New Year's Celebrations

This year I stayed up to "greet" the New Year. I usually do not. One year is pretty much the same from the point of view of my front porch, so I just sit in my rocking chair and whittle. When folks pass by and say "Happy New Year!", I just say "Ayyy,yup", touch the brim of my deerstalker cap and stay a-whittling.

This year I decided to really get into the arcane delights of New Year's I've heard so-o-o-o much about.

We started off by going to a fancy restaurant in an old, quaint building. That means it had a tin ceiling which bounced sound waves off quite vigorously. Lots of static in the attic, as I say when I pull out the old ear trumpet.
Then I was punked by the lady who arranged the whole deal. I was left feeling distinctly like Wilson after Dr. House has pulled a prank on him: the dinner was prix fixe, not a la carte as we had been led to believe, and the prix was a bit haut or élevé at $65 per person, leaving me with a minimum expense of 130 simoleons... with nowhere to go but up!
Then that lady herself bowed out at the last minute.
We had a table of five sorry Wilsons.

She-who-must-be-obeyed has taught me to gently yet firmly put my hand over the gaping wine goblet to indicate that I do not wish anything to drink. She said she had gotten weary of my saying that I was a temperance man or a prohibitionist or a teetotaller, and regarded my intentional efforts at gaining attention by invoking the past to be far short of amusing - not at all like Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, which was charming.
But what does one do when the waiter glimmers in with a glass already sloshing about with wine? It was a free gulp, and the waiter brought a glass for each of us.
I gave mine away, and cautioned the waiter that I would countenance no more free Chateau d'Yquem; I had a Maginot Line of probity and sobriety that could not be breached... even by a fruity Jungfraumilch!

Totally Wilson-ized, I promised myself some sort of revenge in the future.

There were five courses in the dinner, and they were all of them the "long version", leaving me feeling rather as fuzzy-headed as I had felt after hearing the first full version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida after having become used to the quick radio play.
Of course, back when I had heard that music, my fuzzy-headedness was due to something I had smoked - I think - and the  music actually sort of stopped for a few minutes on certain passages or even on individual notes, and the elongation was a priapism in the audio portions of the head and brain. That was much better than being in a loud restaurant packed with celebrants, whose revelry raised the temperature a couple degrees Celsius every two minutes.

At the stroke of midnight, I saw Times Square, a descending globe, and Mayor Bloomberg dancing with Lady Gaga!
That sums it up for me: Gaga...  and any anagrams on "Gaga" that you may come up with!
--