Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2006, everyone! I hope you are a lot warmer and drier than I was this morning, hanging out in Pasadena and watching the 117th annual Tournament of Roses Parade! That's right! I was one of the thousands of die-hard fans lining the sidewalks of Colorado Blvd in the pouring rain, clapping enthusiastically for the brave marching banders and float riders as they went by. See?



Ok, I lied. I was not one of those people. I was there, alright, but I was laughing at those people from my lofty perch on the third story of an office building on the parade route, because they were getting soaked and I was...well, ok, I was getting soaked too because I went out on the balcony to get a better view, but TECHNICALLY if I had stayed in the office like I was SUPPOSED to, and just watched from the window, I would have been warm and dry.

It's the thought that counts, right?

Now ironically, I've lived about 15 minutes from the parade route for most of my life, and yet I have never seen the parade in person. The year I finally go, it rains--the first time it has ever rained on the Rose Parade in, oh, 50 years.

And when I say "rain," I don't mean the pathetic drizzle that usually qualifies as "precipitation" in SoCal. This was the real deal--gusty winds, dark clouds, torrential downpour, rivers where gutters should have been, that sort of thing. Props to all the parade people involved for going through with it! Personally, if I were in the parade, I'd have said, "Are you paying me? No? Hmm. Looks like your gonna be down one trombone player then." And I don't even play the trombone.

Luckily for the parade people, I was not an integral part of the event, so the show did in fact go on, trombone players and all. And the theme for this year's parade was "It's Magical," so all the floats, or most of them anyway, had the word "Magic" in the name. Like, "The Magic of Love," which was supposed to depict (I think) the balcony scene from Romeo & Juliet, but all I could see was the giant flowery float-Juliet looking over the balcony at no one and waving a giant rose. Not a Romeo in sight, which I thought was a little weird, and kind of sad. (Later, when I watched the parade again on TV, I saw that Romeo was there, but he was a real human man, as opposed to a giant flowery float-man, and that meant he was about 10% of the size of his fair lady. Well, I guess every romance has its challenges.)

Another float was called, "The Magic of Healthy Eating." In my own case, of course, healthy eating would be magical indeed, or probably more like plain old miraculous, but maybe the float makers were taking an optimistic view of things.

Yep, we had a good time in spite of all the bad weather, as you can see from this photo of me smiling as I lean dangerously over the balcony railing so that you can have a great view of the big tree blocking the marching band and float in the background:



Well, here's to the new year! May it be full of lots of magic and good things for you...maybe even healthy eating! (And don't try to tell me that's not one of your new year's resolutions!)