Hogmanay

HAPPY NEW YEAR, everyone!!! Oh boy did we plan a great evening of events for our New Year's Eve celebration (also known as "Hogmanay" in the land of the Scots). In Scotland, Hogmanay is bigger than Christmas... I mean people from all over the UK travel to Scotland just to be part of one of the huge New Year's Eve parties. Our friends Keith and Carla came up from London to hang out with us for Hogmanay so we bought tickets to go to Stirling to the third largest Hogmanay celebration in Scotland (just after Edinburgh and Glasgow). We rented a car for the two hour drive since we weren't too sure how the mini would hold up. Well, it was quite the drive...we were in the middle of a hurricane...rain bolting down and from all other directions...gail-force winds...tree branches falling into the road...you name it. We finally made it into Stirling safe and sound just to find out that the whole Hogmanay party had been cancelled due to the weather!!! I mean, seeing as how Hogmanay is soo dang huge in this country I thought for sure they would've just found a way around the whole weather issue (move inside somewhere or something) but oh no. So we figured that after a two-hour drive we might as well find a place to eat...so we wandered through the wind and rain hunting down any place that wasn't already booked and finally came across a Jimmy Chung's (our favorite Chinese buffet place). We of course were bummed that we were stuck celebrating New Year's in a Chinese restaurant (See picture) (January 1st isn't even the Chinese New Year anyway....the irony). We then decided that heck we came to Stirling to have a good time and dagnabit we were going to make sure that happened so we decided to be the life of the party in that little Chinese restaurant and boy did it show. (See next picture). :) So after all our Chinese buffet partying we decided to head back home. The hurricane had picked up quite a bit by that time making it quite the ride home. All I've got to say is that there is no way our mini could have made it. The biggest disaster of the night (way worse than the party being cancelled) was the tragic death of a poor wild pheasant which Jeff (who was driving) didn't even see in the middle of the road. I, however, saw the whole thing....the poor little bird was just trying to find some shelter from the wind and rain when it found itself in the middle of the road...it's poor little head turned in shock as it saw our car fast approaching and that was that...under the car it went, complete with a thud as the undercarriage hit the bird's head and a bump as it went under the tire....I was mentally disturbed for the rest of the drive home and am still upset by the catastrophe. What a sad way to end an already sad evening. The rented car did manage to make it home with only a few tree branches dangling from the wheel well and the undercarriage and just a few pheasant feathers. (How sad!) We did, however, temporarily cover up our worries with a few glasses of champagne at midnight.