A Quiet New Year's Eve

from Google Images

Neither one of us made to it midnight last night--again. (I really can't remember the last time I actually waved the New Year in ... maybe it was the Y2K year, when I stayed up to shut off and turn on my computer?)

This year we were actually a little closer to midnight than we have been in recent years--around 11, I think, when we gave up and doused the light. The high winds around here kept us awake for a while--but not long enough.

It's been our habit in recent years to have a fairly early New Year's Eve dinner at the Café Tandoor in Aurora, then head 100 yards south (is it that far?) to the Aurora Cinemark and see a film.

We didn't make it last year: Both of us had the flu, and we were ... otherwise occupied on New Year's Eve.

But this year--there we were: 5:30 p.m. Café Tandoor, where I always have the tandoori chicken + a selection of breads; Joyce--a more adventuresome soul than I--and more unpredictable--ordered something last night involving lentils and ginger. Not a molecule of her entree remained afterward. She also--always--orders the rice pudding, and I watch her with fierce envy. (I just can't eat things like that these days--not without a severe waistline consequence: one of the delights of the meds I'm on.)

It was a warm but blustery and rainy night, and it poured on us--well, on our umbrella--as we headed to the car to move it closer to the theaters.

We had decided to see Mary Poppins Returns--and I'm so glad we did. Both of us loved it, and This Old Man had tears in his eyes more than once. (More in Sunday blog.) The audience seemed to comprise mostly multi-generational families. And there was a pretty good crowd for 7:30 on New Year's Eve.

I drove home with preternatural caution. (Three guesses why--and the first two don't count.) We arrived safely a little after 10 (nearly two hours after my usual lights-out time) and headed upstairs to collapse and stream a little more, via Hulu, of the recent SNL Christmas Special.

But the eyelids, which seemed to have added some pounds at Café Tandoor, insisted on covering our eyeballs, and we went to sleep accompanied by the howl of Nature--and woke to 2019. We met in July 1969. Do the math.