:: Venting Insanity ::

:: Friday, January 02, 2004 ::

night out
My New Year's was just plain crazy. Brian called me and asked if I was doing anything. I wasn't, so he suggested hanging out. I was like, 'sure'. After some talking, he mentioned going somewhere with a lot of people.

Heh...

I looked at the time and figured it would probably be too late to go into the city. Yeah, the city. He figured so, also. Then, Mom said, "Well, if you catch the next train..." She flipped on the Weather Channel, saw the weather wasn't going to be too bad, and we figured what the heck.

So, we did the crazy thing and went to Times Square for New Year's.

WOW!

It was crowded, cold, and just plain nuts. But, we had a really great time anyway. We had a great spot on Seventh Avenue right by 50^th Street. We had a perfect view of the ball coming down and of the fireworks in the park after it came down.

It was last minute, insane, and crazy, but it so much fun.

checkpoint
We went through about seven or so security checkpoints. It was a pain in the ass. People started pushing from behind, so, to prevent those of us up front from being crushed against the metal barricades, the cops let us through. There was a time where we all stood around fairly far apart from one another. After a while, they started packing us all in again and actually got a good number of us to move up almost a full block.

nicest cops on the block
After we got settled into our new spot, we quickly made acquaintances with the people around us, including the cops stationed at our corner. Cops... Actually, they were detectives. They were really cool and let us out of the barriers to get hot chocolate and use the bathroom at the deli right there, even though no one was supposed to.

The one detective told the deli owner we were her friends from California... so he let us go downstairs and use the employee bathroom because the customer bathroom wasn't working. It was kind of creepy in the storage room downstairs, but it was a bathroom and I had to use it... >.>

the show from above
Helicopters everywhere... doing all sorts of fancy maneuvers to keep an eye on things from above and maintain the no-fly zone over Manhattan island. Then, of course, there were the occasional glimpses of snipers getting up and taking new positions. That was kind of freaky... knowing they were up there.

The best show from above though (at least, to the guys standing in the crowd) was the porn girls hanging their naked breasts out of the window of the hotel above us. They tossed ad cards down with their websites (which I neglected to pick one up... >.> gee...). Yeah, that became a fast collector's item among the males in the group.

countdown
10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

4 hours until 2004!!!!!

Umm... right.

Every hour, they ran a countdown on the stupid screen beneath the ball. Though, after a while, it started to get exciting. I called Mom at 15 seconds left. We yelled at each other over the screaming crowd around me as the ball dropped and 2004 illuminated above the Discover card sign. It was so cool! Fireworks shot off the sides of the building, all up and down it. Then, someone shouted something and a few people turned around. I stood on the barricade, facing the other way, and got the perfect view of giant fireworks behind us in Central Park.

What a night!

real new york pizza
Brian's been in Texas for quite a while. So, when he saw the pizza place down the block from us, he suddenly had a craving for some real NY pizza. We couldn't get in. We ended up wandering around for blocks, trying to find a spot where we could south again to get back to Penn Station (they kept sending east, west, and north...) and found this nice place with pizza. It was crowded, but it was open, and we could get in.

Brian was *very* happy. Afterwards, we walked around a bit more, caught a subway back to Penn, and headed home. I was so wired, I didn't go to sleep until 7 am...

O.O;; Heh...

snapple "real fact" #172
The eye makes movements 50 times a second.

Unless you're having a staring contest... >.>