We're at home for New Year's Eve; we rarely end up going out in the traditional
sense. We do have a semi-tradition of spending New Year's Eve in dumpy motels in
the middle of nowhere, for various reasons -- everywhere from Pensacola Beach,
FLorida, to Chirstchurch, New Zealand. (Though to be fair, that hotel was far from
dumpy. But we were jet-lagged and bleary-eyed enough that it wouldn't have
mattered.) My favorite to date was New Year's Eve 2000, when we camped out in the
Chiricahua Mountains (that's Chee-ri-CAH-wa, kids). We took a bottle of Dom and
some very good steaks and shared some Jiffy-Pop and an impromptu champagne tasting
with the like-minded folks in the next campsite. They'd brought Pol
Roger.
This year our champagne tasting is on a somewhat lower scale;
we've got two bottles of our usual Freixenet (having determined that yes, Dom
Perignon does taste better, but not enough to justify $100 instead of $10)
and decided to determine once and for all if we prefer Brut or Extra Dry. The
latter came out ahead in the popular opinion polls. All two of us, that is; we
haven't asked the cats to vote, though given the aount of champagne present we may
well do so.
In other news, yesterday we did some ambitious four-
wheeling, checked out a remote climbing area and ruined the side steps on Orange
Crush, Rudder's new Hummer. Oops. Silly design, anyway. We finished the painting,
cleanup and unmasking and now have a yellow entry hall with spandy white woodwork.
And my new Handspring arrived today, so I've been setting that up and figuring it
out.
2002 has been an interesting year and one bringing
opportunities and choices, for me and for others. It will be interesting to see
what we do with those in the next year.