In With The New

The forecast temperature in Salt Lake City for New Year's Eve was in the neighborhood of 15°F. So we had a little party at our apartment to welcome in the New Year. Besides the two of us, we had three friends over: Shelly, one of Nancy's friends from Kentucky, her beau Chuck, and our old friend Kollette. It was warmer, quieter, and a lot of fun.

The festivities started around 7:00 p.m. with hors d'œuvre of crackers, cheese, and summer sausage. Cheeseburgers and chips followed, with pumpkin bread for dessert. We chatted and listened to Jimmy Buffett as we ate. After the meal, we adjourned to the living room and put on a movie. Shelly, Chuck, and Kollette had never seen Undercover Blues. Naturally, we were obliged to introduce them. Everyone enjoyed it, as evidenced by the many repetitions of the words "My name is Muerte!" afterwards.

The movie ended just in time to switch over to the TV and await the countdown to the dropping ball. We continued to watch for a few minutes while Mariah Carey performed. (I liked her a lot better when she was actually a singer; I thought her first album was actually quite good.) Then we turned off the TV and broke out the games.

With ABBA and The Beatles playing in the background, we decided to introduce our guests to DICEcapades. The game is something like Cranium, in that there are different types of challenges that the players have to complete: actions, thinking puzzles, and trivia. The difference is that this game uses dice—LOTS of dice. Dice of all colors and shapes, ranging from four-sided dice to twenty-sided dice. There's even a clear die with another die inside it. These dice used for everything from determining which trivia question the player has to answer to stacking different types of dice atop one another.

We played this game for well over an hour, and everyone did pretty well. I happened to reach the final space just before Nancy did, which meant that she and everyone else had to choose a final challenge category for me to complete to win the game. My final challenge: to roll a twenty-sided die and do that many sit-ups within thirty seconds. I rolled 16. So I tucked my feet under the couch and started doing sit-ups. Everyone was impressed—except for me; amazed was more like what I felt—that I did them. I was red in the face when I got done, and it took me a few minutes to cool down, but I actually did sixteen straight sit-ups. As I commented to everyone afterwards, that's probably more sit-ups than I'd done in the previous three years combined. Maybe I should do something about that.

We broke the party around 2:00 a.m.; Shelly and Chuck still had to drive home to Logan (about two hours away, even under good conditions). We turned in shortly after everyone left, and I celebrated the first morning of 2008 by sleeping in. I made it almost until 10:00.

And that pretty much sums it up. I hope this new year finds you all well, safe, and happy. Best Wishes for the New Year, loyal reader(s).