Happy New Year Next Year From Seattle's Macklemore & Madame McNutty

Madame McNutty Facebook messaged me the link to a New Year's Eve Macklemore video of a song titled Next Year.

The video takes place in part of Seattle's Pioneer Square.

Next Year is an upbeat optimistic song about the year that begins today. I rather liked it. You can watch and listen to it via the YouTube video below....

Happy New 2016 Year From Texas

Happy New Year from Texas.

No. That is not last night's downtown Fort Worth fireworks erupting when the clock struck midnight a few hours ago.

What you are looking at is the downtown Seattle fireworks erupting when the clock struck midnight on the West Coast.

I have never seen the Space Needle lit up in this manner.

I did not make it to New Year's Day on the West Coast. I was peacefully slumbering well before that.

I did not even make it to the Central Time zone crossing into 2016 before being in peaceful slumber mode.

I did manage to stay awake long enough to see the New Year arrive on the East Coast.

I think the last time I managed to remain vertical all the way into a New Year was that New Year's Eve which turned in to 2000.

That New Year's Eve started out at the Fort Worth Stockyards, in the saloon in the now long gone Spaghetti Warehouse. By about 10 the party moved to downtown Fort Worth. This was back when parking was easy in downtown Fort Worth, before the Radio Shack debacle destroyed the world's shortest free subway ride taking riders from acres of free parking to the heart of downtown Fort Worth.

I used to frequent downtown Fort Worth much more frequently back when it was easy to find parking before Radio Shack and inept Fort Worth planning ruined it.

The downtown Fort Worth New Year's Eve 2000 celebration was the best such thing I have ever witnessed.

It's been 16 years, but if my memory is serving me correctly, images were projected on the side of one of Fort Worth's few skyscrapers. Eventually the countdown happened and then fireworks erupted from various rooftops. It was a spectacle. Very well done.

I suspect last night's celebration in downtown Fort Worth was well done as well, with the celebrating centered on the location where Fort Worth now has a town square after decades of confusing the town's few tourist by having signs pointing to Sundance Square, where there was no square or plaza. Just a lot of parking lots, one of which finally did become a square, goofily, redundantly named Sundance Square Plaza.

Anyway, Happy New Year. I suspect 2016 will be a very good year.....

Day 2 of a Long Year

New Year's Day went well up til the point that a baby pit bull began crying and whining. This baby pit bull had been dealt with a month earlier with its parents under threat of eviction if the dog was not silenced. Apparently the howling began New Year's Eve. I did not hear it at that point. But I did last night. The temperature was well below freezing. This was animal abuse. Various calls were made. At some point the dog was silenced, how I do not know. All I know is I have very good ear plugs that can block out just about anything.

This morning I uploaded the webpage version of my hike on New Year's Day to Tandy Hills Park that I mentioned in yesterday's Blog. I haven't finished the video yet, but you can see pics of this wild area so close to Fort Worth's downtown by going here.

Today I wanted a supply of fresh fruit and vegetables. So, I drove up to this place called Sprouts Farmers Market. It's a chain out of Arizona with 4 stores in the D/FW Metroplex. Produce here in this part of Texas is sub-par, particularly for anyone who grew up in the agricultural areas of the west coast. But Sprouts has good stuff at a good price. On the way back from there I wanted to go to this other good grocery called Market Street. But I got a bit lost. Market Street can wait for another day.

I've not mentioned the cell phone problem I have with Lulu. Awhile back both our phones failed. Somehow our new phones ended up being identical. Lulu is in Tacoma. I am not, but somehow we ended up with the same phone. The two phones did not get along. Lulu took hers back several times. Something called a SIM chip was replaced. It'd work somewhat okay for a bit and then start acting up again. It was becoming sheer torture to talk to Lulu, with her phone making horrible guttural noises that were not at all flattering. After suffering way too much, Lulu got a new phone.

That seemed fine. For awhile.

And then the bloop bloops started happening. We'd be talking and suddenly there'd be a bloop bloop noise with the call being dropped. Sometimes this would happen almost instantly, sometimes several minutes into the call, sometimes, rarely, there would be no bloop bloop.

Lulu and I only have the bloop bloop problem when we talk to each other. We suspect Cingular/ATT has noted we take advantage of the unlimited mobile to mobile calling and have somehow rigged the system to bloop bloop us.

Currently Lulu is in propaganda mode trying to convince me that my phone is the problem. But I only have the problem when I talk to her. At least that is what I've told her. I will admit to you that I have also had the bloop bloop happen when I'm talking to another Cingular/ATT user, that being Betty Jennetty of Puerto Rico. It's very vexing.