Today is Richard’s birthday, which was, of course, the reason I spent the past two days frantically knitting him a Dalek. He had the day off, so we pretty much just spent the day lounging around lazily at home until it was time for dinner. I had a short videochat with my little sister, and she and my brother-in-law and niece all crowded around the camera and sang him Happy Birthday. We played a little bit on the Wii. We made a short excursion out to Michael’s so I could pick up some yarn and a crochet hook, and so he could pick up a picture frame, and we swung by Fry’s on a futile quest for some kind of cable thing to hook the laptop to the television, which it turns out would not have worked anyway so it’s good we walked out empty handed.

Our New Year’s Eve celebration this year, such as it was, was dinner at the Melting Pot downtown. Back when I made the reservations, I told them it was Richard’s birthday and had arranged for there to be some balloons and such, but I made the reservation weeks ago, so had completely forgotten about it until we arrived and they wished him a happy birthday. Dinner was delicious, and involved far too much food, as usual, starting with the cheese fondue and culminating in a dark chocolate fondue flavored with coffee liquor. We’d talked about heading off to Old Sacramento afterwards, to watch the fireworks, but I’ve been still fighting off this whatever it is kind of virus most of the day and with that and all the food I was starting to fade. So instead we returned home, where we are now comfortably ensconced, surrounded by cats and our computers. If we cannot see the fireworks, at least we can hear them, booms echoing faintly in the night from a few miles away.

Every once in a while I turn on the television on New Year’s Eve just to watch the stupid ball drop in Times Square, but this year, I know I am just not going to make it that late. So instead, I’ll wrap up this entry and close off on this year a few hours early. It’s already 2009 somewhere else in the world, anyway, so really, what difference do a few hours here or there make in the grand scheme of arbitrary calendar designations. Good bye 2008. Thanks for the shiny new kitchen. Hello 2009. Looking forward to seeing what you have in store.

Tis the season for Holidailies!