into the night.

New Year’s, 2003-2004–A party at my friend’s father’s place. The party ended at about 1 am. The get-together was fun, but my friends and I were up for a little more merry-making after everyone else had gone some. So we ended up going bowling. Yeah, no kidding–we went bowling. There was this all-night Christian bowling party thing going on at one of the local bowling alleys, and that was the only place we could find to go to that was still open at 3 am or so. And we had a tenuous connection to the Strikes for Jesus (or whatever they were called), since one of the friends I was with had played violin for one of their services. I’d had surgery on my foot a couple of weeks ago and was still on crutches. So I was doing a lot of hopping on one foot to get around. And I’d had a few glasses of champagne, which made my hopping really fun to watch. I was wearing a lovely black silk dress, semi-slinky, that I didn’t really have a bra for. I’d cut off the control top part of a pair of pantyhose and was wearing it as a bandeau. This worked OK at the party. It didn’t work so great when I picked up a bowling ball. My impromptu boulder holder popped off and squinched itself into a tiny rolled-up band under my breasts, thus leaving my C-sized girls a-floppin’ under a little black silk. So there I was, hopping around, half-dressed, half-drunk, jiggle-breasted, half-rolling, half-heaving a bowling ball down the alley for Christ. That was, quite possibly, the most surreal New Year’s I’ve had in a long time. Maybe ever.

New Year’s, 2004-2005. Spent it with MaxTheVool, at various get-togethers his friends had. Played apples-to-apples, had many lively conversations, and generally hung out with Max’s subset of the Silicon Valley geek crowd. Much fun, no real incidents of note. Flew back to Ohio the next morning, IIRC.

New Year’s, 2005-2006. A small get-together at a friend’s place. Rather informal, casual dress, no stress. Which was good for me, since I’d just returned from a visit to the Bay Area and just couldn’t be bothered with a fancy affair. Not to mention that I’d, uh, expanded a bit, horizontal-wise, and hadn’t gotten a nice dress that would fit my new proportions. Everyone else there was kind of tired from various travels, themselves. (One couple had just gotten in from DC that day. One guy had just gotten back from a whirlwind trip to Europe.) A fun enough time was had by all, and most people headed off into the new year by about 1:00. I stuck around for a bit and helped clean up. Then I went home to crash out.

8

One of the Best: Laying on my back on the beach in Rio, watching a fantastic firework display being shot off less than 30 yards away (not to “safety concious” down there)

A Good One: Lake Tahoe, Stateline, during a heavy, heavy snowfall with a few thousand drunken strangers

Most frequent: At home, with the wife, doing nothing special

Worst: Jail, Las Vegas. Got out in time to catch a few late bowl games

9

NYE, 1999-2000: A balcony of the Flatiron Building in Chicago, drinking champagne out of a plastic cup and singing along with the Beatles’ “Revolution” to the riot-geared cops in the street below. I actually hailed the moment by saying, “Huh, ComEd didn’t fuck it up after all,” vaguely surprised that they’d managed decent Y2K coverage.