Happy new year

We had a party here for new years eve last night. It was a great night; a great time to catch up with new friends and enjoy a care-free night. One in which I was the only one not drinking. But then I had the advantage of certain chemical enhancements—totally medicinal of course—so it’s not like I was the only sober one. It was nice to let go, for once.

The day began in the same way most days-of-parties begin: with bedlam. Cal and Ade were working out the front clearing up the front yard (with noisy power tools), Lala, Tia and I were clearing up the house, Ade and Mary were setting up the sound system, and, later, Bin and Alex clearing the backyard. The neighbour leant us his party lights. Once the yard was prepared—with tables covered in their festive “Happy New Year” table cloths, music pounding and enough fairy lights to confuse low-flying aircraft—we all had showers (sequentially, don’t get too excited) and waited for the guests to arrive. I won’t give you a running commentary of who arrived when, party because I don’t remember and party because I’m running out of pseudonyms.

There were several amusing moments. The first was being in being introduced to a friend of Lala’s. We waved at each other and I saw her mouth move to form the word “hi”. “So are you the fruity one?” she shouted at me during a slight lull in the music. “What?” I shouted back. She repeated herself: “So you up for a big one?”

The second was watching Lala making margaritas while plastered. She got the blender base out and set it on the bench, then dug out the jug and its screw-on blade housing. She filled the jug with six shots of tequila, two shots of orange triple sec, and was just about to add the third shot of lime juice when she realised that there was nowhere near ten shots in the blender. Slowly it dawned upon those present that the liquid previously in the blender was now running down the sides of the base. We were astonished (this is a new blender after all) and attempted to investigate the strange occurrence until Amber realised that Lala hadn’t put the blade or the rubber seal into the blade housing.

There were many laughs, and I even lasted until 2.30 before having to flop into bed. This morning we all got up and had eggs and bacon for breakfast, cooked by the still-drunk Cal.

The image above was taken at about 1am this morning. I decided to follow in the footsteps of Liz and Kate, who are taking a photo every day for a year to raise awareness for type 1 diabetes, and take a photo every day of 2008 myself and publish them every Sunday. I've also decided it would probably be a good idea to some kind of diagram of my family and friends that I mention on here, so stay tuned.

So Happy New Year all. This year will be a good year, if I have to kill (or mortally wound) someone to make it happen.