  New Years Eve The year was 1997 and I was 19 years old. It was the second year that I was spending new years eve with friends and not my family. The year before we all were to young to get into a licensed club/bar so we opted to just hangout in a penthouse of a near by hotel. So this year was exciting, this year we would drink in the club, this year we would be dancing to music while we counted down, this year we were adults. Our plan was from the beginning to meet up at Andy's house and then take only 2 cars downtown to the hotel we were staying at, get ready, eat some dinner, and start drinking then so that not a lot of money needed to be spent in the club.
At about 10:45pm and about 2 cases of beer later, we decided to leave the hotel and head over to the club which was about 7 blocks down the street. We started to walk in hopes that the 7 of us could hail ONE cab, on the busiest night of the year for cabs in one of the busiest cities.
Needless to say no one would take the 7 of us and it was to risky to leave anyone behind to wait for the next cab, cause chances were that there wasn't going to be any other cabs. So we walked, 7 blocks, to the club, in the blistering cold that was about 25 degrees below zero with the wind chill.
But we laughed, took it in stride and made the best of it. Once we got in the club, we all felt sober, I guess the cold does that to you, so after we checked our coats we made our way to the bar so that we could bring back that good feeling we had earlier in the hotel room. We drank and drank and finally we warmed up, and finally our wicked buzz had come back, now of course after downing another 3 or 4 drinks each, well you could imagine how drunk we were. So we danced and danced and drank all night long. The floor shock underneath our feet each time we jumped up and down, it felt as though we were going to fall through, but we didn't care.
It was New Years Eve, in less than 20 minutes it was going to be 1998, "1998 can you believe? ", we shouted at one another while we danced around to Prince's "Little Red Corvette". The countdown began and Lisa and Matt who were at the bar ran over to find us and we all shouted "9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
" in unison like 5 year olds at a birthday party. We all hugged and kissed and laughed, drank champagne and danced till about 4 in the morning. Tired and staggering, we all walked back to the hotel, laughing at when Josh and I thought the floor was going to cave in, or when Lisa banged her head on the bathroom stale, when Dave kicked a cup that was lying outside of the club and then fell.
When Matt locked himself in the bathroom and couldn't get out and Josh, Lisa, Eddie and I couldn't help him cause we were laughing to hard. When we finally made it back to our room, I believe about 45 minutes later because we all kept stopping to either laugh or throw up in a corner or a garbage bin, we were all so hungry, so we ordered a pizza and chicken wings (just in case Jessica Simpson is reading this and thinks I ate buffalo) and hungout lying in bed eating and watching cheesy music videos on MTV until we all slowly started falling asleep around 6am.
The next morning I remember waking up at 8am to find Lisa awake and lying in bed next to me Josh and Eddie (we were only 19, no one worked full time so no one could afford more than one room so we had to sleep 4 to a bed, luckily we were all just friends), looking out the window at the snow blowing off the buildings next to us.
We looked at each other and smiled, grabbed the phone and ordered room service for all of us. We checked out at about 11am, so we could all make it home in time for our Lunch/dinner with our families. On the drive home I remember all of us talking and sharing things that we did that some of us couldn't remember. We all shared our thoughts, as different as they all were, since we all had different views of the events that took place the night before, but one thing was the same no matter what, that was the best night we had ever had, even though it was all planned last minute and by that I mean the morning of December 31st.
Six years later and I am still reminded of this one New Years Eve when everything was good and when we all made plans together. This year will be different, just like the past 4, that could never even come close to that night. Most of us won't be together, wait actually none of us will be together, and it's sad, and I want to go back and I know I can't. But me and Dave were just saying last night that we both would give anything to see him again fall from kicking a plastic glass on King Street at 4am. 
