December 31, 2000: The Big New Year’s Eve Party

Tonight is the big New Year’s Eve Party!  This is the party that Sheep Guarding Llama was originally created to announce.  Strangely, I didn’t update the site with any information about the party tonight until a full seven years later!  (Post created on December 28, 2007.)

Andy, Bob, Nate and I are all living in the house at 8-1 Sanctuary Drive, Ithaca, New York.  This is our first (and only) holiday season that will be spent here in this house.  It is also the first time that anyone of any of our friends has their own place that qualifies as a real “entertaining” house.  So we decided that we needed to through a real, blow-out holiday party.

The party tonight set the tone for the next several years.  The party was semi-formal and everyone was really dressed up.  The house members had just gone together and purchased a small, round hot tub that we placed in the garage and had all heated up and ready to go for the party.

We had been hoping to be able to get some digital pictures of the party and I bought a $99 digital camera at Walmart that turned out to not be any good and we took it back.  We weren’t expecting much of the camera but we got even less out of it.  It’s 640×480 resolution was horrible and it couldn’t take a picture even at that resolution worth anything.

The most famous moment of the evening was Matt Hoch playing piano and singing several of his own tunes for us like “Look at my Ass”.  Once he had had enough to drink, Andy joined Matt and sang along with some impromptu piano tunes making up the words as he went.

By the end of the night the hot tub was full.  It sounded silly at the time but a lot of the late partiers went for it.  The garage at Sanctuary was pretty small and we didn’t have much space for much else in it.  All we used it for was the hot tub and additional storage.  We didn’t have as much storage in the basement as you would expect since my bedroom was down there.

By late in the evening we had people running out into the cold, New York night making snow angels in the front yard.  There was a lot of snow out there.

So who made it out for the party tonight?  I wish that I could remember more clearly.  A lot of people made it and I hope that people who know that they made it can email me and let me know to add them to the list.  I know that Nate, Bob, Andy and I were there as we were the hosts.  Matt Hoch clearly made it.  Ryan Cloud was there – he was in the hot tub and making snow angels.  Nate’s cousin Mandy came back from Connecticut for the party.  Carrie was there – I can remember her getting tackled into the deep snow in the ditch out front.  I assume that Eric and Amanda made it although the weather may have kept them away as I can’t picture them being there.  Josh definitely made it as he always did.  I am pretty sure that Joe Howlett made it as well.  There were probably a dozen or more people that I just can’t picture for sure.

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