Happy New Year!

That last couple New Year's we've had a crazy house party (complete with The New Year's Cheese/Ham, stair suprises and Kevin-related diasters, lol) and gone to the party at Eau Claire. Last year I was out of town and missed out on the group party...though, I was on a beach in Thailand so I'm really not complaining! This year Christine found out about a party at the Vicious Circle (a martini bar downtown) so she arranged getting tickets for us all to that (thanks!!).

We were supposed to meet at Christine and Sketchy’s place downtown around 6, so I took the c-train with Mark and Erin. While I was waiting at Anderson station I found a (pretty decent) digital camera on the ground. After a bit of panicking and trying to decide what to do, I took the camera with me, figuring it would just get stolen if I left it. I was frantically looking for a pen (so I could leave a note in case somebody came back to look for it) and never found one, but managed to lost my toque somewhere in the process (I only noticed this later, booerns).

On the train, we looked through the pics on the camera (you know you would have too…) and discovered one of a guy that looked a lot like Mark, except he had a kid on his lap. This spun into wild theories about the camera being from the future, especially since it is the exact camera model that Erin has! Creepy… they joked that I should just keep it, and I pointed out that that would mess up the camera karma, and would result in me losing my camera tonight to set things back into balance. Little did I know…. (ooo, foreshadowing!!!)

We got to Christine’s place, which is a pretty nice apartment, even if it is in a shady part of town (right near 1^st street club area). There was already some people there, and when more arrived we ordered pizza and watched the start of the flames game (which we won, woot!). There were New Year’s stickers and we decorated ourselves, yay!! Sketchy had a bunch of people over as well (a different party technically, they weren’t going to the Vicious Circle with us) and they were cooking dinner.

Mike (with his "Happy" sticker), Mark, Erin and Chris on New Year's Eve

Mark, Chris (creepily peering over Mark's shoulder), me and Aimee...there seems to be a lot going on in this picture

Mark, proving that he's so good at self pictures that he can do it with his eyes closed (Bernard, you have competition!). After looking at the picture he yelled that Mike wasn't supposed to close his eyes too, since now it just looks like a pic of them napping together (haha, reminds me of that friends episode)

Jared, Scott, Steph and Sketchy at the apartment

Duncan, showing his lack of chest hair to go with his stick-on moustache (that he bought with a 50% off coupon at a costume shop)

Doug, Keith, Dave, Jane and Sketchy cooking dinner (hopefully not with play doh)

It was the pizza that caused it... the boxes on the table, combined with drinks resulted in a rye and coke (mine actually, how did I lose out doubly on this?!?!) being knocked over onto my camera. I quickly wiped it off, and tested it out….seemed to be working alright, hooray! During the night it degraded however, seeming to have some sort of electrical problems. I figured I would let it dry out (After all, if Devon and Kevin’s cameras could recover after being submerged in a fountain mine should be able to survive a minor drink spill. ) so I put it away, for the night. Further details of the aftermath on the way.

The aftermath of the camera-killing drink spill....also one of the last pictures ever to be taken with my old camera *eyes start to tear up*

So where was I….we headed over to the Vicious Circle, which is a martin bar that had some bands playing for New Years. We got a table and adorned ourselves with party favours and tested out the noisemakers. We discovered that bellinis were on sale, hooray, that determined my (and many other people’s, lots of guys sacrificed their masculinity for the sake of cheapness, haha) main drink for the rest of the night! I also had a couple martini’s (luckily they were nothing like the one’s on my birthday, *shudder*), since the Vicious Circle has an awesome selection that are all rated on a scale of 1 (dry) to 5 (sweet). I stuck to 5’s, haha. Oh ya, and the menus are metal, how cool is that (especially since they work as a good flaming match shield)!

Part of our group at the Vicious Circle...not sure what Sean is either amused or distraught by on the far left

Duncan, Steph and Jodi enjoying some martinis

Erin, Mark and Aimee at the Vicious Circle

Me and Amit decked out in our New Year's gear

Since we got there at about 9:30 we had lots of time to party before midnight. I got a chance to visit with lots of people that I hadn’t seen in awhile, which was awesome. Various shenanigans went down, including a typical Mark-invented drinking game involving a coin and a noisemaker, and playing with fire.

"Are all these for me!?!?"

The first of many match-related games... (you know that's gonna end well, haha)

Haha, I just like this pics because at first glance it looks like I have a giant hairy arm (for the record, I don't)

Mike using the noisemaker incorrectly (he claims it worked as a straw though)

More inappropriate things in Mike's drink

Duncan and Colin dancing intimately

Steve strikes a pose

5…4…3…2…1…1’ (since Scott informed us that they were adding one second to 2005)… Happy New Year! Let’s drink some awesome budget “Champagne”!

The bands were pretty sweet (Vailhalen, The Dudes and another one I can't remember), so we went and danced a bit and then some of us decided to relocate to Bottlescrew Bill’s for a couple drinks. Best thing about that plan: new set of party favours, I got a wicked purple hat!

Duncan, Mike and Chris ride the saddle outside Bottlescrew's (I think I have a very similar pic of Mike doing this on my birthday last year)

Rob, Sean, Mike, Steph, Christine, Scott and me at Bottlescew Bills

The result of Duncan saying "make a scary face"

Chris, Christine and Rob checking out Christine's beer passport

By then most people had headed home or to other parties, but the rest of us went back to Christine’s to find the house party in full swing. We wanted to finish our pizza, but it had all been eaten so Rob and Chris went out for more, yay. We stayed up for awhile and then somehow ended up playing Truth or Dare jenga that had no positive results, and pretty much ended off the night. Caught a couple hours of sleep, and then said farewell to Sketchy in the morning as he caught his early flight to Ontario for Congress, mwah ha ha, sucker! Caught a ride home with Steph, gotta love the old-school Woodlands connection.

Me and Mike having fun with hats

That's a crowded couch...