The New Year's Eve Party

Well, I went to the New Year's Eve party, and I'm glad I went, though it somehow wasn't quite what it might have been. Certain people were not there, though we still had a full house. It's just that it's unusual for certain people not to be there, and certain other people did not even make an appearance. So that was odd.

It usually starts off rather slow, with a few of us watching a DVD. I am usually the third person to arrive, with a lot of the other people not showing up for another two hours. Then a bunch of us go in the other room and talk and play with the cat and see if he'll maul anyone.

Last night most of the people showed up about ten or twenty minutes after I arrived. Someone brought a very short film for us to watch, and I don't think anyone watched DVDs after that. The cat was pleasant company for about an hour, and then he decided he'd had enough of us and went upstairs.

There was the usual silly stuff going on. And since there were a few newbies we had a bit of fun with that. One guy got the fright of his life while in the bathroom. Personally, I don't think trying to scare a person half to death while they are in the bathroom is funny, but apparently I am in the minority. I did get to tell one of the newbies what the cat's name was. I'm sure she didn't believe me at first. Now that's funny.

But aside from the usual silly stuff, some of us got into a very serious discussion. There are now four of us in the little "my dad is dead" group. Or more specifically, there are now four of us in the "my dad died around Christmas time" group. We've added two of the newbies.

We were so into our serious discussion that we didn't notice that is was about fifteen til. Usually we'd have been outside already.

A few years back my friend started this tradition of writing down personal crap that she wanted to get rid of and then burning the paper with the personal crap on it. That first year I was really happy and didn't really have anything to right down. But I wanted to be part of the group so I wrote down something like I need to worry less and give my husband more space and stuff like that.

That was a big mistake.

So I really don't participate in this part of the evening. The stuff that I want to get rid of is serious stuff and burning little pieces of paper aren't going to do anything to make me feel better. Sometimes I think it would be fun to burn someone in effigy. But that wouldn't go along with the spirit of the tradition. And also I'd have to waste time making something to burn, since they don't make fat-assed Homewrecking-slut Barbie or anything else suitable that I could just buy. And I suspect that burning a doll would probably create toxic fumes and make everyone sick.

Following this there are a bit of illegal fireworks, though this year there where not as many as in previous years due to a certain person being out of town. There were some small intentionally lit fires and some fun with fire extinguishers. And there there was talk of the time that the bathroom did not get blown up. You would have thought that would have ended the tradition of the illegal fireworks (just as you would think that the threat of a two thousand dollar fine would have prevented the tradition from getting started in the first place), but no.

I don't think that there was any dancing this year. The "kids" (who must now be in the mid-twenty to nearly thirty range) had taken over the TV area playing some game where you pretend to be a rock star. I have no musical talents whatsoever and did not even go to see what was going on. A bunch of us left rather early, though in past years the party has gone on way past two and people even end up spending the night.

The upside of not staying out too late is that I am reasonable awake now and feeling reasonably well. I had expected to feel really sick and spend most of the day wishing that I could just get back to sleep.