New Years Redux

If New Year's Day is supposed to predict how the rest of the year goes, then 2012 is going to be a real whopper.  This is so ridiculously insane I have to document it.

New year's eve was great.  Our friend Kayte came over to watch the ball drop, we had a few beers but not too many, Kelley made some cookies, we had a fire going in the firepit outside, Evil Genius went to sleep at a reasonable time but the Bigun stayed up until midnight to see the ball drop on TV for the first time.  I went to bed about 12:30 and read some before turning out the light and trying to sleep.  That's where the fun starts. 

1. Insomnia - I could not get to sleep.  I am an old man here people.  Anything up past 11 pm is going to leave my knuckles dragging the ground the next day, I just can't do that anymore.  About 3:30 am I decided to go into the living room to watch tv for a bit.
2. Actual Death - I find 8 cop cars and 2 fire trucks outside my front yard with the lights flashing.  We live on a busy four lane road, and someone was trying to walk (or I bet stumble) across the road when they were hit and killed by a car.  No other details were released about the victim or the car.  There are large skid marks in the road.  I timed 19 seconds that you can see a car coming on that road from that direction, the intersection is well lit and it's not like the car was cresting a hill or coming around a curve.  The victim didn't look, might have been drunk, the driver might have been drunk or didn't have his headlights on.  Something funky had to be going on there.  It's really quite obvious when there is a car coming or a person standing in the road.
3. Hangover - The hit happened about 2:45 am.  I got up about 3:30 am, got something to eat, posted the accident on facebook, watched some tv and went back to bed about 5 am.  The cops were still cleaning up when I went back to bed.  I felt fine when I went to bed.  Got up about 10:30 with a horrible headache.  Actually, I was woken up at 10:30 by a reporter from the local news asking if we saw or knew anything about the accident.  I answered the door in my boxers thankful that there was no cameras on me at the time.  As I was describing what I saw when I got up, I realized I had a terrible headache and was dehydrated consistent with over-intoxication from the night before.  I only had maybe 3 or 4 beers and one glass of wine.  That's not nearly enough to induce that kind of headache.
4. Superstitions - After re-hydrating some, I ran out to grab some lunch from the Cook-Out.  Kelley's family has always practiced an old superstition about New Year's, and it was apparently on the news this year too.  If the first visitor to your front door is a tall man (I'm 6'1") you will have good luck throughout the year.  If the first visitor is a woman with a unibrow, you will have bad luck throughout the year.  The reporter that came to our front door was a woman, did not cross the threshold into our house, and did not have a unibrow, but that's still too close for comfort.  So I stopped on the way to grab lunch at Kayte's house and went to Kelley's dad's house, being the first visitor to both.  I think maybe the superstition was just a way to get people to socialize, but should still be taken seriously.
5. Lack of Football - my lunch was great, but I didn't get to eat it until about 3:30 pm.  Since NYD fell on a sunday this year, there were no bowl games on what is supposed to be the best day in college football.  I had enough other stuff to take care of to not get involved in any of the NFL games, and I have a tough time getting into the NFL anyway.  I was finally starting to feel better when it got too dark to get in my planned 12 mile run on the day, so I did some strength work and yoga instead.  Then the kids wanted to go to Waffle House for dinner.
6. Bad Food - Going to WH can be an adventure by itself.  We used to go to one in SC, order the same thing every time just to see what we actually got.  It was always different, and rarely what we ordered.  Of course, Evil Genius ordered eggs and only actually ate Kelley's toast. Then she was hungry for the rest of the night.  Imagine that!
7. Bad Movies - we ended up watching a movie called Warrior after we put the kids to bed.  I had really been looking forward to this one quite a bit thinking it was a boxing movie, and it turned out to be an incredibly predictable MMA  movie.  It was well produced, but so much of the flick was hokie and predictable.  An irish schoolteacher with an italian brother that's twice his size?  please.

If that pattern holds true there will be nothing but death and disappointment for us in 2012.  Of course, being the eternal optimist I don't want that to hold true.  All I can do is stick to my training plan, work my heart out, and keep my head held high.   How insane was that?

Monday Jan2 was much better.  The kids did the calisthenics and yoga with me, I ran 10 miles, the football games held some insane delayed gratification.  Oregon won, Stanford lost, USC won big, and we found a place with all you can eat tacos on monday nights for $5, so I was able to feed the whole family at a restaurant for only $18 plus tip.  Then we got the new season of The Batchelor, with more trashy crazy women than I dream about.  It was incredible.  And I had the day off from work.  So let's hope 2012 has more Mondays than days like Sunday.  And that starts the list of things I never thought I would say this year.