A New Experience for New Year's Eve

As 2012 begins, I won't pass on any great wisdoms learned from the past year. Today doesn't feel any different from yesterday. I don't have any great hopes that the next 366 days will be any better than the previous 365. 2011 was actually pretty good to us, and, as an optimist, I hope that each day is better than the previous one. As a school teacher, I tend to think of my life in semesters and summers anyway. A new year doesn't necessarily begin in January.

So, today doesn't really feel like a new beginning. It simply feels like a morning in which I am sleepy from staying up too late the night before. But what a great night it was!

In the same untraditional fashion as we spent Christmas 2011, we did something completely new and out of the ordinary. We skipped the obvious New Year's Eve parties. Super D and I worked a concessions stand at the local NBA arena. (Thunder up!) A is going to be in the high school band next year, and the band boosters let us work the gig to earn money for her high school band expenses. In addition to the usual uniform fees, the band will take a trip at a cost of about $1000 per student. In a single evening, Super D and I earned 1/5 of the cost of her trip!

And we had so much fun! We had been scheduled to work the condiment carts, restocking and keeping them clean, which could have proved to be a menial task. Instead, we were moved to a hot dog stand. I worked the register while Super D made the super-dogs for me. They have this giant footlong called the "Thunder Dog" which seemed to be a fave among the fans. Loaded with chili, cheese, and onions, it was enough food for about 3 people, although I suspect some of those men intended to eat the whole thing by themselves.

The crew we worked with had been working concessions stands for over 10 years, and they were a blast! We laughed all night long. Early in the evening, Super D and I had planned to stay downtown after the game to attend the New Year's Eve celebrations, but by the time we were finished at the hot dog stand, we opted for a late fast food dinner and a quiet celebration with the kids and my mom. We arrived at her house just before 11 p.m., and we rang in 2012 an hour early with the Big Apple and the crystal ball as we wore our hats and tiaras, blew our horns, and drank hot chocolate.

We had an exciting ride home when an overeager police officer looking for drunks pulled us over, tried to claim Super D had run a red light, and let us off with a warning. Right. You can't argue with a policeman, but all four of us know that Super D stopped and waited at that light.

Instead of celebrating a second time, 2012 slipped quietly in at our house as we all played separately on our electronics and went to bed just after midnight. (*Correction: Super D was up until after 3 a.m. watching Dog the Bounty Hunter, which my mom got him hooked on over Christmas Eve!) We were exhausted!

Happy New Year!