New Year's Eve

We played a game at dinner on New Year's Eve, when neither of the girls were on good behavior and the whole scene was just utter chaos, nobody able to enjoy their dinner, plonk being served to Don as "Chivas Regal 18 Year Old," and so forth.

The game was called "Describe this, the Sixth Circle of Hell, in One Word." Since I'd invented the game seconds before I went first with "circus." Danielle paused for a few moments and offered the clear winner, thus ending the game.

"Aneurysm."

Then Ayla threw a plate on the ground (again) and Beckett began suggestively licking an ice sculpture (also again).


During the few moments of relative calm, Beckett ate something like two whole lobsters and some ham and rice. Danika, it would appear, just ate cake.


After dinner the little girls went back to the room and Danielle and Joel; the rest of us retired to the plaza for seven hours of New Year's Even pre-partying.

Beckett made a friend, a Brit named Foppin or Loxley or somesuch. Nice kid, but prone to announcing, unprompted and to complete strangers, that "the Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4 is a mid-engine supercar produced by Bugatti Automobiles and introduced in 2005 as the fastest production car in the world. It is currently one of the fastest accelerating and decelerating production cars in the world, with a 0 -100- 0 time of 8.6 seconds and, at 1.1 million Euro (1.5 million USD) , it is also one of the most expensive cars in the world." He would not take a breath while saying this.


Beckett was very excited to stay up late and party with Mama, Mema and Papa, though frankly the adults could have gone to bed around ten. But they did not, the end.