And to you 2008, I say Welcome

1/2/08

Firstly, Happy New Year to everyone. I hope that everybody enjoyed their New Year's Eve festivities as much as I enjoyed mine.

And before I even get into that, New Year's is a pretty popular holiday, which means one thing. I have some big time issues with it.

What exactly does the phrase Happy New Year mean? For a birthday, I can understand Happy Birthday because you are telling somebody to enjoy celebrating the day they were born. But it lasts a day. Should we be saying Happy New Year 365 times until December 31st rolls around again? Or by January 2nd is the New Year and Old Year already? If thats the case then New Years to me is blown completely out of proportion.

I was having a conversation with "Fier Thy Words" contributer Scott Spinelli (although he does not know I consider him a contributer) about New Years and how its really a rather depressing occasion that is ridiculously over-hyped. Think about it logically. Every December 31st, another year of our lives has come and gone, and 365 days later, we can do it all again, another year older. Why are we celebrating to such a degree the fact that our youth has pretty much come and gone, and for adults the realization that they are getting another year older is something they typically despise celebrating on their birthday.

I know its a big excuse to throw awesome parties (which I did) so in that regard I can't complain, however in theory, it's just like any other day of the year, except that it requires us going out and buying new calendars. My mom bought one with little kittens on it. I kinda like it.

My point is that New Years, for all the hype surrounding it, passes me buy in terms of significance. That being said, I easily has a New Years Eve to remember.

The majority of my friends here at home were planning to go upstate to Binghamton to ring in the New Year, which was a plan I had zero interest in taking part in.

However, those plans all seemed to crumble at the last second, partially because I had proposed alternative plans which involved celebrating in my parent-less apartment, but partially because among the 14 people going up, there was not unanimous excitement about the long drives and such.

So, essentitally 24 hours before the ball dropped, plans were finalized to host a Welcome 2008 party (which is how I'm going to refer to New Years from now on) in my Bay Club Apartment.

15 people turned into 20 people, which by nights end turned into 26 people, all comfortably hanging out in my place.

I was really skeptical about a number of things, mainly that because the Binghamton plans fell through people were going to be let down by having to stay home in an apartment. I was afraid that people were not going to have the great time they were looking for, so I wanted to do everything I could to give those who cared a memorable New Years.

And memorable it was, at least for anybody who didnt drink enough to lose the memories.

After spending upwards of 300 dollars on liquor and i would imagine another 100 on beer and 100 on food, plates and cups, my quiet little 2 bedroom was turned into a pretty wild time.

Beer Pong games in the dining room area which was conveniently located right next to my makeshift bar which had something like 10 bottles of liquor and 50 cans of beer on it. My dining room table, hardly regulation size, proved to be big enough to some good old competitive beer pong which everybody seemed to enjoy.

The living room was cleared out and became filled with snack trays of food, whether it was chips, shrimp or pita and hummus (my favorite), and thanks to 3 people bringing their iPods, along with the speakers from my computer, we had music going all night.

My bedroom was also available for use if anybody wanted to get away from the music, and both my living room and bedroom had big screen HDTV's which were on all night. I didn't expect the living room TV to have Tila Tequila playing for 2 hours, however when midnight rolled around, all 26 of us squeezed into the living room to watch the ball drop.

You can add the ball dropping to my list of complaints with New Years, as i really dont understand how some glass ball costing thousands and thousands of dollars mechainally dropping 30 feet is supposed to be the representation of the New Year.

But either way, watching it drop is essential, and so when it did, 2007 was finally put 6 feet under.

The party really ended up being a huge success, and if you want to see what went down, my facebook profile has tons of pictures to give you a better idea of what went down.

People hung around until around 3 if I can remember correctly, and I want to once again say thank you to everybody for doing such a great job behaving and helping me clean up.

All in all, while I really hate getting caught up in New Year's, I would be lying if i told you 2008 could not have gotten off to a better start.

And here is to hoping that 2008 truly is a Happy New Year.