When you think about it, the phrase “New Year’s Eve” is fairly hopeful. I mean, they could call today, “Old Year’s Death” or something. The last day of 2012 is starting out with blue skies and sunshine here (though they say it’ll end with snow). Looking out my window, I can see the snow in my front lawn is more than half way up the 4 foot dog fence, and the pile where I push the snow by the garage is taller than I am (not that that’s much of a feat). In fact, it’s almost as high as the garage roof. I’m starting have trouble figuring out where to put it, and I’m thinking I might not see the inside of my poor, buried van until spring. Still, it’s all quite pretty.

The big story of the morning seems to be whether or not there’ll be some agreement on this whole pecuniary precipice thing (or, as the Crappington Post headline reads, “WHITE HOUSE READY TO CAVE?“). It looks like if there really is, a deal, it won’t actually reduce the deficit at all, which kinda makes you wonder what the hell all this nonsense was about, except it’ll mean my taxes will only go up 2% instead of about 5%. As a state worker in these times when being a public employee is considered about one step above child molester, it’s not likely I’ll be seeing a raise anytime soon, so that 2% jump is going to be gone for a long time. Could be worse, of course, so I won’t complain (much).

Not that I actually expect there to be a deal today, but I guess you never know.

Anyhow, I hope everyone has a safe and happy old year’s death tonight, and, as always, we’ll hope that 2013 is a better year than this one was. The world didn’t end in 2012 (not yet anyway), so that could be a hard one to beat. But there are supposed to be two visits by comets this year, including one toward the end of the year that may be brighter than the moon. Unless it melts going around the sun. So that should be pretty cool. And, hey, maybe the economy will get better and there’ll be more jobs by this time next year. And the way climate change is going, we should have some really neat hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, monsoons, and blizzards to talk about.

Should be fun.

Oh well, back to the Twilight Zone Marathon.

Happy New Year! :alc: