Do You Love JD Salinger Too?

I've finally figured out why I don't like New Year's (Punctuation Sidebar: Does the 's' on New Year's take an apostrophe? I would argue that it does, since the full phrase is New Year's Eve, so the eve clearly belongs to the new year, necessitating the posessive apostrophe; but every time I see it written, the apostrophe is left off and it's starting to bug me). The problem with all, or at least most, of my New Year'ses (oh yeah, I did.) up until now is that I have been approaching them from the wrong direction entirely. There was always a great amount of expectation surrounding the ball-drop and the magical moment when the numbers change, and when the moment comes and goes and nothing happens except flurry of kissing and toasting and then a whole lot of feeling exactly the same, albeit with a slight tinge of disappointment added into the mix, I am always faced with the undeniable fact that New Year's is a whole lot of preparation in honor of a whole lot of nothing, which seems like a dumb thing to celebrate.

But this year changed my mind. I finally discovered that New Year's must be approached from a passive stance (one does not set out to celebrate the night, instead the night proves itself a time worthy of one's celebration). I learned this by accident this year when we planned a party because friends were going to be in town, and this party just happened to land on the 31st of December, yet because of the people and the things, ignoring and perhaps even despite the date, we managed to have a perfectly mirthful night, completely devoid of dissatisfaction.

So I think I'm going to do it this way from now on.

A rundown of the actual events of the night (for those who like details of the nitty-gritty nature rather than lofty abstractions and sporatic italics):

We actually didn't mean to ignore New Year's. There was supposed to be a reservation and tickets and a fancy party, but complications that I'm going to go ahead and dub providential got in the way, so five of us girls ended up cobbling our own evening together instead. We started out driving through the beginnings of a snow storm to wait for a table at San Chez. For our first course we got mojitos from the bar instead of tapas, and drank them in the atrium while we waited. This nineteen-year-old waiter kept rushing past us with trays full of delicious things, and I was about to exercise some feminine wiles to procure us a papa frita or something, then our buzzer went off, so I didn't have to. Also, considering that I was too shy to even approach the host's stand to ask how much longer we had to wait, the wiles were probably going to stay under wraps all along.

So we're eventually seated, and we commence to order and consume delicious victuals for the next couple of hours. Can I just say that it's amazing what the Spanish can do with a little spicy sausage and cumin-flavored mayonnaise? We tried to eat slowly because Meredith was unavoidably detained by her mom's invalid daschund, Clarke, and we knew that she would want some kabobs and sangria when she eventually arrived, but it was difficult since our waitress had neglected to provide us with bread OR water while we waited for our entrees, so we were practically famished when round one (or two, counting the 'jitos) came.

But Meredith did finally join us, and she was just in time for dessert. After chocolate-chili trifles, truffles, and other flourless wonders, we paid our staggeringly affordable bill and retired to Danny's. Though the way was wrought with much snowing and blowing, we managed to rock out to a little Tally Hall and arrived in high spirits.

After that I suppose we don't need to go into too much detail, and there are facebook pictures to fill in most of the gaps. We stopped for a couple of minutes to watch the ball drop, but that's not really what it was about. It would seem that the combination of CatchPhrase, Bop-It, ten-dollar 'champagne,' cookies, and video games mixed in proper proportions comprises the recipe for a very jolly (though certainly not the most hip-and-trendy) night. It was a very refreshing change of pace, as far as New Year's parties go. Can I hope that the rest of 2008 will follow suit, or would that be asking too much?