Not as bad a holiday. Well, yeah, hard to handle alone, perhaps. But not always. Sometimes after Christmas, it’s just as well to have the chance to wind down. And usually, I’m performing, which is a whirlwind of activity that keeps my mind off that sort of stuff and leaves me utterly wiped by the end of the night.
Maybe the saddest thing, really, is how badly TV sucks for New Year’s now. It’s decent during the day, I think. They still do the Twilight Zone marathons, and now someone does a Star Trek marathon (I myself was content with the Doctor Who marathon over the weekend), but remember in days of yore when all three networks had some kind of cool New Year’s countdown? Now you have Dick Clark at 112 and topping every death pool in the country, and pop and hiphop to make me nauseous….maybe country, too…I hate it all….how about some real, old-school rock? Face it. There’s nothing on.
Our family tradition? Always seemed a bit weird to me, but I don’t know how many families even have traditions. My parents would let me stay up to watch the ball drop, and I would get up and open the front door to usher out the old year and welcome the new.
And I would drink. Because my parents were firm believers in “your first time shouldn’t be in a bar”. So, folks, I met my good friend bourbon at 7 years old. A tiny bit. Highball style, and that’s how I like it to this day. And one New Year, my father gave me my bourbon, a bit too much. My mother (I’m purely nocturnal, and in later years, they could never outlast me and fell asleep hours before me) was up with me to “change years” and noticed my path to the door wasn’t very straight. Not a happy woman. I’m sure my father heard about THAT the next day. Also, our traditional New Year’s dinner was spaghetti. I have no idea why that was. None.
So…here’s to another book. Or two. More successful than the first. Or more free time to actually promote the first. Here’s to lower gas prices, and prosperity, and some warm weather sometime before May. Cheers to all!
azbaelus 