great balls o' fire

Happy New Year! I traveled to Baltimore, Virginia, and Dallas over Christmas and New Years - and somehow I managed to take plenty of pics of what I was up to - and post absolutely none of them. For whatever reason, at the time, none seemed interesting enough (or I just didn't feel up to it.) It's another example of how when I posted almost daily, meeting that goal meant a lot of boring and banal stuff, but also that stuff I did have rarely went un-posted. Now, I still have a mindset that it has to be significant to post. I'm not one for resolutions, but if I'm going to make one for this year, overcoming that mindset may be it. So beginning a step back through the last few weeks with this post…  For many years, my friend Myron and I have often met up on New Years somewhere. Our first trips were to Las Vegas, followed by Key West with our friend Tres. And since then lots of other places from San Diego to New Orleans to Philly. I've always kind of hated New Years; to me it was always a peer pressure holiday and a big countdown to nothing, so my main requirement is that something has to actually happen at Midnight. A drop of some sort, or fireworks - just something. Ideally someplace moderately temperate is a secondary factor, though Philly obviously broke that rule (and was worth it). Sometimes life gets in the way and one of us can't manage it, as was looking to be the case this year. Myron had some work things up in the air that he couldn't plan around, so I suggested just visiting him in Dallas. It turns out they also have a fairly new tradition of New Years fireworks off of Reunion Tower, so that satisfied the midnight event requirement nicely, and I lived there myself years ago, so still feel an attachment to the area. We had no real plan, but ended up starting the day watching a game at a Steelers sports bar (Myron's from PA originally), then a couple beers at a local beer bust, a stop at a foot spa (!), and then some vegging before heading out for the Midnight show. We called a couple places downtown to be sure they were open late for New Years, but we may have been too cavalier in not asking if their kitchens stayed open, too. Oops. After a bit of back and forth misery in 25 degree weather and underground (heated!) tunnels trying different places, we settled for a beer before Midnight and then ended up in a Hungarian bar in Deep Ellum for a pretty great dinner at 1:30am. Sometimes just rolling with it works out okay.