Storm Warning

 It was 7:00 PM on Tuesday. Andrea and I were going out to dinner to for New Year's Eve.  We had a 7:30 reservation. 

(Ooh! Fancy! We're going somewhere that takes reservations. Yeah, it's not that big of a deal. More on that later.)

Andrea was in the car as I was about to get in with I noticed a flicker of blue light on the house across the street.  A flicker of light that almost looked like...

But it couldn't be. It's friggin' December 31st.  

I got in the car and said, "Did you see that? That almost looked like lightning!"

Andrea replied, "Yeah because it was lightning." 

Oh get out! It can't be! It's friggin' December 31st!

Then the light flicked again.

I exclaimed "Holy shit! That's lightning!"

Nothing gets past me, folks!

NOTE: While there was lightning in Greensboro, alas there was no Batman.

That I know about.   

On our drive to the restaurant, the flashes of lightning turned into crackling bolts that shattered the sky and released torrents of rain.  

Nothing I haven't dealt with before. 

During the summer.

Not in winter! 

I wondered aloud, "I hope this not some kind of portent for the new year!" 

We arrived at our destination and under a slight ebb in the rain, we made our way inside to Mimi's Cafe just ahead of our 7:30 PM reservation.

Which we did not need. The place was half empty.  

Here's the thing with Mimi's Cafe. Any time I have gone there on a whim, there is inevitably a wait of up to an hour.  When I make plans in advance and set up a reservation, the place is half empty. 

The small ebb in the storm ended and as we sat safely ensconced at our table, the rain resumed pounding the windows as bright bolts of lightning shattered the darkness.  

Again, normal enough for a summer thunder storm.

Except it ain't summer.  

Andrea opted for her usual house salad with thousand island dressing but I chose the tomato basil soup which is really good at Mimi's but leads to my usual consternation on how to pronounce "basil" with a short or long "A". 

The name "Basil" is pronounced with a short "A".

The herb "basil" has a long "A" as in "bay-sil".    

For the entree, Andrea got the Parmesan crusted chicken and I had French Pot Roast which is like regular pot roast... but French. (There's wine in the gravy. Ooh la la!)  

For dessert, we got Mimi's fabulous bread pudding which is drenched in buttery wine soaked goodness. We got it to go as we needed to get back home for the New Year's celebrations in New York City.

The summer thunderstorm in winter over Greensboro had moved on when we left Mimi's but when we got home, it was clear the celebrants in Time Square were getting soaked by the rains over NYC.

We divided our time between Ryan Seacrest on ABC, my wife's second boyfriend (She's cheating on her first boyfriend Colin Jost) and the two Andy's on CNN (Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper) who were gay as fuck and made things gayer by inviting a CNN reporter up on stage and his husband and I was happy in the knowledge that Trump's America was losing it's collective shit if they were watching CNN.  

As we bopped between ABC and CNN with their respective line ups of musical guests and other celebrities, I spent a lot of time grousing, "I don't know who you are!" 

The two Andy's spent a lot of time talking to someone named "Diplo" who was late for his segment with the two Andy's due to a delay involving his helicopter. I have NO fucking idea who this Diplo guy is or what he does but he apparently does whatever he does well enough to rent (or who knows, maybe BUY?) a helicopter.  

Diplo did flummox Anderson Cooper by admitting he was high on acid at that moment. 

The rain over Time's Square relented by the time of the ball drop.   

Everything went well enough in Time's Square with all the various festivities.

Meanwhile (and why we can't have a nice evening for just one goddam fucking minute), shit was going down in New Orleans.  

The FBI identified 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. citizen from Texas, as the person who drove a truck into a crowd of people, killing 15 and injuring dozens more.  The attacker had a handgun and AR-style rifle but was shot by police before he could use them on the crowd.  

The next day social media was rife with right wing nut cases looking to assign blame (Democrats and their love of open borders was one immediate target) and plunging into conspiracy theories and shit.

So 2025 is off and running. 

Maybe that storm was a warning...