New Year 2021

[CNGL-Leudimin]

As per the tradition I take advantage of my time zone to send the first post of the New Year while most of you are still in the previous one. Due to you know what I'm writting this from my laptop instead of my cellphone, but at least 2020 is Fucking gone, and so does that Austrian village, now officially named Fugging (pronounced exactly the same as before: FOO-king). I'm not wishing a happy New Year due to the blunder the last one has been, but I still I wish everyone to have a decent 2021.

[GenExpwy]

Even the name of the new year rubs it in: "2020 Won" .

Fair warning, it will be followed by "2020 Too" .

[Henry]

I still find it Fucking amusing that a village in Austria has been called that! 

Anyway, I'm stuck in Seattle, preparing to celebrate virtually with my folks in Chicago, so we'll get to celebrate twice, at 12 AM in both time zones (Central and Pacific). Happy 2021, and here's to a better year than 2020 ever was (and it was the absolute worst, for obvious reasons).

[thspfc]

I still find it Fucking amusing that a village in Austria has been called that! 

Anyway, I'm stuck in Seattle, preparing to celebrate virtually with my folks in Chicago, so we'll get to celebrate twice, at 12 AM in both time zones (Central and Pacific). Happy 2021, and here's to a better year than 2020 ever was (and it was the absolute worst, for obvious reasons).

It could have been a lot worse. Yeah, it stunk, but it was not even close to the worst year ever. And while it was a difficult year in many aspects, I'm going to choose to remember the positives and the fun things I did.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

I can pretend....

[hotdogPi]

US 20 intersects MA 21, but I don't think there's a photo with them side by side.

[US 89]

Happy start of the 203rd decade!

[Ben114]

Just crossed into 2021 here in Massachusetts.

Happy New Year!

[webny99]

Happy new year, everyone!

Here in the Eastern time zone... I made it!
It's... actually not that different from 2020. A crisp, quiet evening with plenty of Christmas lights still twinkling, and a few fireworks going off.

If 2020 was the year where everything changed early on, I think 2021 could be the opposite. May and June might be similar to now, but by next December things could be completely different.

[webny99]

I might add that 2020 has completely warped my sense  of time. The fact that it's now 2021 isn't registering like it normally would.

[kernals12]

Even the name of the new year rubs it in: "2020 Won" .

Fair warning, it will be followed by "2020 Too" .

2020 2 Electric Boogaloo

[wanderer2575]

AAAArrghh! Why, WHY, if SyFy is going to bother showing a Twilight Zone rerun marathon, do they have to chop up every episode like a steer in a butcher shop?  It's an hour into the new year and already I am wound up.  I think I'll have another couple glasses of whiskey and watch my own marathon from the DVDs.

Happy New Year, everyone!

[formulanone]

Happy 2021!

[corco]

[kevinb1994]

AAAArrghh! Why, WHY, if SyFy is going to bother showing a Twilight Zone rerun marathon, do they have to chop up every episode like a steer in a butcher shop?  It's an hour into the new year and already I am wound up.  I think I'll have another couple glasses of whiskey and watch my own marathon from the DVDs.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Hey, it could be worse, like when they tried to butcher the Beatles.

[LM117]

I might add that 2020 has completely warped my sense  of time. The fact that it's now 2021 isn't registering like it normally would.

Same here. My sense of time is still stuck in last spring. 2019 seems like only 2 or 3 months ago.

[1995hoo]

New Year's Eve felt like sort of a conundrum for us. My wife's sister was born on December 31. But she died of cancer last March, so it made "celebrating" seem just wrong or weird. We did raise our glasses at dinner in recognition of her birthday.

For me, 2020 was by no means the "worst" year of my life. It was my first full year in my current job, which is the best one I've had (not the best-paying, but the one for which I'm best-suited and that I enjoy the most). The telecommuting due to the pandemic wasn't a huge issue because I was already telecommuting anyway. I agree with other folks who say it was certainly the "strangest" year they've ever had. Biggest thing for me was not having sports to watch on TV at night and on the weekends for most of the spring and the first half of the summer. I felt kind of lost.

I'm not sure what the worst year of my life was. Problem is that even in the worst years, there were positives to balance out the bad.

[Scott5114]

I knew 2020 was going to be a weird year when we woke up on January 1 to a murder on my street. I had no idea how weird it was going to get, though.

2021 opened up with an unusually large amount of snow, which seems like a much more pleasant omen, given that snow is a once-a-year kind of thing in central Oklahoma, and it's been a good number of years since we've had this much.

[ET21]

2021 opened up with me quarantined because I was exposed to Covid last week and an ice storm. Happy New Year, can't wait to get the vaccine

[CNGL-Leudimin]

2021 opened up with an unusually large amount of snow, which seems like a much more pleasant omen, given that snow is a once-a-year kind of thing in central Oklahoma, and it's been a good number of years since we've had this much.

In Spanish we say Año de nieves, año de bienes (snowy year, good year), so 2021 should be great for you.

[kphoger]

New Year's Eve, it was just our family at home.  We watched two movies, with a game in between.  All of our kids managed to stay up till midnight, although one of them was about to go to bed at like 11:40 PM, till we convinced him not to.

On the morning of 1/1/21, we woke up to beautiful snow–the fifth snowfall I've seen so far this season, which is crazy for this part of the state.  After I cleared the car and the driveway, I convinced my three boys to go for a walk with me in the snow.  It was like pulling teeth, getting them to go with me.  Yeesh...

But then we quickly discovered that the snow was PERFECT for making snowballs, and we basically had a seven-block-long nonstop snowball fight in the streets.  What a hoot!  When we got home, they didn't even go inside right away.  Instead, they stayed out in the front yard and played awhile.

(I've blotted out my kids' faces to make the mods happy.)


Then on 1/2/21, we all went up to my parents' house for a party that was a combination of Christmas and my eldest son's birthday (a few days later).  Our original Christmas plan was to go up there on 12/25/20, but my dad got sick with COVID one week earlier.  He got symptoms on 12/18, was laid up in bed on 12/19, then got a positive test result on 12/21.  By that time, though, he had recovered so well that he went for an eight-mile bike ride.  Because he's a pastor, it was really hard for my parents to have to stay home on Christmas, and they were getting cabin fever even before we went up there.  Ironically, we had to wait longer for my mom to clear her home-quarantine period than for my dad to clear his, even though he's the one who got sick.  I took my guitar and amplifier and song sheets, and we sang Christmas songs;  they said it was the only Christmas music they got to participate in.  But hey, it was still only the ninth day of Christmastide, and it was nice to not have to rush up there after our own Christmas morning traditions on 12/25.  My son requested Chinese take-out for his birthday dinner.  That's kind of strange for a holiday dinner, but we also traditionally do it on Halloween anyway, so not totally out of the ordinary.

(My dad has Parkinson's, and he likes to joke with his students about it to put them at ease.  He's been looking forward to telling them, I got COVID, but I just shook it off.  Ha!)

We have no plans for later in the year yet.  Our missionary friends in Mexico are planning to come back stateside in March or so, because she's due to have a baby in April.  They have no idea if they'll be able to return afterward (and after waiting for the baby's passport), because they don't know if border agents will consider the return to their home in Mexico as "essential travel" or not–assuming the land border is still closed at that time.  I haven't made any plans for a mission trip down there, because I have no idea when the border will open again.  My passport also expires this month, and one of our sons' does later in the year, and I know renewals are taking longer than usual (his will still have to be a new application because that's the requirement for children).

Hopefully, I'll be able to take my kids on another camping trip later this year.  But our car is still acting up after major repairs a few months ago.  It happens so rarely that the mechanic can't replicate the issue to diagnose the problem, so we'll have to see if it gets worse or not.

I wish everyone on here a happy and prosperous new year!  I hope the connections you have with your loved ones have deepened over the previous year, your appreciation for life has expanded, and you have a bright future in front of you.

[bandit957]

I went to a family member's house on New Year's and had a blast! Everything on TV though was garbage.

[kphoger]

Everything on TV though was garbage.

I've never had any desire to watch the ball drop in Times Square, or any other New Year's coverage.  It would probably be cool to actually be there in person, but I've never seen the appeal of watching it on TV.  And I feel the same way about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

[kevinb1994]

Everything on TV though was garbage.

I've never had any desire to watch the ball drop in Times Square, or any other New Year's coverage.  It would probably be cool to actually be there in person, but I've never seen the appeal of watching it on TV.  And I feel the same way about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

I've been in New York for at least one of those (the ball drop in Times Square)-it's only worth doing once in awhile.

[SSOWorld]

The only time I got the opportunity to see the New Year's ball was after it dropped in 2014 - well after it dropped.