I remember as a little kid pleading with my parents to let me stay up and see this ball drop thing on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t understand what it was exactly but I knew that it was a big deal and that I needed to see it. Plus I just thought it would be cool to stay up until midnight.

Now I am just as happy to be snug in my warm bed at midnight on New Year’s Eve. And, hey. If I happen to stay awake until midnight great. If not…fine.

I have never been the type of person who has to get dressed up and spend a lot of extra money just to be somewhere when the clock strikes twelve. Why is that meal that’s usually $15 suddenly $65? I don’t need a hat and noisemakers.

Don’t get me wrong…I’ve had plenty of really fun New Year’s Eves in my day.

Since my sister’s birthday is January 3 when we were younger and still liked to ski sometimes we’d go up to Massachusetts or Vermont for New Year’s Eve. One year we even got into a car accident driving to the Berkshires in a rental car. Snowstorm. Car leaves road and ends up in snow bank. No one was hurt but we had a heck of a time getting a tow and then found ourselves stuck at the Bar-Ken gas station in the middle of nowhere eating peanut and cheese crackers from a rusty vending machine while waiting for our Aunt to come and get us. Good times.

When I was in my twenties I lived in Manhattan. You could not have paid me to go to Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I did, though, go to the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting one year (I was working in Rock Center at the time). Once and only once, as the crowds were so huge that I nearly got pushed through the plate glass window of a bank. This was back when the lighting of the tree happened at 6:00 on the chosen night. There was no prime-time TV extravaganza associated with it; they just lit it pure and simple. Then someone figured out how to make money off of it.

And there was the year I spent New Year’s Eve in Salt Lake City. My ex-boyfriend from many years ago was from there and we had gone out to visit his family. Utah being a dry state was not really what I had in mind for celebrating New Year’s Eve. Ah, but how wrong was I. In Park City we paid $5 for a “club membership” at a bar and since we were now “members of a private club” we could drink to our hearts content. I recall getting drunker in Utah than I had ever gotten in New York.

The New Year’s Eve that I remember most fondly was 1999. Bob and I succumbed to the end of the 1900’s hype and decided to do something special. Since we both had full-time jobs at the time we could afford to go where we really wanted to spend New Year’s Eve should Y2K result in the world ending or, at the very least, in the power grid failing. That place was Key West, Florida.

So we booked it, Danno.

Bob and I have been to Key West about 10 times. Of course like everything else, prices were jacked up for the “special occasion”. I think paying more just makes it more special. Anyway, since we could get a better deal by booking more than a week we did and left for Key West two days after Christmas.

We saw the giant conch shell that gets lowered at midnight from Sloppy Joe’s on Duval Street although we opted not to be in the middle of the chaos when the clock struck twelve. Instead we stood drinking champagne on the balcony of our guest house on upper Duval Street (the quieter part of the infamous main drag of Key West) and were treated to the unexpected sight of fireworks going off all around the island. It was wonderful and magical and…WARM!

And the world didn’t end.

Ten years after our New Year’s Eve trip to Key West we spent it here on the shoreline as we have over the past several years with a small and wonderful group of friends at our small and wonderful favorite local restaurant that is within walking distance from our house. We ate, drank and were perhaps a little too merry (my head hurt the next day) and we were home well before midnight.

And this year we saw that mysterious ball drop from Times Square while, yes, warm in our bed. We were fine with watching Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper freeze along with a few million other people viewed from our TV screen.

Whatever you did – or didn’t do – on New Year’s Eve 2009, I hope you stayed safe and warm doing it .

Take with you my hopes for a happy and healthy 2010.

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