New Year's Eve Done Right

Last night, Vicki, Julie and I finally got in our Christmas exchange, our final Up night (watching 49-Up), and celebrated New Year's Eve while we were at it. I don't think I've ever had a more enjoyable sendoff to the year than last night. Just check out that smile:



So it turns out that Julie is kind of nuts when it comes to Christmas. Her gifts to me were in 5 different packages and came with 5 cryptic poems that contained clues to the nature of each gift. My first challenge was to match up the poem with the package it related to, which took at least 20 minutes to do. Then my job was to guess what was inside before opening it to see how I'd done. Here's one of the clues, just to give some sense of what I was up against:

"Since you're kind of a geek and you read all the books
Here's a cute little gift to help with your looks
I can't really promise it will make you a ten
But you'll get to hang out with some really cool men"

I really worried that she'd gotten me a membership to a crazy guys-only club of some sort, but fortunately it was referring to a beautiful X-Men t-shirt. It's a grey shirt with a particular comic cover pictured on it. As soon as I saw it, I said, "I'm just realizing: you don't even know what this is, do you?", ran downstairs and quickly returned with my bagged and boarded copy of Giant-Size X-Men # 1 from 1975. Though there's no way Julie could possibly have known, this is a comic from my childhood that was hugely significant to me. I can honestly still remember buying it off the stands at the news depot:



I guess it's true: sometimes you have to be lucky to be good, and good to be lucky! And she was both in this instance!!

I also received a "head light", a portable light I can strap on when biking, walking or - as she pointed out - peeing in the dark! Then there was an Italian movie on DVD that I'd never heard of - The Best of Youth, which holds an impressive 8.4/10 score on IMDB! - which Julie found by polling dozens of her patients in the weeks and months leading up to Christmas. Her great track record on book recommendations of late led her to give me Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, something she'd greatly enjoyed when she discovered it. And finally Vicki and I received 4 gorgeous glass coasters, each of which contains a winter photo of Julie, her dog Cooper or me, from our recent walks in the woods.

Vicki got various weird food stuffs that she'll love, which Julie's smart enough not to waste on me, and a box of chocolates, which I'll have no problem helping her deal with! Julie got books and a DVD of Long Way Round from me as well as flavoured teas and a special tea-making mug thingie from Vicki (who understands such apparati). They both seemed quite happy with their haul:



(And as Vicki's principle photographer over the past 20 years, trust me: that's her looking happy in a photo! Tammy apparently got all of the smile-for-the-birdie genes in that family!)

All in all, we had a great wrap up to 2010! I couldn't have scripted a better finale, but I'm already worried that 2011 is going to be a letdown by comparison!