I don't know what it is, maybe something in the air, something in the food, or something in the water, but the end of 2003 has been rather low key compared to past End of Years. At least that's the way it's felt to me. I had to remind myself consciously several times yesterday that it was in fact New Year's Eve. It even took me going out to the mailbox and finding out that there was no mail before I realized it was New Year's Day today. If there weren't any football games on today, I probably would have forgotten entirely that it IS New Year's Day.

The ringing in of the New Year last night was more like a muffled tinkle. My sister and her husband were mostly asleep, Braden was in bed by 9pm, and the rest of us were pretty worn out as well. My sister woke up enough to toast the New Year and then everyone pretty much went to bed immediately afterwards.

Another thing I must rant briefly about - TV coverage of bringing in the New Year in the Central Time Zone sucks. We either get a rebroadcast of what the Eastern time zone got an hour previously, or we get nothing at all. Up to 10 minutes before the start of the New Year, three out of the four prime TV networks were showing anything BUT New Year related programming. I think Conan was on NBC, some infomercial was on CBS, and all I saw on ABC was a continual stream of commercials. Fox was showing New Year programming but it was a rebroadcast of what was happening in Las Vegas (who I believe is on Mountain time) when the Eastern time zone was counting down. WTF is up with that???

When it finally was time to countdown, we saw a rebroadcast of the ball dropping in Times Square. It seems like all the major cities in the Central time zone (Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, St. Louis, etc) don't exist on New Year's Eve. We've been here in Little Rock for a couple of New Year's Eves now, and I always forget how crappy the TV programming is. It's like if you don't live in NY time, or Vegas time or Los Angeles time, it's not worth mentioning or remembering. Bah.

I'm sorry to be the New Year Grouch, but all I have to say this year is Bah Humbug.

We saw Jen's family off Monday afternoon and was graced by my family's presence almost immediately (within a couple of hours) afterwards. They had a pleasant 17 hour drive (as pleasant as a drive of that duration can be) from Maryland and we've enjoyed spending the past few days with each other. We've played in the yard, gone and hiked to the top of Pinnacle Mountain, and went and saw LotR: RotK. Best of all, I've had the entire week off from work.

While our biggest news was our new house and new cars, my sister surprised us with the biggest news of all when she arrived Monday afternoon. If all goes well as planned, I will officially be an uncle come June or July! So we've been privy to much debate and discussion about potential baby names. My BIL likes Calvin and Angus if it's aboy, while my sister likes Samantha, Isabel, or Hailey if it's a girl. Unfortunately, they can't agree on a name that they both really really like. So those conversations have been interesting and somewhat humorous.

Some other observations of the past few days:

On the way to "Cheaper by the Dozen", we witnessed some maroon driving an SUV about to miss an exit off the interstate, cut quickly across three lanes of traffic without looking, nearly hit a full-ton Ford pickup (who slammed on his brakes so hard that he smoked his tires), and then swerve back into the right lane when he realized he couldn't make the off-ramp. Probably some idiot talking on his cellphone not paying attention to where he was. I'm just glad no one got hurt and that we weren't the victim of some idiotic driving manuever.

On the way to RotK from Pinnacle Mountain State Park, a woman lost hold on her dog who then promptly proceeded to run away from her down the road. Traffic was backed up for a few minutes while several people (my dad, sister, and BIL included) tried to save poor ol Fido. Fortunately Fido was returned safely to her owner and no injuries or damage was reported.

College football bowl games have been pretty uninteresting for the most part.

Polyurethane hardens when left to dry in a foam brush, hence the final coating on my entertainment center will have to wait a few days until I can acquire another brush.

So far, the start of the new year has started with a fizzle. But I suppose it's better to start with that than a big, surprising, shocking bang.