New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve hasn't been a huge blowout holiday for me over the years. On the Y2K changeover, I got to celebrate in Hawaii with a couple college friends, the traditional Hawaiian fireworks, and the sure knowledge that if civilization collapsed because our computers thought it was 1900 that at least the hellscape in which I'd be struggling to survive would be, well, Waikiki. A couple other years, I got together with college friends in Chicago or DC and had a great time--not so much because it was New Year's Eve as because I was hanging out with great friends. I've had two New Year's Eves that were colored by the fact that I was breaking up with a girlfriend on January 31st, one in college and one in my early 20s.

My wife and I can't remember any of the New Year's Eves before we had kids, except the last one, where Lauren was due any moment--we were kind of hoping to make a run to the hospital to either pop out a little tax exemption before the new year came or have the first baby of the new year, but mostly we just celebrated together with some noise makers, party hats, and video games.

Since we've had first one and then another child, we've established a different pattern (which, granted, we haven't upheld every year, but whatever): we've gotten together with other parents of small children to celebrate "New Year's in ______."  That way, we can ring in the new year with the kids and still get them to bed at a reasonable time. The menu has tended to run toward fondue.

This year, we're aiming for 9:00, which means that we will be celebrating with the residents of King Edward Point, the capital of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. That is to say, us, our guests, and the 30 or so residents of the government offices and research facility in this inhospitable corner of the southern Atlantic Ocean.

This may not sound like the most exciting New Year's Eve to some, but I can say definitively that it's a far better way to spend the last day of the year than being broke up with. And my wife will probably tell you that it beats being overdue to deliver a baby.