Happy New Year!

We rarely do anything these days to celebrate New Year's. We don't go out because we don't want to be killed by any drunk drivers; we don't go to parties because all our friends are old like us and no one wants to throw them any more; we don't watch fireworks, either in person - due to crowds, which we hate - or on TV - because fireworks cannot be captured correctly on TV. But, this year we're trying something different.

We've made 9PM dinner reservations at La Medusa in Columbia City. It's within walking distance from our house so we're not terribly concerned about the drunk driver issue and with reservations we're not too worried about crowds and the 9PM reservation will allow us to be home at a reasonable hour so we won't have to deal with post-New Year's revelers.

We tried this dinner reservation thing for Christmas dinner and it went rather nicely. We dined at Six Seven at The Edgewater Hotel. The only trick was that the restaurant was a whole lot more crowded than we ever thought a restaurant would be on Christmas day. The hostess, who was also surprised by the crowd, told us that they were turning away patrons without reservations because they were so full. Eating out was really nice and probably a tradition we'll maintain though not necessarily at that restaurant. Nice place and reasonable price for prix fixe ($65) but we didn't really like the menu or the food that much.

Of course, we can't post on New Year's Eve without mentioning our New Year's resolutions. We really only have one: start renovating the house...again. We've been on hiatus for a number of years now, though the house desperately needs some help. We had good momentum at the beginning of 2007 but we had issues with finding a reliable electrician.  So, rather than persevere we decided to just give up.

We're also just paralyzed by the amount of work that needs to be done. To combat this paralysis we've decided to ask for help by way of hiring a general contractor.  Our plan is to list everything we want to do to the house and have the GC prioritize and recommend sub-contractors so we can get some shit done! We have even identified a couple general contractors that we're going to approach thanks to Seattle Magazine's recent special section "Best of Home Repair."

Best wishes for a Happy New Year!