Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?

Okay, I apologize about the fact I haven’t written anything in over ten months. I would like to say that I haven’t had anything meaningful to write about but that would not quite be the truth. Let’s face it, I never write about anything meaning and this submission just reaffirms my goal to waste your time when you actually be watching cute cat videos on YouTube.
Any of my tens of followers will know I am a bit of a Holiday Freak. Today I’d like to deal with what is not exactly a holiday, New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Eve or for those people too lazy or way too busy to write out all eleven letters, NYE, has never been one of my favourite times to celebrate but I did have few that went well and not so well. I am now going to share these with you along with a few notes about how my typical December 31’s went.
And rather than start from the beginning we will begin with 2012/2013. Last New Year’s Eve was a bit out of the ordinary. It was actually one of the most enjoyable I had experienced in quite a few years. After all, I spent the evening in a bed watching the Time Square Ball drop sipping champagne in the company of a very attractive and intelligent woman and then interacting with another beautiful woman after the first one wandered off into the night. Hey, I am not lying. This is the Interwebby Thingamajig and there are rules about posting lies on the Interwebby Thingamajig. Hey, you can look it up! In fact, check out Episode 62 of "How I Spent My Fall Vacation".
I once tried the overpriced packaged night club experience. It was way back in ancient history when I was still with Version 1.0. Along with two other couples, we went one of the first multi-room themed nightclub/restaurants in Vancouver. The package included dinner, party favours (read: cheap paper horn and hat) and champagne (read: something extremely cheap and vile) at midnight. Because they wanted to keep you around buying their beverages for as long as possible dinner was served quite early at seven or eight. By the time midnight rolled around you were so bored that the next phrase out your mouth after “Happy New Year” was “Can we go home now?” My advice to anyone considering this option is save your money; go out for dinner at a great establishment the next weekend or so and maybe even go to club to dance if desired. (Note: avoid waiting more than a few weeks because then you run into Valentine’s Day and that’s another story altogether.) You will even have enough money left over to purchase a bottle of bubbly that doesn’t taste like mouldy soda pop. Besides you may have a better chance of getting "some" on another day. I guarantee on New Year's at least one of you will be having a meaningful conversation with Ralph and vomit has never been listed as a major aphrodisiac. Hee hee!
Not all my other New Year’s Eve party experiences have been disastrous. I have attended a few enjoyable house parties particularly during my “Tween years” as in “between marriages”. The most memorable of these was a weekend at Whistler where at least thirty of us managed to cram ourselves in to a townhouse with people sleeping everywhere including the heated garage. (At this point I should offer this advice to anyone considering sleeping in a garage. Make sure you are the one with door opener. Hee hee!) The actual party spilled out into the village square where the people in all the restaurants and clubs got to watch everyone having so much more fun and we were doing it all for free. I believe the following year the powers that be put a stop to revelry in the square because after the clubs need to sell those overpriced packages with the cheap champagne and paper hats. However New Year’s Day was not so pleasant  and not because I was hungover because hangovers actually require sobriety. I went up the mountain for one of my first experiences skiing. Within the first hour I managed to get stuck on a chairlift for over two hours. It may not have been so bad if I stuck on the chair with a Pretty Young Thing and if it wasn’t snowing and the wind wasn’t blowing. But alas, that was not to be. Hey, it wasn’t all bad; they gave everyone a five dollar food voucher which at the inflated resort prices would have allowed me to get a half slice of cheese on my burger if only I could have afforded the burger in the first place.
During this string of “Last Nights” I even managed to attend a wedding. The fun part of that was it took place at 8:30 AM. Who in their right mind gets married at 8:30 AM? But then again what moron would be drinking champagne in the Bloedel Conservatory parking at 9:00 AM after the ceremony? Let’s just say any further details about that New Year’s Eve are a little bit blurry. ;-)
One of the best things about social media is that over the past few years, I have managed to reconnect with several of the players from these Tween years including the aforementioned bride who was kind enough to bring me a Christmas care package while I was in the hospital last winter.
During the time I was living with Lorraine (Version 2.0), more often than not I worked at the Coliseum or some other venue on the grounds and even once at BC Place in 2000 for a Kiss concert. Lorraine never minded missing out on celebrations because she liked her sleep and I was usually being paid double time. Because of this the first kiss I received most years was usually from a co-worker or some random overly exuberant young guest.  Some of those events were not so pleasant. I can remember coming home one night and the radiator cap blowing off so I had to leave the car parked illegally on the hill below our condo only to discover in the morning someone had managed to sideswipe our Toyota. Luckily, the dude that did it wasn’t a rocket scientist and he parked his bright yellow pickup truck around the corner. The worst actual event was one year when it seemed that everyone wanted to fight. My partner and I got the fun job of escorting the bleeders to First Aid. My shirt had to burned after that one.
 
Tonight I will only be working until early evening so I will be ringing in the New Year on my living room couch and may even cheat and ring in the Eastern Time Zone New Year so I can hit the sack early so I can get up and enjoy an orgy of College Football Bowl Games tomorrow morning. But then I wouldn’t object if a mysterious woman shows up at my door with a bottle of champagne again. That would be n*** too.
Oh and the answer to the title question – Sometimes it’s not always bad thing.
Thank you and enjoy the rest of the day here in the Magic Kingdom...Oh crap, wrong theme park. ;-)