andrew61

Confessions of a Slacker
2009-01-01 00:00:00 (UTC)

Happy New Year… or so they say.

It’s official. I’m old.

Last night was the first New Year’s Eve in my lifetime that I didn’t stay awake in anticipation of the stroke of midnight.

I fell asleep sometime around 11:45 pm, watching a “Frasier” rerun. I did wake up just as the theme song to “Golden Girls” was coming on, so I knew it was midnight, and now 2009, but my waking up just then was purely by chance.

Then I tried mightily to stay awake and watch the show, but I zonked out again. I guess two glasses of E&J Cask & Cream, followed by two slices of cold stuffed pizza, will do that to a person.

I guess staying home for New Year’s Eve is the “in” thing nowadays, or so it seems from reading other people’s diaries. I did my fourth annual Giordano’s stuffed cheese-and-sausage pizza feast, with Truffle Mousse Torte Cake from Jewel’s in-store bakery for dessert (which I never touched all evening) and the Cask & Cream liqueur (which is brandy with Dutch cream… Mmmm, delectable!), but other than that I purposely decided not to make too big a deal out of New Year’s, which is a rather emotionally dangerous holiday for me for various reasons.

(After all, it’s just an arbitrary dividing line on the calendar. I suppose we humans have to mark time somehow; that’s how we function.)

I looked for something on TV to watch. I couldn’t find any movies that interested me, but then I remembered that the SciFi channel always runs a 24-hour Twilight Zone marathon every year at this time. I checked the TV Guide on my cable service to see what episodes they were running.

And I found my all-time favorite: “The Midnight Sun”. Due to start at precisely 10:57 p.m. Yeah!

Which meant I would have to miss the ball dropping in Times Square at 11:00 p.m. (here in the Central Time Zone). Oh, well. Let’s do something different this year and watch “The Midnight Sun” instead.

I made sure I was a little buzzed by the time it came on. Everyone should watch their favorite Twilight Zone episode(s) a little buzzed… it really brings out the Bizarro aspect, I think.

Having missed the New York festivities, I thought about watching Chicago’s version from Navy Pier, televised locally, but decided to watch old “Frasier” and “Golden Girls” reruns instead. So tonight wouldn’t be unlike any other weeknight.

But then I fell asleep. And woke up, purely by chance, at the stroke of midnight.

Heck, that’s not bad, I guess. I know people who go to bed at 9:00 p.m. every New Year’s Eve.

My one big regret about 2008: I didn’t get laid all year. Not once. (The only other year — in my adult life — that ever happened was 2003, and I had the excuse that year that I had health problems.)

Well, that’s going to change. Just wait and see.




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