Can you believe it? It's 2007 and the world is still here. Briefly on New Year's Eve, I watched a documentary about the end of the world. (Yeah- of all the other days in the year, the National Geographic Channel chose this day to broadcast that particular program.) It claims that the Mayans predicted the end of the world as we know it by way of water (flood?) in the year 2012... on my birthday!
Anyways, despite impending doom, we had a blast New Year's Eve. My wife and I took our kids to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. The zoo held their first annual event called "Noon Year's Eve" where a giant silver ball dropped at noon with Channel 3 News reporting live. This allowed families with young children (such as us) to celebrate the new year together. We saw many animals, mostly at the indoor displays since rain drizzled the entire time. Our kids saw various primates, dared the sharks to bite them, held their noses from the elephants and their dung, thought the koala bear is so cute, and made frequent trips to the restrooms (too much juice). Then we went to a Pizza Hut restaurant to eat before heading for the Cleveland Playhouse. There were over 60 decorated holiday trees on display in the lobby and its adjacent halls. It was beautiful. These were Christmas trees decorated by various local companies and organizations, most with themes. One such tree was from a toy company in which its branches were laden with board games, toys, playing cards, game pieces, and dice. That was cool. The kids especially liked that one because they recognized many board games on the tree that we own or played.
Later in the evening I went out with my brother and a few friends to celebrate at Caper's in the Hilton hotel. We had a great time. It didn't take long for the place to get packed with cheerful people. It reached capacity and some people had to be turned away because of the fire code. We sat at the back, closest to the dance floor, next to the DJ booth. I had so much fun, especially line dancing and fumbling the steps. What a way to start off the year!
