Happiest of New Year Wishes

One of the stranger New Year's Eves in recent memory. llynecat and samildanach didn't make it over, as Llyne was feeling under the weather. And us with two unopened bottles of absinthe! In the end my total alcohol comsumption of the evening consisted of a single mug of eggnog.

Still, we did see singingbarista and her James. We did First Night in downtown Tacoma, the highlights of which included several thousand (plastic) heads rolling down the hill at 9th street* and the subsequent mayhem of five thousand people using the heads as footballs.

Then somebody discovered that the large plastic bags used to mark the head-rolling track were filled with shredded paper. Within minutes, downtown Tacoma was covered in drifts of what (to a bleary eye) looked like fresh snow. This rapidly degenerated into a snowball(?) fight with thousands of participants. We have pictures. jaynefury will post these soon, I suspect.

We made it home three minutes before the new year, just enough time to join together with the kids in the aforementioned eggnog toast. And with that, the cultural and political disaster that was 2004 came to its blessed close.

I can't explain why, but everything seems new now, full of possibilities and hope. Sappy, I know, but there it is.


* Each molded from a local politician or business person. The crowd was screaming "heads must roll!" while someone dressed as (presumably) Marie Antoinette danced around a bonfire at the top of the hill. I am NOT making this up.