For the past two years we've spent New Year's Eve in the little theater in Davis, watching a play put on by the Davis Musical Theater Company, followed by mountains of mostly bland Chinese food. We suffer through the mostly bland Chinese food only because we know that after that is done, there will be pie and cheesecake to make up for it, and also because once the food has been consumed and we can truly eat no more, they bring out a live band and pass out hats and noisemakers and sparkling cider, and we all get out into the aisles and dance ourselves silly until we collapse in one of the theater chairs and finally drag ourselves home. And for the last two years it's actually been a lot of fun.

This season, however, we've been a bit hesitant about spending yet another New Year's Eve with the DMTC. This is because the offerings so far this season have been more than a bit disappointing. In fact, when it came time for intermission during Music Man, we all decided that we couldn't really handle any more of the lackluster performance, and so we snuck out and went to Bakers Square for pie a lot earlier than we usually do. Of the three plays we've seen this season, only one of them showed any promise at all - and that was the one we saw this past weekend. They did a fairly good job with Fiddler on the Roof (and I have almost managed to exorcise "If I Were a Rich Man" from my head, three days later), but one out of three isn't the best of odds.

So...this year we decided to live it up a little bit and we're going to do a fancy schmancy dinner that night, followed by fireworks in Sacramento (if the rumors are true), and then we'll head home before things get too crazy and probably end up toasting in the New Year with sparkling cider while we watch the stupid ball drop on the TV.

And now that I think about it, this year it just may be time to resurrect that old family tradition of a blowout ice cream feast. Since my family doesn't drink, and there were always a few metric tons of cookies leftover from Christmas, we replaced the usual 'drink til you can't stand straight' tradition for New Year's Eve with an all out dessert feast, buying any kind of ice cream and toppings we wanted, and then doing our best to suck down as much ice cream and cookies as we could stand. It was a marvelous tradition, and really, the only difference between that and getting drunk is that - while we probably all take in the same number of calories, our tradition never gave anyone a hangover the next day.

So I'm thinking that this year, after dining in style at one of the nicest restaurants in Sacramento, and after wandering Old Sacramento and oohing and aahing over holiday decorations and fireworks, we may just have to swing by the store on the way home and stock up a few pints of all our favorites. I'll drag out all the leftover cookies and fudge and any other goodies that might still be lingering, and then we can toast in the New Year with all the sugar and calories at our disposal and it'll be just like old times. Auld lang syne, and all that.