i Adios, 2005 !

Hohum, I just passed on doing New Year's eve with Team America 2005 (of Watertown, MA) at a party in the South End. I'm a lame old kook for doing it, but I'm pretty sure it's for the better. I had pretty much committed to slackin away the final hours of 2005 on my own at home anyhow. Certainly, the company of my lovely and talented teammates (and no, I don't just mean you, Bruno... well, not JUST you...), would be most welcome and enjoyed, but I just don't have my head and heart in a place where I can handle the turn of the calendar as a singlet at a party of young movers and shakers...

Lame.

O well. Happy New Year, y'know?

Keep on keepin on~

The best thing I ever heard:
"Aloud is also a word!"
---Amy L, designated sculptor, Team America 2005

Jan 1, 2006. Filling in some blanks...


I was at the supermarket yesterday, new year's eve, late afternoon, shopping for ingredients for rice cake soup. It's a traditional Korean new year's good fortune thang and my mom made a point of taking some time out while I was home for Xmas to show me how it's done. Well, while puttering around looking for the garlic, I ran into Glen, the C (heh). He was shopping with his sister and her fiance. He invited me over to his place for some pre-midnight-party gaming and hang-time, a last-minute wingding w a group of volleyballers, and I said I'd think about it. I explained that I'd turned down everyone's party-type invites and was all ready to just slack at home and flip between DVDs and the SciFi TWILIGHT ZONE marathon, but, well, what are the odds that I'd run into Glen just then, right?

I've gotta get some kind of quick-draw holster for my camera. Glen and I sorta leap-frogged one another for a few minutes while shopping, passing each other at the end of every other aisle, y'know? And I spotted him lingering at the cheeses cooler for a while. Anyone who's talked to Glen for five minutes knows a few things about him - he's Canadian, he believes nothing ever gets old (and he'll make you believe it too), and he's scared of cheese. So, Glen examining the cheeses of the world (as selected by Shaw's) was quite the photo-op. Unfortunately, it took me just a few seconds too long to get out the PowerShot and I only got a snap of Glen leaving the scene.

Well, a few hours and a quart or two of soup later, about 8pm, I'm still on the fence about whether to hit Glen's for the pre-party hooha. The soup's got me in a food-coma sorta state, but I keep thinking that running into Glen is somehow sort of a REASON to go hang out. This is me, overthinking. I eventually decide to check it out, leave the replayTV on SciFi so that it'll record the next few hours of the ZONE marathon, and head on over. I haven't seen any vball goofballs in weeks now, and games with Glen and Bruno have proven to be very entertaining in the past, heh. And there's definitely multiple cap options on the evening for me, cuz everyone there is planning on leaving in time to get to Sebastien's party in the South End, so I'm guessing they'll game til around 11.15... And if I'm feeling different about being supersocial by then, I can motor over w them.

When I get there, the gang - Sara, Amy, Bruno, Glen, sister Joyce, and fiance Eric - are a little way into a game of Cranium. Glen pulls a chair out for me on the American side of the table. They've split into teams along Canadian vs. American citizenship, heh. Poor poor Canadian bastards... Two hours gives us time enough to whomp 'em two in a row, thanks to our team of spLEling, humming, sculpting, and drawing specialists, and also the fact that the Solar System was made in America - U! S! A! =)

Sara mixes up a couple of very tasty vodka n tonics, cranberry for me, cuz I do like my sweets, y'know, and I figure the good stuff, aka Ketel One, would be wasted on me. It gets my face flushed and red fast enough and knocks my typical guard down enough for me to agree to do a pretty poor "model airplane" charade - thank Lincoln for my perceptive teammates!

From the banter among my teammates, I figured out that sometime earlier in the evening, Bruno suffered some sort of difficulty or mishap involving the scooping of ice cream. So far as I could tell, however, he wasn't obviosly injured. Well, y'know. Physically.

There was a lot of "Canadian losers" trash talking, mostly courtesy of Miss Amy. And then, of course, some inadvertent cuts. Like when we started the second game, Sara, feeling generous in victory, offered...

"You guys roll first, so that you can get ahead for a little while..."

She really did mean well, she did, heh.

Well, like I said, Team America won the evening, twice! After game two, it was about time to head to Seb's new year's box social. I waffled on joining up, first agreeing (cuz Sara and Amy were twisting my arm), but after reconsidering, decided to bail, just not picturing the best time in whatever state of mind it was I was in. Lame.

And thusly, I headed home. Wasn't really paying attention when midnight and 2006 arrived, cuz I was watching replay-delayed ZONEs and feeding an ice cream sandwich to my vodka.

Happy frickin new year~ =)