Happy New Year!

   Well it happened just like they said it would!
   That big glass ball began its 60 second drop
at Times Square at 11:59pm on December 31st.,
2012 and at the moment it completed the fall
we found ourselves in the year 2013.
    By the way, I prefer saying Twenty thirteen
rather than Two Thousand and thirteen. It's a
carry over from the Nineteen hundreds. Think
about it. Most of us identified the year 1999
as Nineteen Ninety Nine instead of saying
"It's One Thousand Nine hundred and Ninety
Nine. Right? Well the next number after
Nineteen is Twenty. Is it not?
   OK. Now that we have that settled. My family
and I my and I all got together for New Year's
Eve even though we were never actually
together!
   One daughter saw to it that we marked our
traditional "New Year's Noon" by calling us
preciously at Noon, Eastern Standard Time
to exchange our greetings. A little later she,
her husband, and four of our grand kids, joined
my wife and I via Skype to salute 2013 which,
by that time, had arrived somewhere in the world
to our East.
   Our other daughter, caring for her "post op"
husband, also called to give us the good news
that he was now home and recovering and
settled in for a Quiet New Year's Eve,
   My son called shortly thereafter to check
on us and wish us a Happy New Year. He and
his best gal would be representing the whole
clan at some actual New Year's parties!
    I finally got to the doctor to check on my
cough. It was, I told him, his final challenge
of 2012. He confirmed my wife's diagnosis
I'm not dying........well....at least no faster
than anybody else.
    So I begin 2013 with some new medicine,
well wishes of family and friends, and fond
thoughts of the "good times" of times gone
by!
   And one memory of a New Year's Eve
miracle!
    Years ago my Dad, a movie projectionist,
was almost always working New Year's Eve.
Since he couldn't be home he always called
on the phone just after Midnight, He made the
call to us in the years after my Mom passed
away. The year Dad passed our phone rang
just after Midnight on New Year's Eve. There
was no voice on the other end. Our Called ID
read "Unavailable." That's OK. We all knew
who made the call even if we didn't know
how!
    Hope your New Year is filled with miracles
and, as always, may all your NEWS be good!