Wednesday, December 31, 2014

The Critical Mom and The Champagne

So far, I'm only anticipating it.  While we were watching Dinner For One, Germany's traditional New Year's Eve ten-minute tribute to Carpe Diem, we had sherry, because Miss Sophie, in the film, has sherry with her mulligatawny soup.  Then we had a little red wine with the appetizers and the baked nachos (my husband makes them with grated Gouda, chopped scallions, and salsa).  A few people are shooting off firecrackers already (yes, you can just buy them at your local Aldi's here . . .) but we're waiting until midnight.  And it's only 9:52 as I write, and two children have said, "Wake me up before midnight, Mom," and my husband is snoozing on the couch.  We did watch The Lord of the Rings and a little CNN, but now I'm just answering e-mail and reading one of my favorite blogs, "Little Earthling."  And I'm remaining upright, although I may just take a little nap.  Our eldest is in China, and sent a Whats App of himself and the other members of the choir singing "Clementine" in Chinese and wishing us Happy New Year.  It's already 2015 in China!  I'll top off the evening with a return to my blog as soon as I've had my champagne.  But now I've got to get the laundry out of the machine.  Oops, didn't manage that--we were watching 2012, apocalyptic enough for the end of the year.  
And now midnight has just come and gone.  I've had my share of champagne, oh bubbly!  Bubbly!  It goes superbly with the fireworks, some of which, thrown enthusiastically by my twelve-year-old, landed not in the road but the neighbor's garden.
"Not in the neighbor's garden!" we yelled.  But that's where the next one went, too.  The neighbor came out on his balcony.  Good thing he wasn't in the yard.
Now, one more sip of champagne, and then I'll toddle off to bed.  Happy New Year!

4 comments:

  1. OMG, you just reminded me that we totally forgot to watch it this year. We are Germans living in the USA. Yay for youtube. I guess we have to watch it tonight, still counts, right?

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  2. Yes, you can catch all versions on You-Tube! Also see my post on New Year's Eve 2013--wrote quite a bit about Dinner For One . . . I think all versions of this favorite are on You-Tube. Happy Viewing!

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  3. This is completely unrelated, but I just saw your comments on the Wellness Blog on the NYTimes. I think you misunderstood the point of the study. We certainly do know that exercise keeps us younger, what is NOT understood is precisely which different components of fitness are being maintained. Fitness can be said to be made up of several different components, such as VO2 max, strength, flexibility, time till fatigue, endurance etc. This study tried to look at what level these different components were at in a population of active adults. This could give a better idea of how specifically our level of fitness changes as we age and how we are able to maintain different components.

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    1. I did get the point. It's just that I believe these things are less measurable than you believe they are.

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