The Life and Times of a Navy Husband

Well. New Year’s Eve 2008 was quite a night! Let me tell you why:

After a nice supper with my folks (mmmmm, hammmmm), we left for Lynne’s house in Ann Arbor. Sean was asleep and my parents were babysitting. We were hoping he would stay asleep at least until we got back.

We wanted to stop for coffees on the way so we stopped at Meijer, where there’s a miniature Starbucks, but it was closed. Then we drove up to Espresso Royale, and that was closed too. Then we spotted a place near Lynne’s that sounded like a coffee shop (something like Classic Cup Cafe) but proved to be a sit-down restaurant. So we had to do without.

At Lynne’s we were surprised to see our friend Mike, in from L.A. We sat down to eat a bowl of lobster bisque and proceeded to ‘talk small,’ as the young Octavian in HBO’s Rome would say. I’m sure I offended at least two people I didn’t know.

Then Megan and Luke arrived and we were entertained by their story about their cab driver’s views on the economy and the Gaza conflagration.

Then, at about 10:35 p.m., my phone rang. ‘Your son’s been awake for an hour,’ my mom said. He had woken up hungry, as he sometimes does, and wouldn’t settle down without seeing Danielle. So my parents were watching TV with him.

Thankfully, we hadn’t been drinking copious amounts of champagne (contrary to Nan’s sage advice), so we could drive home and deal with the baby.

The rest of the evening was quiet and uneventful, except for (oh my God!) Dick Clark’s sad sad sad continuing presence at Times Square.

And that, my friends, is why we don’t go out very often.