“Its almost time!”

“Hush! Get ready!”

“THREE…”

“Wait, already? Man! This was a quick year!”

“TWO…”

“Wait, is she here yet? Damnation, I need someone to kiss, quick!”

“ONE!”

” WOOO! HAPPY NEW YEAR!”

And so, for the second time in as many days, I rang in the New Year with a cheer and a glass of scotch. How did this happen? Thankfully for me, I share a flat with a most excellent woman named Storm (not, not the X-man, but almost as cool) who, 8 years back, had a horrible New Years Eve. Thus, New Years eve 2.0 was pioneered, since “well, the first time sucked, so lets do it again!”. Thinking about it as I sit in the 4-person Spa (Ed note: Again, Spa = Jacuzzi in New Zealand) with 11 other people, I’m quite ok with the idea of having a second chance to party over New Years.

The night started quite worse off than the original New Years, unfortunately, when I realized that my steaks had rotted in the fridge, instead of waiting patiently for me to grill them. I tried tossing them in a brine to bring them back from the brink, but it wasn’t to be, and instead of delicious steak and potatoes I had Fish and Chips with Spanish instead. Definitely a good dinner, but a bit of a letdown when you were expecting Steak, I have to say.

The party itself technically started up right at the official facebook start time when a few people started showing up, but it only really started for me when Nick and Harriet showed up and we started chatting about a Capoeira trip that might be coming up. We relaxed outside on the driveway with all the lawn furniture spread out around us, chatting and going over a few of the moves that I keep getting wrong… I’ll admit that I nearly got a solid kick in the face from Nick, but thankfully he pulled it back when he noticed that my esquiva (the basic dodge/deflect for Capoeira), but other than that it was quite a fun time, heh.

Once the party did finally reach critical mass around eleven or so, we started having the real fun – between the spa being full of people and almost every room in the house being full of random excellent conversation ranging from high-altitude rocketry to the way to disarm someone in a fencing bout. The best technique, if your interested, we learned was to use mind bullets to destroy your opponents sword… a method that I employed by accident when my partners sword broke before we even started fencing. Totally my mind bullets, by the way, and not the fact that his sword was a cheap plastic costume piece. Totally mind bullets.

Aside from that… typical most-excellent party evening. By the end of the night the empty bottles had filled a full trash-bin, most of the water from the spa had been sloshed out by our attempts to break the record for most people, and the flat itself was… actually quite clean, thanks to some last-minute work by Storm and someone named Jacob. I believe that I finally fell into bed around 4:30 or so, after helping a whole group of people make the heart-rending decision as to whether they should stay on our couch, or walk the 200 yards or so to their own flat. <sigh> Life in a small city is so tough, isn’t it?