Happy New Year

And good riddance to 2005. In retrospect it wasn't an entirely bad year but there are parts of it we'd all like to forget.

We rang out 2005 in style. I spent the better part of the marning and early afternoon in the hot shop. The last candy dish, my first attempt at using cane, came out rather well. A few more of those and I just might be ready to start blending techniques in producing some really neat pieces. I managed a large candy dish in green for this session along with a slightly smaller one. A hot punty and a too-hot bottom conspired to remove a chunk during the final break-off but I think this piece will come out OK. Although the larger dish looks good overall I wasn't impressed with how thick I let the lip become. Better luck next time. With the holiday break over everyone is back in town so we have to fight for studio time again. I guess it is back to once a week blowing again. Ask nice some day and I might post some pictrues of my pieces.Thanks Carlo for all the glass this past week.

After studio time I went home and picked up the family where we headed downtown for First Night. As usual I forgot my camera so I have no neat photos of any the ice sculptures. I forgot the camera last year as well and took some lousy shots with my camera phone. The kids enjoyed the ice slide and I think this is the first year I didn't go for a ride with the kids down the slide. I think 'the hand' needs another year of healing before I try again. We rang all the bells, threw some resolution sticks into the fire, saw the reindeer and munched away on some of Hanson's Orginal Kettle Korn. After dinner at Grandma's we headed back downtown to check out the rest of the scene and catch the fireworks show at midnight.

Needless to say we all woke up late Sunday morning. New Year's Day is little celebrated in our household- no special dinner or anything. I don't think we ever did anything special on this day, even as a kid. New Years Day was The End of Christmas Vacation meaning Tomorrow we all went Back to School. As such it was a bummer of a holiday.

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Pity poor New Year. It really is a bummer of a holiday. New Year's Eve gets all the glory while the day itself gets the hang-over and post-holiday letdown. Nobody sends New Year's cards and as far as music goes my limited research shows that Auld Lang Syne is about it. I'm still waiting for the Charlie Brown New Year special. Or perhaps Garfield's. Even the pinnacle of New Years Day, All Day College Football, is spread over several days, each bowl trying to trump the others in their importance because they commandeered another day of the week. XM will never dedicate a channel to New Year. All New Years gets for its holiday music is some leftover Christmas songs. Heck, even the First Night ice slide, cared for and alive and full of screaming kids on New Years Eve, lies forlorn and tattered the next day, The Day, the holiday itself.

Little loved and often misunderstodd New Years Day plays back fiddle to New Years Eve and Christmas, the back door to the holiday season, when we see the first of the Christmas tress, once lovingly picked out in an ornate family gathering, now unmercifully tossed to the curb awaiting pickup. New Years Day needs a better PR campaign. To heck with the so called war on Christmas- there's been a wa on New Years Day and it lost to the Eve. I say we march on city hall and make something of this holiday. New Year Ham, anyone?