It happens when you have kids.

The kids were determined to stay up to midnight, and in fact were determined to watch the sun rise.

So, they watched Nick, which had a countdown timer on screen, while I finished assembling the drawers of Sharon’s^* new desk while she worked upstairs on her laptop on some reports for clients.

Unfortunately, I did not have the right screws, but a quick run to Target, actually two runs, I needed two different sizes of screws, fixed that.

At one point, she and the kids went out for ice cream, but I wasn’t in the mood, so I kept up work on the desk.

After I got the desk together, I rearranged the furniture, found a network cable, and set up the printer.

There were a number of fits and starts regarding getting the network to recognize the printer, and half way through, it was almost midnight, so I took a break, and went to the TV with the kids, and called Sharon^* down.

I passed out the blowout horns (see picture below), and changed from Nick to one of the networks to see the ball drop in Times square.
After that, we switched to a local station to see the fireworks display on the inner harbor.

Thankfully, the kids were ready for bed and had no interest in seeing the sun rise any more, so we put them to bed, and about an hour after that, the printer was up and running as a network node.

For new years day, we went to the Baltimore Society of Model Engineers open house show, and looked at their intricate O and HO scale layouts.

It was amusing listening to a modeler talk about how he had just purchased a new engine, and that he needed to “dirty it up”.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.