Who has a story from New Year's Eve to share? Here's mine...
New Year's Eve 1999 - Our boys were out with their friends doing what boys do, so Tom and I stayed in for a quiet evening at home. We had a couple of bottles of champagne in the fridge and I'd picked up these 'collectible' party items for all of us, as the turning of a century seemed like a big deal.
And it was a huge deal! Prince had released that famous song about partying like it was the end of the world. People everywhere thought all of the world's computers would shut down when the date rolled over from 1999 to 2000, do you remember all that hysteria? We expected to lose our electricity when the power grids shut down! There were doomsday people taking shelter underground and corporations with contingency plans and lord knows what else. Nobody really could say exactly what would happen......
Ever the optimists, we were in the living room listening to Jimmy Buffett's live New Year's Eve performance over the web, drinking our champagne, had the flashilights ready just in case - and had a box of roman candles to shoot off in the street at midnight. We were ready.
When midnight arrived and Jimmy shouted 'Happy New Year' we went out into the street with an empty bucket and our roman candles feeling really good now that 2 bottles of champagne had been consumed. Tom put the first candle into the bucket, lit it, and off it zoomed into the night sky of a brand new year! He reloaded, and I was commenting 'you know, we need to be careful not to shoot this into the woods, they are so dry this year' when the bucket fell over and the colorful fireballs headed straight for the edge of the very dry woods that surround our house. What!!!
Of course all the leaves and pine straw caught the flame in a flash and our laughter died in our throats. Yikes! we tried to stomp it out but it was spreading too fast. He ran for a rake and I ran for the garden hose that was all the way behind the house. Suddenly we were not laughing any more, afraid of burning down the neighborhood! Sobriety was apon us!
We got the fire put out, thankfully. And stood there in the dark looking at each other like 'what did we just do!?!' That was our welcome to the new century.......thank you, Jimmy Buffett! 
What's your story about that night?
- Be Safe, Take Care of Each Other
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