Let Me Out of 2009 and these #*%^% Holidays

CELEBRATE!

Barbara has a birthday 'twixt Christmas and New Years on the 28th. Kind of a crummy time for a birthday so close to Christmas, you know presents and all. Don't think she minds it now so much, as she buys her own gifts as I don't dare, and that's a great gift to her.

So Barbara invites two friends and husbands along, don't remember why, but the husbands can't make it. This bums me out of course, because now I have to go to dinner with three intelligent and attractive women. Oh drat! But ya know, like the trooper I am, somehow I suck it up and don't complain.

Anyway, Barbara gets to choose her poison, and she chooses Tutto Bene. The women love this, me not so much. They don't care, I'm just the designated driver. And here we are, well...they are.

Coincidently, these two great women friends are about the same age as our two daughters. Barb doesn't look old enough to be their mom does she? Not quite on Rachelle, for sure on Tonya.
I tell them to look friendlier, and they do. I just had to show this pic as it is so very rare that a woman, let alone three, will take a suggestion of mine. Happy birthday Barbara Ann.

Happy happy birthday

to every girl and boy.

Hope this very special day

brings you lots of joy.

Hope the birthday presents

you get from Mom and Dad

make this very special day

the best you ever had.

~Written by a local Minneapolis musician named Jim Hobbins.

(From the Twin Cities children’s show, Lunch with Casey. Roger Awsumb as Casey Jones, brought joy to children all over Minnesota and the surrounding area. The show is long gone, but Casey will be beloved forever.)

31 December. Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?

Heck, I don't know. I can't remember, so how can I forget? Well, the older we get seems the less we do on New Years Eve. We used to do parties, then did dinner and a movie for a while. Last year my brother John came up to Brother Gregory's and we shot off fireworks and jumped in the snow at midnight, a kind of crazy tradition my brothers have come up with. This year, we stayed home and watched Dick Clark finally look old. We watched a movie too, and just kind of relaxed and waited for a new decade.

Midnight, January 1, 2009. Me with camera. Two brother bookends, then wives, then niece Jennifer and Barb.

Couple seconds after Midnight, January 1, 2009. Second verse, same as the first...almost. Same characters, Barbara with camera.
About 10:30 PM, December 31, 2009. Barbara and girl kitty Bandita. They don't make it to midnight.
About 10:33 PM, December 31, 2009. Little Princess Bandita (soon to be Queen) and Barbara. I, on the other hand, make it to midnight and beyond, although fading in my Lazy Boy.

12:30 AM, January 1, 2010. The late stayer-upper, Michael and Tomcat Makwa.

In the New Year, may your right hand always be stretched out in friendship, never in want. Happy New Year all.

New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights. ~Hamilton Wright Mabie