HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Yeah. That's basically what I wanted to say. This year's gonna be completely different than the others. Because of... well, that belated, yet most utterly fantastic Christmas gift I got... ;-) (And I'm not talking of the strong winds and rain we got for New Year's Eve, even though that was quite refreshing.)

New Year's Eve was just the same ol', same ol', really. Had a quiet celebration with my parents and stood outside in the wind with sparkly wotsits ("stjerneskudd"... Any idea what this is called in English? "Shooting stars" doesn't really sound right...) while looking at the fireworks. And of course, as during the previous New Year's Eves, there was an ever-present smell of burnt wood and... err... explosives... In addition to all this, there were a few people who couldn't resist sending up a few fireworks during the afternoon (actually they fired up some a few days before as well); you know, just to annoy the rest of us who were anxiously waiting for midnight. So while we were having our turkey dinner, did the dishes, watched TV, sent text messages to people and talked, we heard loud cracks, bangs and booms. Patience? A virtue? You've got to be kidding me.

Some pretty good fireworks, though. Gotta hand it to 'em.

And while we're in on the topic of fireworks, there was a little incident right before midnight last night in one of the neighboring houses close to where I live. We were sitting inside minding our own business and watching the tube when suddenly we heard an unusually large bang. Which lasted considerably longer than what we expected. When we went outside to look, we found out that a batch of fireworks had exploded inside the garage of one of our neighbors. The parents appeared to be out for the evening with all their kids but one, who was having one of those binge-drinking parties. You know the kind; empty house, son invites friends and their girlfriends over, they get drunk, go outside to e.g. smoke a bit, shoot up one or two fireworks and suddenly end up igniting the whole bunch. Thus making the whole neighborhood (and then some) startle by a great big "booooooooooooooooom". Happy New Year. *sarcasm* Thank God nobody got hurt, though.

Ok. This should be enough for a while, don't you think? Off to read "Mrs. Dalloway" now. (Strange book.) But first, foooooood.

"Jeg tok min nystemte sitar i hende" (:-D),
Elise