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Wednesday, December
31, 2014
Joe's Secret Garden always has a New Year's Eve event that I have attended for the last 3 years. Many hors d-oeuvres and a lovely shrimp-stuffed lomo fino (filet mignon) followed by the most scrumptious cherries jubilee pie delighted our palates.
The tradition is to celebrate the coming of the New Year on Greenwich Mean Time (7pm here) where everyone gets a skewer of 12 grapes and we have to eat one grape quickly with every bong of Big Ben.
The evening had one sour note when one of the guests fell and banged her head with a lot of bleeding so the poor lady was taken to hospital by ambulance for a check-up. It is a good thing that there were 2 nurses and a doctor present to make sure she was OK.
Joe and Joseph also had three forms of surprise entertainment following the delicious supper. First, we did the traditional burning of the effigies to represent all the bad things from 2014 that we are burning and leaving in the past. I had my list stuffed into the pocket of one of the dummies. It couldn't hurt...
We had a visit by David Naccari and his Dance Mob who performed a choreographed dance before the burning, and then they did another dance at the end of the burning. They were almost upstaged during the second song by a young Ecuadorian boy and his two sisters who joined in their performance. What a hoot!!
Then we went inside and were treated to the marvellous voice of Broadway singer/actress Cindy Benson, accompanied by Joe on the piano. It is always such a treat to hear such a wonderful voice. Apparently Cindy will be doing a show at Joe's on Sunday Jan 18th.
I then went with a gaggle of friends over to La Terassa condos and managed to get onto the rooftop terrace. Then we looked down and saw more friends down one floor, with a huge wrap-around deck and they invited us all down for a drink. It turns out that the condo is owned by a lovely kind lady chiropractor from Edmonton..... so we enjoyed watching the myriad of fireworks surrounding us, literally, and had champagne at midnight. That was my first sip of booze as the group sang Happy Birthday to me for my 65th birthday. As one of my friends pointed out, I am now an official old fart. Thank you to Caroline Zimmerman and friends for their hospitality!
I made it home about 1am and went to check out the neighbourhood party raging on across the bridge. I brought a small beer from home and watched for 20 minutes but did not recognize any familiar faces so I came home to filter through and process my 135 photos. Needless to say, I have had very little sleep as I struggle to get this uploaded.
HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!!
I hope you enjoy the photos. That was the day's excitement, Cheers, Al
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