January 1, 2008

Happy 2008

Last night, SOF and I broke from our usual "watch a movie and maybe stay up to watch the New Year" to actually attending Oklahoma City's Opening Night celebration. Our family joined us for a cold night of walking around downtown from venue to venue (no, we did not see the Flaming Lips) until we shivered in the cold waiting for the ball to ....

Isn't the phrase, "watch the ball drop?" This one went up and was largely unimpressive. But then the fireworks started and they were very impressive. It was an evening enjoyed by all.

The highlight for me was watching the Red Dirt Rangers play for a while, though a close second was our visit to the old First National Bank building with the beautiful historic stone room, where we entered just as a chorale group was finishing Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American." Now people probably suspect that this is not my favorite song ("proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free"--at least? Damning with faint praise, I think.) But this group could have been singing Mein Kampf--The Musical and it would have sounded amazing in that room. We wondered around and heard a smaller barbershop group sing a few songs--all of which just rang in that room. It was truly amazing.

The crowd was well-behaved and diverse. When we returned to our car, we found a giant pickup nearly inches from the passenger side of my car--prompting a few curses at the people who still think that giant SUV-like vehicles are reasonable. But we made it. After a bit of a line coming out of the parking garage, we hopped on the freeway and home to warmth and sleep.

It was a great evening where memories were made--which was the point.

Happy New Years to you and yours!

10 comments:

Bitebark said...

Merry New Year, Streak!

Streak said...

Thank you Bitebark and thanks for your contributions here. I hope this is a good New Year for you as well.

steves said...

What is so unreasonable about a truck? My next vehicle will probably be a full sized truck. I am tired of borrowing or renting one when I have to move large things, haul wood, etc.

Happy New Year to all who post here.

Streak said...

Well, that particular frustration is aimed at urban truck users who buy them with seemingly no concern for the environmental or gas price connection, and in this case aimed at the trucks that are so huge that they dwarf the rest of us--endangering us in traffic and not working well with others in parking situations.

Tony said...

Ditto--Happy New Year.

Here's to intelligent conversation at Streak's Blog in '08.

Streak said...

Here's to intelligent conversation at Streak's Blog in '08.

That would be a nice change, wouldn't it? :)

Anonymous said...

Happy New Year to you Streak, and SOF! It's been a pleasure chatting with you here and over at JP. I hope this year brings good things for you and for all of us.

Bloomberg in '08!! :)
(kidding...I think!)

Happy New Year to everyone else here as well!

JoeG

Streak said...

joeg, thanks for the good wishes. And the same to you and yours. Your contributions here are appreciated and I hope they keep coming.

Nina said...

We haven't gone to opening night yet, either. It seemed contraindicated to try to wake up the kids to go walking outside in the freezing cold. But, maybe next year.

I'm glad the Red Dirt Rangers played, they are one of our favourites.

LOL about the ball going up--we saw it on TV--quite anticlimactic.

Happiest of New Year's to you both, with a blogging good year to us all! :)

Streak said...

Heh. Contraindicated or counter-intuitive crossed my mind as I shivered in the street at 11:50.

But it was worth it.

Thanks for the nice wishes and please keep the comments coming. :)