New Year's Eve in New York City

Even though we didn’t do anything incredibly exciting, there is nothing like New Year’s Eve in New York City. As many of you know, Wife has been quite ill for just over four weeks now. I have spent the last few weeks nursing my wife back from the brink of death (yes, that’s a bit of hyperbole). Given the cold, the crowd, Wife’s health, and the fact that neither of us really felt like getting into a fourteen-hour shoving match with tourists (during which time we would be unable to use a restroom), we decided that we would watch the Ball drop from the comfort of our apartment.

Though we decided that we didn’t want to spend fourteen hours freezing with a million others in Times Square watching the ball drop, Wife and I decided to go over to Times Square on New Year’s Eve just to take in the atmosphere. On Monday afternoon, we took the ten minute trek over to Times Square where we saw the stages, where the ball will drop, and hundreds of thousands of fans lined up.

We now have a completely different perspective of the festivities as we watched Ryan Seacrest host the New Year’s Eve spectacular in Times Square. All the events take place on a block that we have walked down countless times in the last few months. We recognize the signs; we spot little shops and restaurants we have gone in; we notice how each station carefully positioned their cameras to avoid showing advertisements for their competitors. A year ago I never would have dreamed that we would watch the biggest New Year’s party in the world while feeling like it is taking place in our backyard.