I hope everyone had a great New Year's Eve and has had a good 2010 thus far. I know I did. I drove to Ft Worth Wednesday night to be with friends for the new year. I drove in after work so I did not get to Margaret's until a little after 10:00. Dana and Lauren met there too, and we all sat around the table at Margaret's apartment drinking and laughing until the wee hours of the morning. Topics of conversation: dating, drinking, work, and a sock monkey hat I got from my aunt. I will be posting pictures of this hat along with "the story" very soon. We had a great time and then got up in the morning and did it all over again!
On the morning of the eve of the new year we slept in a little, which was pretty nice. Everyone then got ready and we headed out to have a bite to eat. We went to Flipz, which has become somewhat of a tradition since we have been getting together in Ft Worth. Rather than order separate meals, we ordered a bunch of appetizers for everyone to share, which of course meant we ordered way too much. We ordered a Flipz fireball, pickle chips, sliders, fish tacos, boneless wings, another order of sliders and topped it off with four tall Blue Moons. (and an additional Blue Moon for me) We made a valiant effort, but we could not finish everything we ordered. An hour later it definitely became a maalox moment.
We ran some other errands during the day including dropping off my karaoke machine at the house where we going to party later that night. We got it hooked up to make sure everything was working properly. Much to my dismay one of the microphones did not work. Not a huge deal since I have two microphones, but the one that did not work was the cordless, which can sometimes be a lot of fun if someone adds a little showmanship to their karaoke number.
We went back to the house and said goodbye to Lauren, who was going on to a party with some of her friends in Dallas. We watched The Hangover (hilarious) and The Goods (not great, but certainly worth seeing). Then we got ready and headed back over to the house to go to Dana's friends party. Pat and Ashley were the couple that were throwing the party. I had previously been to one party at their house and it was nothing short of awesome. It was earlier in the year, so it was much warmer then. They have a pool and hot tub, and had a large spread of food and drinks outside by the pool. They had rented a beer tub, which was basically a small tank that horses or cattle would drink out of, except in this case it was full of iced down beer. Pat told me I would be doing him a favor that night if I drank all of the Miller Lite out of the tub because they were Coors fans. Challenge accepted! I was not able to complete the task, but I gave it the old college try. Needless to say, I did not drive home that night.
Anyway, back to the NYE party. The party was set up inside because it was much to cold to be partying outside. However, this did not stop one partygoer from jumping in the pool. We did not know he did it till he came back in. I guess he stripped down to his underwear, because when he came back in he had put his clothes back on, but sort of looked like he wet his pants due to the wet underwear. This gave us multiple reasons to laugh! They had rented a margarita machine again, but this was definitely not your mom's margarita machine. It looked just like the one they use at Chili's for frozen margaritas, and they tasted like restaurant quality margaritas too.
The biggest treat was one we noticed right away. Another friends of the party hosts had heard about the microphone debacle. Did he ever take care of it! We walked in to see two large speakers flanking each side of the tv, a sound mixer next to the karaoke machine and four mic stands with four microphones set up in the living room. With my mic, that gave us 5 mics total. It's official, I will have to trick out my karaoke machine the same way from now on! I better start saving some money!
As with any party, people were slow to get on the karaoke machine. Everyone usually gets a little nervous, but fortunately Margaret and Dana were there to rock the mics! They sang several songs and so did Chad, they guy who jumped in the pool. I sang a few too, but it really wasn't until after midnight that the karaoke party picked up. My group took over the mics and started singing song after song. Ashley was picking the songs and they were all the crowd pleasing staples that you think of when listening to karaoke. Sweet Home Alabama. Margaritaville. Sweet Caroline. Ashley even gave us a few challenges too. She put in Young MC's Bust a Move to test me, and if I do say so myself, I passed with flying colors! Regardless of how we sounded, we all had a blast! We headed home a little after 3 am. It was a great night! I have had some not so fun New Year's Eves, so nights like these certainly make you appreciate the fun ones.
I'm looking forward to what 2010 has to bring. I know Jan 1 is just another day, but it certainly represents much more. The start of a new year is an opportunity to change many things. Margaret and I joked last week about resolving to remain the same for the next year. We had a misunderstanding about some new year's resolutions and she thought I was resolving to keep things at status quo. You really don't need to resolve to do nothing, you can just do nothing! That may not make a lot of sense, but it's late, so I'm leaving it! Goodnight!
