New Year odds & ends

• 2012, eek. As one of my university friends commented on Facebook, "Wasn't it just 2000?"
• The Toronto Star has begun a weeklong series on "Motherhood After 40" that I thought might be of interest to some of you. Here's a link to the first story from today. There are no comments... yet!
• Back to work tomorrow (boo, hiss...), after 17 days away (but only 8 of them actual vacation days -- not bad, eh?). It's been a really good holiday. : )
• We went into the city on the afternoon of New Year's Eve for a matinee performance of the Broadway touring production of Hair. I was 7 in 1968, when the play originally debuted, & grew up singing & listening to songs like "Good Morning Starshine," "Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine" and "Hair." Memory flash: My figure skating class skated to "Hair" in the carnival of 1973, when I was 12. We all wore jeans, turtlenecks under vests, love beads, & shaggy wigs that our mothers made by pulling lengths of yarn through the bottom of a pair of pantihose, lol. And the grand finale that year was skated to Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World."
• I had never seen the play before. I saw the movie about 30 years ago, when I was in university (starring Treat Williams as Berger and Beverly D'Angelo as Sheila), but couldn't remember much except the ending. Which, as it turns out, was very different from the play.
• Overall, the play was really good & we both enjoyed it. The key role of Claude was played by an understudy, but I thought he was wonderful. I'm sure the play was considered quite shocking when it first came out in 1968, & the ending still packs a wallop today -- particularly in light of Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Yes, I had to find a Kleenex.
• My one quibble is that the kids onstage looked way too cleancut to be hippies, lol. Dh can remember being on Yonge Street in Toronto in the late 60s/early 70s (which was sort of the Haight-Ashbury of Canada at the time), & says they were filthy, lol. At the very end of Act I, everyone strips down to their birthday suits (something the play is famous for) & although it was sort of dimly lit, I couldn't help but notice how many of the actors seemed to have had extensive waxing done (guys too) which was certainly not very '60s. I mean, it's called HAIR, people, lol.
• After the play, I had made dinner reservations at our favourite go-to restaurant, where dh had pasta & I enjoyed a delicious steak. And then we headed home, watched "Animal House" on TV for the umpteenth time, & actually managed to stay awake until midnight, lol.
• Seeing "Animal House" reminded me of one of my all-time favourite New Year's Eve parties. It was New Year's Eve 1979-80 (32 years ago, eeek) -- I was home from first-year university, & "Animal House" had made toga parties all the rage. One our friends had the brilliant idea of a New Year's Eve toga party. (Picture my sister walking in to the local beer vendor to buy some supplies, clad in a toga, lol.) I have lost touch with many of those people over the years, but I still cherish the slightly fuzzy group snapshot of all of us, clad in our togas, raising our glasses to a new year and a new decade. Ahh, youth... (I went to several toga parties at university, too.)
• Went to dinner at FIL's yesterday, & to see "Sherlock Holmes 2" today -- great fun!
• How was your New Year's Eve?