Happy New Year!

I'm back! After many, many months without a computer at home, Jeff and I have finally re-entered the age of technology. I won't attempt to catch up too much on events of the last few months, but I will post some of the best pics to catch everyone up.

New Year's Eve in Honolulu is something to behold. It's less like New Year's and more like a war. From 5PM yesterday until about 2AM this morning, all of our neighbors participated in an assault on silence. The really interesting part is that these are major, serious fireworks being set off by normal people. I'm talking over-your-head, exploding in a burst of light, trailing twinkly lights on the float-down fireworks. My personal favorite are the ones that sound like popcorn popping, only at 100 times the decibel level of Jiffy-Pop.

I'll let it be known now that I am not a huge fan of New Year's Eve in general. It always turns out lamer than your expected and leaves you disappointed that your life isn't more like the movies. [Which is not to say that I have not been part of some good celebrations: My favorite was the start of the millennium which I spent with friends and family at a house in the woods in south Alabama. The best part of that day was 1) most of the people at the party actually stayed up until midnight, 2) my best friends and family were all there, and 3) we burned stuff.] My friend Alessandro also knows how to throw a kick-ass party, and I have happily rung in the new year with him a couple of times, too. But, for the most part, I think that excellent New Year's Eve memories are hard to come by, while I have almost exclusively positive memories of, say, Thanksgiving and Halloween.

So things weren't shaping up well for last night when I realized at about 8PM, only three hours into the chaos, that I was not going to be able to make it awake to the stroke of midnight. Needless to say, I was awoken many, many times last night from dreams of high-capacity water hoses raining down water on my neighborhood by things I thought were bombs. Jeff was smart and stayed up reading all night. Next year, we have both vowed to spend New Year's Eve somewhere else, preferably NOT in Hawaii! If anyone is planning a big party for next year, let me know and I'll promise to take a nap that afternoon...