Happy New Year!

Susan Coffin · Jan 1, 2011

What has your new year been like thus far? Mine has been a bit exciting! We went to a New Year's eve party last night around eight. It was snowing a bit--not much. In this particular area where my beau lives, it snows from time to time. It was after midnight when we were driving the snowy. Because the roads had not yet been plowed, we slowed to a snail's pace. We saw a car that had went half over the side of an embankment. Our car did a little sliding, but Don's 4 wheel drive helped to keep us steady. We saw the car behind us skid sideways. A twenty minute drive took us around an hour. We got home safe. I hope everybody else did too.

I have not seen snow since around 1987. This morning, we woke up to around two inches of snow! I am delighted to say the least!

We had a New Year's breakfast date with our pals in a neighboring town. We are all smart and staying inside (except Don just drove the 2 miles to the store).

Please share your New Year's stories, whether they be this year of last. Happy 2011!

Lavern08 · Jan 1, 2011

Happy New Year, Susan.

So far, mine has been fabulous.

Don Evan Scott · Jan 1, 2011

My visitors are gone, so this is a really great start to the New Year.

Happy New Year everyone.

Susan Coffin · Jan 2, 2011

Thanks for replying, guys.

We had another odd experience on Saturday night. It had been snowing all day long, then it slowed down a bit and snowed a little during the night. My boyfriend's housemate works the graveyard shift, thus he is gone all night and returns at seven in the morning. Well, we were all up when Don's roommate, Paul, said, "Hey, there's something odd I need to show you guys."

Paul has a sliding glass door, which is a private entrance into his room. The deck had a lot of snow on it and some kind of tracks. We thought they might have been Great Dane tracks from the dog up the street, but he's kept in at night and does not roam. Since Don's house is in the country, we thought maybe they were mountain lion or coyote tracks or something.

The odd thing is that deep into the night we heard strange animal sounds that sounded nearby. This morning, Don said he thought it might have been a dog somewhere in distress. I thought the sound was different than a dog, but could not discern what it might be.

We had a breakfast party at our friend's house. The host is an avid hunter. One of the guests also lives in the boondocks and has come across many wild animals. After looking at normal range and close up photos of the tracks I took, they thought they looked like the tracks of a small bear.

How scary, since not soon after we heard the odd sounds, Don was going to go out and check and/or change the propane tank (the house was getting cold, and he thought the propane tank was empty). I asked him to wait until daylight. I'm glad he did.

They looked sort of like this image: http://www.zazzle.com/bear_track_poster-228690896370653083

Any other stories to share?

Greenwolf103 · Jan 13, 2011

This is late, but Happy New Year to everyone here at AW.

Caitlin Black · Jan 14, 2011

My year so far has been positive, if a little taxing.

It's summer here in Australia, and Adelaide where I live gets it worse than most other cities in Australia (except maybe Alice Springs and Darwin, in the Northern Territory - Alice Springs being the only inland major city in Australia, right in the middle of miles and miles of desert). Consequently, starting work experience last week in a poorly air-conditioned building that always keeps its doors open anyway has been a very sweaty affair.

But I'm liking working at the Salvation Army store, so far at least. It's somewhat interesting work, and they actually had me on the register today. For the first time in my life, I got to see what the Eftpos machine does before the worker hands it to the customer. Quite a number of buttons to press, but I got it working alright.

But I would be remiss if I didn't mention the horrible flooding in a different state of Australia: Queensland. I think they hit about 11m of water in some places - that's a hell of a lot! If I wasn't so poor, I'd donate money to help them out. As it is, I can't afford that, but am happy that the Salvos where I'm working donates money from donations to any survivors of natural disasters.

Brisbane, which is I believe the 3rd largest city in Australia, was almost totally flooded for about 1.5 or 2 days. Incidentally, my brother and his girlfriend, up until about October last year, lived in or near Brisbane. They've since moved to England (his girlfriend was born there, and only lived in Brisbane for the experience of training to be a horse instructor/carer in a hotter climate than England) so instead of a flood, they have feet of snow.

Mum got off the phone with my brother last night, and apparently every single place he had lived in Brisbane was now under water. He had lived in about 3 or 4 different suburbs. Where his girlfriend had lived near Brisbane was damp, but not entirely flooded.

So yes, it's been a very big year so far for me.

(Oh, and where my dad lives, near the border of the state I live in, about an hour or two from the next state over, was flooded yesterday. The region he and my step-mum live in is aptly named The Riverland, and yesterday the river ran wild.)

Happy New Year!

Susan Coffin

Tell it like it Is

Lavern08

Sit Down, and Shut Up!

Don Evan Scott

I have a pet snake named Sparky :)

Susan Coffin

Tell it like it Is

Greenwolf103

I'm a grrrl dog, yo

Caitlin Black

Wild one