You've Got To Be Kidding Me - A New Year's Tale

Our New Years crew went from 7 of us to 2 of us, so it ended up being just me and Claude. We had planned to go to Rushcutters to see the fireworks originally, but then I had the bright idea of just going to Circular Quay. This idea stemmed from laziness and seriously repressed memories ;-) Claude and I were busy eating lots of cheese and crackers (including my favourite Sundried Tomato cheese by Tilba) and watching Napoleon Dynamite and Singles and didn't actually leave my apartment until about 10.45pm.

We ran into the lovely Matt (Styx) and Lilly on the way to the bus stop, which was a very nice surpise! :-)

Of course by the time we got down to Circular Quay we could not get anywhere near the Opera House, so we tried to find a spot where we could have a view of the Harbour Bridge. To get to such a spot we had to endure ten minutes of agony. This is when my repressed memories rose to the surface. Why haven't I gone to Circular Quay in years? Because it's the Circus from Hell if you don't get there way early! Things were too close for comfort for a while, but next thing we knew, Claude and I got sucked into "The Vortex" where mean, nasty, angry, sweaty, not-wearing-enough/any-deodorant, slimey people were all trying to move at the same time. It was a bit scary. If anyone had fallen, they would have been in serious trouble. Claude and I had no choice but to move with the crowd. We were just being pushed along in the sweaty BO stampede. In an attempt to scoot around the left side, to stand next to Claude instead of behind her, I accidentally got caught in the traffic of people going the other way, so I started going backwards for a bit - ooops! It was during this ten minutes of hell that I did not feel goodwill towards men. I remember actually saying, "Okay, I hate everyone in Sydney right now." Sorry, Sydney...it was my fault for not realising/remembering what an uncomfortable experience this was going to be :-)

Just when I thought things couldn't get any better, I felt a hard, um, package being pressed into my ass. I was wearing pants, of course, but this dude was totally pressing his you-know-what against my booty. I was so not impressed. We were so squished, I couldn't even turn around to see who this asshole was, but I was 99.9% sure that he was one of those perverts we used to discuss in psychology class at BU. I was going to give him the .1% of benefit of the doubt until I made it out of the vortex. So, hallelujah, we made it out of Satan's Den. Free at last! We had space! We were so excited to be out of that and be able to move!

And then the dickhead reappeared. Mind you, there were people in front of us, but we had lots of space behind us. And yet this asshole comes up behind me and presses himself up against me, once again pressing his hard package as much as he could in between my butt cheeks, considering I was wearing pants. I was like, "You've got to be *$%@ing kidding me!" I whipped around and said, "Okay, you need to STOP standing behind me, right now! Get away from me. Move it!" The guy looked to be in about his 40s. When I told him to move, he looked shocked and his expression was of a 6 year old child who just got caught doing something really bad. He quickly ran away. Asshole. Perverts like him just thrive on events like New Years, where they can rub themselves up against women and have less chance of getting caught since the crowds are so packed.

The extra gross thing is that I could feel where he'd been pressed up against my butt for like 5 minutes after he was gone. EWWWWWW!

After we got that nonsense out of the way, we ooohed and ahhhed over Sydney's fireworks, which, as usual, kicked ass. I cannot think of a more amazing fireworks setting than Sydney Harbour. I liked the heart on the Harbour Bridge - very cute. We had limited views of the fireworks over the Opera House and on the other side of the bridge, but what we could see was lovely. People at Mrs. Macquarie's chair would have had the most amazing views - so jealous!

What kept cracking me up is that there were groups of guys of every nationality getting all excited and screaming out things in their native languages starting from even before the fireworks began. I wish I knew what they were saying. I especially wanted to know what they were screaming when the fireworks were actually going off. It would have been hilarious if they were just saying, "There goes a firework! WOOOO! A green firework! WOWOWOWOW! A purple and red one! YES! And there's another firework!!! YAY! Another one! WHOOOOO! A pink one! WHOOOOOO!" Claude suggested they may have just been counting them like The Count on Sesame Street. "One firework! Two fireworks! Three fireworks! Hah Hah Hah" ;-)

New Year's Day was like 44 degrees C or 111 degrees F. Again, I thought, "You've got to be $%@#ing kidding me!!!" It was insane. In the short walk to Broadway I thought I was going to faint and I was hopping like an asshole on hot sand at the beach. My thinly soled ballet-slipper like shoes were a poor choice. The pavement was so hot, I could barely stand to walk on it, so I hopped around like a dork.

The next day was cooler and rainy and I have never been so happy to see rain. I absolutely loved it. :-)

I have plenty of New Years Resolutions, but I'm going to keep them to myself - Happy New Year!!! :-)