Shallow new year

It's a new year. We did the ringing out the old and in the new thing in the best way I can imagine. A small, manageable, happy and relaxed group including some of our oldest and best friends, and some nice people we just met two hours before the year left us. Tonnes of great food -- old, old cheddar, chocolate, a new discovery compliments of the NYT appetizer recos: dates wrapped in bacon and broiled. Not healthy, but otherworldly delicious. Devils on horseback they called them. Devils indeed. We drank heartily but nobody got slurringly drunk. We woke up to a gorgeous dump of new snow -- the wet kind that clings to the trees and makes the boughs of our huge backyard evergreen hang down (I think it might have heard me talking to a buddy about my ruminations on cutting it down so we could solar power our house).

Now a new year. I woke up with another strange mortality thought. What if you knew that last night was the last New Year's Eve you'd ever have? Millions know just that. Millions more don't know that it was, but it was.

Final internet snippet of 2007. "The only thing sadder than a 40 year old with a mullet is a 50 year old with a pony tail." I'm ruminating on that. I have 20 days to decide.

Also, much time spent looking for pictures of famous old men to see if they look cool or just pathetic.

Turning 50 is going to be unhappy at times I think. But then I'll just forget all about it and get busy again.