Happy New Year!

Ringing in 2005 was an absolute blast. My very dear friend Sarah and her sister Tess had a party at their house in Manayunk for New Year's Eve -- there weren't a ton of us, but still a good size crew, and everyone really seemed to have a great time and get along well. I came to find out that our friends Helen and John got engaged on Christmas Eve -- congratulations! Tess and Sarah's roommate Pat also got engaged recently to his girlfriend Courtney, which is also very exciting news! Of course, there was much imbibing of many different forms of alcohol, and I woke up yesterday with a pretty large headache.

As we all know, the best way to fight a hangover is a little hair of the dog that bit you, so my wonderful friend Tracy was kind enough to make us all Big Gulp-sized screwdrivers for the train ride down to the city where we took in the Mummers Parade. I have never had the pleasure of seeing the Mummers Parade firsthand (27 years of living here, and I've been missing out!) until now, and I cannot say enough how much fun I had down there. Everyone is so nice and having so much fun, everyone talks to everybody, everybody's getting along... it's just a really great dynamic. The best part of the day came when we were hanging out in Dirty Franks, and who comes walking in but the great Bobby Clarke. Clarkey had beers with everyone, posed for pictures with all the Mummers, signed some autographs, and shook hands with everybody. He really was a nice guy. We met some other great people down there, including some really nice Mummers who had finished their leg of the parade and were doing their bar crawl before heading to Two Street for the real celebration.

I might have to seriously consider making this a New Year's Day tradition for myself. All these years I could've been having all this fun down at the Mummers Parade, and I've been missing out!!!