Hau'oli Makahiki Hou!

Raise our glasses to the new year.

Then I went on to win at Race for the Galaxy (but lost the next game, and got *royally* clobbered at the first game a few hours earlier. Really, someone got a 72.)

There was also Galaxy Truckers, which I won, but not by any particular extension of brilliance on my part. My truck just happened not to fall apart. That was amusing.

And my chocolate banana bread pudding was very well received.

That was 2008, basically. Not an overall win. Hoping to do better next year.

Happy New Year to all at Making Light. Thanks for an entertaining and thought-provoking 2008.

May 2009 bring a world that tries just a little harder to recognise our common humanity and to care about the planet we share.

A world of good work, good friends, and good conversation in 2009.

Back when Harold Wilson was the British prime minister, Private Eye used to publish ghastly travesties of the poetry his wife Mary notoriously wrote. Forty years ago, from memory, it went like this:

The New Year dawns; the gurgling babe
Is ushered in with bells.
The old man with his astrolabe
Now hears his tolling knells.
So welcome nineteen sixty-nine
Through gales and blasts of fate:
We know that thanks to Providence Divine
It cannot be as bad as nineteen sixty-eight.

(Resident poets may update this as they will.)

[...]

I asked John D. Berry: "Is this worth doing?" He replied "It might be worth your doing. I'm going to bed."

Seems like a good idea....

but, I took a Making Light break, followed some breadcrumbs, and now I've fallen into Tor.com and can't get out!:-)

新年)あけましておめでとうございます
Happiness to you as the New Year dawns!

A belated happy new year to all, hence.

So, happy new year, I hope it's a good bit better than 2008 all around.

She has noticed that where a culture places its new year in the zodiac shapes the kind of culture they create:

China - Aquarius - inventive, electric, group-centered, rigidly controlling.

Judiac - Libra - Justice, merchant's scales, being pleasant to keep the peace (?Is the State of Israel listening anymore?).

European - Capricorn - corporatist, patriarchal, political organization, status-oriented.

Thoughts from others?

Here's to 2009. May it be in all ways a safe, happy, and bountiful year for us all.

cherish @22 European - Capricorn - corporatist, patriarchal, political organization, status-oriented.

Since when are those in any way European specialities?

FOR THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY DEATH

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

-- W. S. Merwin

Happy New Year to all the Making Light folk!

That being said, it may be time to break out the Ark: it's been raining sabre-tooth tigers and dire wolves here all day and the dogs refuse to go out in the yard. I don't think I've ever seen this heavy a rain for this long in Oregon.

* Please tell me they haven't switched to offset printing with layout by Quark Express!

That 72 at Race is pretty impressive, though I guess you were using the expansion, which makes for somewhat higher scoring games. (The Alien Toy Shop makes for some nice Consume X2's.) My personal best is 75 in the base game.

Galaxy Trucker is also a fave of mine lately.

And, since it's time to look back on last year as well as forward to the next...Congrats one more time on that Hugo. May your next trip around the sun find you healthy and able to keep bringing us more great books.

Thanks, Making Light crew and commentariat for all the thoughtful discussions.

Onward!

We went to my parents and had the Sacred New Year's Dishes: kielbasa and kraut, black-eyed peas, and broccoli. (I don't know whether the last is properly Sacred, but it's what we always have.)

January 20 for inaugurating the new POTUS is a relatively recent development.

The 20th amendment to the US Constitution fixed January 20 as the beginning and end of each presidential term, a change effective for the first time in 1937 at the beginning of President Roosevelt and Vice President Garner’s second terms. Previously inaugurations were held on March 4, so the change cut FDR’s first term by six weeks – not much of a difference considering how long he eventually served.

Washington was inaugurated April 30th, 1789. Lincoln's inauguration was March 4th, 1861. FDR's first inauguration was March 4th, 1933.

Love, C.

Fireworks, nicer still.

But the BIG party should be held at Yellowstone National Park, by the north end of the big lake (where the quakes are clustering), just in time for the eruption.

Bring lots of hot dogs and marshmallows, and some really long sticks!

(I am completely obsessed with discussions of this year's inauguration. Decided against going myself, but am utterly facinated by the immense logistical planning that's going on. Obama -- eh, whatever, tell me more about the charter bus parking plans!)

Our New Year's celebration got cut short by 20 degree weather and 40 mph winds - they decided that setting off fireworks 20 yards from a huge crowd was inadvisable given the conditions. So we introduced the kiddo to Dick Clark and Robbie Knievel and she was kind enough to wake me up and make sure we were all holding our lucky quarters before the big countdown.

On to 2009!

Tho' that was my hope for 2008 …

It appeared that in our neighborhood people were still celebrating until after 2 p.m. with fireworks (it might have been guns but I'm telling myself it was fireworks), Whatever, it was boomy. And I had insomnia so the booms did not help it.

This year has to be better. It just has to.

A New Years Eve story: traditionally, I spend New Years Eve at home, quietly, reading or watching a movie, keeping the cats and dog company. This year I was all prepared with Disc 1 of Season Three of The Wire. Armchair? Check. Feet up? Check? Glass of wine? Check. Except -- the damn disc was cracked.

I had a moment of pure superstitious terror; OMG, is this an omen? Does this mean that 2009 is going to be as plain damn rotten -- except for the election Yes! -- as 2008 had been? Then I calmed down, and decided that no, this was just a final goodbye swipe from 2008, going out the door as one would expect it to, teeth bared, claws out.

I read a Jodi Picoult novel instead.

Happy New Year, all.

Coulda been worse. Coulda led to trials, tribulations, and the prominent displaying of eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one.

(...it didn't, did it?)

Interesting. Standard practice among epidemiologists, when they know only the year, is to assign July 1, the mid-point. (If they know the month they use the 15th of it, for the same reason.)

While working with some insurance data, I created a date of birth chart. It was pretty flat with a shallow hump August through October, except for 1 Jan which had approximately twice the average frequency, and 29 Feb which was a quarter average frequency. The 1 January might have been an artifact of lost, old or just wrong data, but I never got to the bottom of it; there was nothing obviously wrong with the handful of records I had time to check. I think we discussed the lost or unknown date of birth possibility at the time.

Cadbury.

It's useful if you change your name for these spam shout-outs; that way we can scan down the last 1000 comments and do hunt and kill missions.