Happy New Year!

Last year, I spent New Year's Eve and Day at Disneyland. It was pretty awesome. The moment of the New Year was fairly standard, but any time spent at Disneyland is usually pretty darn awesome!

Anyway, I knew I wanted to do something fun and different again this year. No going-to-the-movies-and-skipping, and I couldn't get excited about the various dances.

Heather and Ann are on the right

Imagine my delight, then, when my friend Ann invited me to spend New Year's Eve with her friends at the Hale Centre Theater - West Valley New Year's Eve party! I've been hearing about it for years now and I've been curious. Not only that, but I was excited to hang out with Ann and my friend Sylinda!

A group of us got together beforehand for dinner at the Cracker Barrel. I only knew a couple people. Fortunately, Ann has good taste in friends, and I was in a socializing mood :)

Sylinda and the rest of our friends met us at the theater. We were treated like royalty! We were each given a tiara or hat, two different kinds of noisemakers, and streamers to throw at the big moment.

We found our seat and enjoyed the pre-performance band. I should have volunteered to play name that "musical" tune -- I would have kicked heiney!! Theater co-owner Sally Dietlein cracked me up with her MC-ing. I think there's a requirement somewhere that the owner of a theater have massive amounts of energy, and a healthy dose of wackiness, 'cause everyone I've met has that same unpredictable, lovable personality ;-) I love that lady (anyone who says I remind her of Bernadette Peters is okay in my book).

Sylinda's on the right behind me :)

We watched the first act of the play, Games Afoot. At the beginning of intermission, Sally designated a volunteer to watch his clock and give us a countdown when ten seconds away from midnight. Then we got to stuff our faces with a terrific late-night buffet!

About twenty minutes into the second act, the kid with the watch jumped up and shouted, "TEN, NINE, EIGHT...!" It was funny to see the look on the actor's faces, especially Kylee Bird, who had just barely entered the stage. The rest all ran out to finish the countdown with the rest of us, and when we all shouted, "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" pandemonium broke out! People were cheering and singing and throwing streamers and using the noisemakers, and someone dropped a bajillion balloons onto the audience and stage. I spotted one of the women in the cast seeking out her husband in the audience; he climbed over half his row to kiss her (so cute!)! Unfortunately, it was my first time with streamers, and since I was near the back I probably hit someone in the front rows with a clump of not-unravelled streamers! Oh, well.

It took a bit of doing for the cast to quiet us down again :-D

My favorite part was that nobody bothered to clean up the balloons, so the cast just waded through them for the rest of the show. The dead body showed up at one point, head rested on one of them -- the audience about died! Another guy kept accidentally stepping on them someone else made a flatulence joke. The best was the inspector, who kept referring to the balloons as symbolic of the utter craziness going on in the mansion (it IS a murder mystery, after all). Totally good times.

The play itself was quite entertaining, though not as hilarious as I'd expected. The script was not great, but the actors and costumes MORE than made up for it (seriously, I want the blue velvet dress in this photo; it is stunning).

Photo taken by Doug Carter

I have tickets to go again in a few weeks and I'm looking forward to it!

This was definitely one of my favorite New Year's celebrations... I'm already planning to do it again either next year or the next.

Hope you all enjoyed yourself, whatever you were doing!