It’s New Year’s Eve and our plan is to spend the rest of the evening watching the boob tube. Okay, before you start thinking what I know you’re thinking, please realize that I’m not complaining about that decision or trying to justify my looserishness. As to being a loser, remember, my sister has four monsters, two of which are barely over a month old. Clearly she was not going anywhere, and with Doolies and me visiting with her, we were not going anywhere anyway.

As to the complaining, I actually prefer it this way. If you look back, I spend most New Year Eve’s watching television. I rarely watch the ball drop—and when I say ball drop, I’m thinking of the Times Square ball in New York City. I found out today there there’s also a ball in the center of downtown Buffalo where ten thousand people show up to watch another incredibly small ball covered with lights fall from a rope held up by a crane. I don’t know who started the dropping of the ball on this last day of the year, but it is a ridiculous practice. We’ve really evolved much more accurate timepieces than dropping balls down poles or ropes and letting gravity decide when the year should end (or are they deciding when the new year should begin? That’s probably it). Maybe it’s time we start using one of those more sophisticated time-telling devices. A digital timepiece would be an example—and yes, I do realize that most of these ball-dropping locations have a digital clock to go along with the ball falling. There is a chance I’m complaining for the sake of complaining. Kind of like my consternations over the last couple of weeks.

Returning to the two reasons I stayed at home to watch television on New Year’s Eve. First, I don’t like most parties when I actually attend them, what with the drinking I rarely do and the speaking to people I don’t know (again, which I rarely do), and the loosing of my voice in any cigarette-filled room or whenever I talk above a normal speaking volume for more than five minutes, which happens when the music is pumped at anything less than elevator levels. And, second, seeing other people at a party is just—what’s the word I’m looking for, oh yeah—absolutely ridiculous and clearly not fun. It’s not like I’m jealous of the fun they’re having (see reason number 1). And I don’t even think those people are having fun. They’re probably too self-conscious of the fact that they might be on television and wondering what the millions of people watching are thinking of them—disregarding the fact that none of those millions of people (with the exceptions of perhaps friends and relatives who told them to watch for them on the television) actually care who the audience members are or spend more than a moment looking at them, with the possible exception of the really hot blonde in the tight black dress in the front with, what is that, purple sparkly makeup on her naked chest. I mean, really, how am I supposed to not look at that?

We spent the day with the monsters, walking around my sister’s neighborhood and visiting an art museum. There is a rather impressive art museum within walking distance of her house. I’m again impressed with the neighborhood she lives in (even though I’m not impressed by Buffalo, New York). She has a bucks of stars and an independent coffee house within walking distance (and, no, I didn’t get to visit either of them. I’m staying off the caffeine to help me sleep at night. I’m still not doing well with the sickness, and I’m attempting to survive without the ‘quils. I didn’t manage last night as I awoke in the middle of the night with a blinding headache. My tossing and turning woke Doolies, who, after about an hour of movement and ineffectual banging of my head against the pillow, demanded I take the ‘quil in lieu of the more effective Advil, since we didn’t have any Advil on hand and it was too late to wake my sister).

There’s a bunch of restaurants and shopping also within walking distance. A very cute neighborhood, even cuter than the one we live in Seattle. It has lots of character. Don’t expect me to move here anytime soon, however. At least not until global warming (or is it now called “global climate change” to make it sound less scary?) transforms Buffalo into the next hotspot. That would be a good thing for me (while maybe not for the world), as my sister and brother-in-law own lots of property here. I guess there’s always a bright side to these things.

Now my sister doesn’t want to remain in Buffalo much longer. She’s longing to move back to New York City. I know another person who is longing to go there also: me. Both of our reasoning is suspect, of course. And neither of our significant others are that thrilled by our unreasonable desires. In the end, though, we’ll both probably end up moving there, and end up very happy to have moved there. It’s very difficult to explain the draw to those who haven’t lived there—or even those who have lived there and hated it. There are plenty of people in that second category. They go for a year or sometimes a vacation week expecting to be blown away, and are turned off to the experience by the grime or the unfriendly people or the size and movement of it all.

But for my sister and me, it’s about the energy and the opportunities. There’s no other place in the states like it. The small neighborhoods in Seattle come close to being similar, but they end up as either too small or too far away from another neighborhood or too, for lack of another word, derivative. I’ve talked about this before and probably just as unsuccessfully. This would be a great theme for a story. Of course, I’ll never write it. I’ll probably write a few paragraphs for it and call it a day and never return to it. I can’t believe how much of that I’ve been doing. But I won’t let that get me down today. Tomorrow is the day for reflections. Today is more the day for diary entries about my travels.

It’s nice to travel and have something to talk about. These words come much easier I things are happening. With these easy words, however, comes the lack of focus to write story. Once I return to my boring schedule in Seattle with nothing to write about but the weather and my lazy ways, then I won’t have easy night where I can say something without having to think or push story. I look forward to those nights only to get past this rut I find myself in for the past few months. I also need to get back into Chuck’s ping-pong writing. I wrote some decent stories when that was forced down my throat.

Well, that’s the end of these words. Happy New Years, and may next year bring you everything you promise yourself!