The World as I Know It

Greetings and salutations! Happy new year to everyone, and I hope you all had joyous holidays, and all that wonderful stuff.

For this New Year's Eve celebration, my family and I went into the perils that is New York City on New Year's Eve for the first time in my 16 years. The last time I had been there, I was 11, so it had been a while. At first, we just went to see the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall, but then decided to see the ball drop. This is an interesting show, apparently the biggest one on the planet (well, maybe it's just me, but I had never heard of it before my parents announced that we had tickets).

We got on the bus to go to New York from my grandmother's house in northern New Jersey at 8:35, which isn't that early, but to me, being in my vacation mode of sleeping till about 11, it was pretty early. Anyways, the weather was monstrously cold, and the bus was about 15 minutes late while we were waiting for it, so the day was not off to a very good start. The bus finally came, and we all boarded it, and were merry that we could warm up during the journey.

We arrived in New York at about 2 hours before the show started, so we walked from the bus station to Radio City music hall, which wasn't that far, and so we had a little extra time to walk and see the skaters in Rockefeller Center, which was cool.

The "Christmas Show Spectacular!" was all right, lots of dancing and stuff...I guess the highlight was at the end when they brought the llamas on stage (interesting concept).

To make a long story short, we spent the rest of the day walking around the city, killing time. We went up the Empire State Building at night, everywhere you look are little lights as far as the eye can see. Pretty amazing. Of course, most of my looking was from inside the building...I think the weather was in the negatives with the windchill up there. :-)

At about 10:30, we decided to make our way to Times Square, only to find that the closest we could get to there was about three-quarters of a mile away, cause the cops had all blockaded the streets into sections...they had grouped people into sections along the street. It was all right, though, we had a clear view of the ball in Times Square, so we were happy. So we stood there in the cold for about an hour, and then the group of people behind us decided to rush the blockades (sawhorse-type things). So we were then engulfed in a wave of mostly drunken people storming to move about 40 feet closer to Times Square. Our strategy was to stay in the same spot, and make it that much easier to go the other way after 12. When it finally reached 12, there was much rejoicing and screaming, and then everyone rushed the other way to go home.

All in all, it was a pretty interesting experience, and now I can say "been there, done that". And I have no plans to ever do that again. :-) Have a happy life till next edition!

Quote of the Week!
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Well, my deliberate opinion is -- it's a jolly strange world.
~Arnold Bennett

Link of the Week!!
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The Gallery of Regrettable Food A gallery of pictures they used in commercials in the 40s and 50s. Interesting, to say the least.

Pic of the Week!
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The Johns from They Might be Giants :-)

New!! Wav of the Week!
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From MST3K, one of the robots declaring his love for pickles...in honor of all the pickle juice I spilled on myself at a restauraunt the other day :-) Pickles