Happy New Year

I sure hope 2009 is better than 2008 was

Our original plan for the last day of 2008 was to go down to Elephant Butte in the morning, meet Zorro and Cornhusker for sailing, and then go to a New Year’s party with Dumbledore and Mother Superior.

Because of the vandalism to the Expedition, we were stuck in Albuquerque, getting repairs done, while Zorro went sailing on his boat, and Cornhusker went sailing on the new (to her) boat that she has just bought, figuring out how things work on it. Winds were mostly light, but toward the end of the afternoon, they came up nicely.

We got to T or C about sunset, and we arrived at the party as darkness was falling. It was a very small, quiet party, more a gathering of friends than a big bash. There was posole, and there were homemade tamales, and everything was good.

When it came close to time to celebrate the stroke of midnight, Dumbledore brought out the starting gun setup that the sailing club uses only on special occasions. It’s three shotguns, with barrels cut off very short, welded together in a set, with a bracket to mount them on a vertical pole such as a sailboat mast. He and Gerald mounted the device on the flagpole out front, loaded it with blank cartridges, and cocked it. We had a GPS, so we would know exactly when midnight was – we noticed that the local television station that was carrying a tape-delayed version of Times Square was more than 30 seconds off.

When midnight came around, we celebrated with three shotgun blasts.