B E B E R E

Though not generally what one would call tradition-bound, I do find that I cling to some real doozies like the post Christmas respiratory infection. Some years, it's more annoying than others: have ended up in hospital emergency rooms on New Years Day with full-blown pneumonia. This year, not as bad as that, but draining just the same. It started last Monday with the aches and pains, the exhaustion and the burning throat. Half-heartedly fighting it (what's the use? That's why I slid back so this past year - old stuff coming up to play with me again and again and again. Got tired, stopped fighting back.) probably caused things to get worse rather than better, so I ended up without a voice and feeling like a wet rag by New Years Eve Day.

We kept the festivities very low key as a result: dinner with friends (a glazed ham, some scallopped potatoes, peas washed down with Joachim's gorgeous spiced wine), Pablo reading to us a bit from a book of Native American myths, Sleeper (how is it that this movie gets funnier and funnier each time we see it?). Flipped channels a bit to see New Year being celebrated in TV-land, was happy to see Dick Clark looking and sounding as well as he could. After the ball dropped, we decided to climb Winter Hill to see if we could catch some of the First Night fireworks: just missed them. Only slightly disappointed, we wandered back to the house, decorating cars by drawing cartoon figures, 2006s, "Happy New Year" in as many languages as we knew in the snow on windshields.