mariness

Happy New Year to all. It is time, I think, to reveal my resolution for the year to all of you:

Eat chocolate.

I know, I know. But I'll be keeping my resolution.

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It's no secret that I love fireworks. Love them.

And I've always wanted to set off little fireworks of my own.

(Er, in the real, not metaphoric sense.)

Alas, much of my life, I have either lived in places where individual purchase and lighting of fireworks is outright illegal, or, severely disapproved of in the apartment complexes where I lived.

But last night, we were able to head out to the driveway to set off little fireworks of our own, under the concerned eye of the Winter Garden Fire Department, which was making slow and nervous rounds throughout our neighborhood. What I hadn't anticipated – although this, along with the unusually dry weather, which explained the Fire Department – was just how many of our neighbors would be joining in – nearly every single house on this street and the two next to it. Frankly, not shooting things off would have seemed, well, unneighborly.

We set off a few fireworks, then headed back in for games (because, honestly, more years should end by facing Cthulhu), turning on the TV to warn us when the New Year approached. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of having CBS on in the background, paying so little attention that we entirely failed to notice that CBS was running—not kidding –a re-run of David Letterman. They didn't even have the guts to run live coverage, so we totally missed the countdown.

Luckily, the booming sounds of Disney and the neighbors made up for this, so we weren't exactly able to ignore the incoming 2011 for very long. We flipped stations and then popped out to shoot off more fireworks. The street was filled with people making things go bang bang bang.

(I say "we" but in actual fact I just stayed back and watched things go up and bang. I'm notoriously abysmal with getting lighters to turn on and not particularly fast at moving backwards as fuses as sizzling. But it almost counted!)

It was not until after midnight that I remembered I also had a bottle of Rosa Regale (a rose champagne) in the fridge for a moment just like this (we'd been drinking Gluwine and eyeing the bottle of Chocolate Wine, which I actually haven't dared try out yet.) We decided to let it go. The city bangs lasted quite some time – until 3 am – and the Grey One, who does not approve of this sort of thing at all, is still not talking to any of us.

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On a totally different note, but before I continue to forget to blog about it: I am not at all surprised that Stargate: Universe was cancelled – ratings were not good, and although the show certainly improved in its second season, this was largely because it had nowhere to go but up. Cancellation was pretty much inevitable.

So yeah, not surprised, and filled with doubt that this is really and truly the ultimate end of the Stargate franchise – someone, somewhere will resurrect it again. But I will say that whatever the feelings about the cancellation, letting your cast and crew (including John Scalzi, who really doesn't deserve this sort of thing) find out that they've been fired through Twitter seriously sucks.

1. When the cars are piled up on the way into a parking garage, the event will either be overcrowded, disorganized, or both.

2. It helps, when organizing an event of this nature, to ensure that your parking garage people are fully aware of all of the policies concerning museum membership policies, in particular, all of the absolutely free parking that comes along with a museum membership, even if this is a special event that your parking garage people have been advised to absolutely but absolutely collect absolutely five dollars, cash, from every car, no matter what cards they may have, thus preventing a long and growing line of ever more steadily irritated people waiting to get into the parking garage unable to because your parking garage people are arguing with museum members. See, also, point one above.

3. The Orlando Museum of Science is perhaps not the best venue for this sort of event.

4. People can still be talking about the parking issues, and getting charged for parking when they shouldn't have been charged for parking, hours afterwards.

5. The reason the Orlando Museum of Science is perhaps not the best venue for this sort of event is twofold: 1) much of the museum centers around one of those large circular atriums ringed with narrow balconies that go round and round, that when filled with little tables of chocolate things and people trying to reach the little chocolate things become deeply overcrowded sending acrophobes, enchlophobes, claustrophobes, and people who love big words alike into a panic, 2) the museum has two – count them, two – small and rather slow elevators, one of which is partially accessible only by stairs (I swear I am not making this up) which, when you are hosting an event attended by many, many people using wheelchairs, scooters and very large and heavy strollers that already exhausted and cranky parents do not want to drag up and down the stairs, lead to long, long lines of people waiting hopefully for an elevator, thus blocking access to said narrow balconies and more critically, the bathroom, leading to Sad Accidents with said small children.

(I am frankly baffled as to why a museum specifically designed to appeal to families with small children, which in my experience are always accompanied by strollers, would not have added more elevators to accommodate them, although perhaps they hoped that using stairs would either help tire out small children or encourage said small children to demand candy from the museum store. Whichever.)

6. To counter this, nothing beats the awesome sight of a Tyrannosaurus Rex looming hungrily over mounds of chocolate cupcakes.

7. Apparently, Microsoft Word recognizes Tyrannosaurus as a Real Word and will even capitalize it for you. Who knew?

8. Meandering through tables of chocolate and dinosaurs can have a distressing effect on your critical faculties.

9. Chocolate covered gummy bears are actually more disgusting than they sound.

10. White chocolate raspberry gelato is actually even more delightful than it sounds.

11. A reasonable looking person can, indeed, try to persuade you that her particular form of ultra healthy chocolate will cure your fibromyalgia.

12. When you explain that, delightful as this sounds, you do not, as it happens, actually have fibromyalgia, she can, indeed, immediately switch to suggesting that her particular form of ultra healthy chocolate can prevent the development of fibromyalgia and so it's great to try anyway.

13. You will, it must be confessed, end up preferring the completely unhealthy chocolate.

14. The surprisingly hands down best selection at a chocolate festival featuring gourmet chocolatiers and the finest in chocolate stores from everyone in the greater Orlando area (except Godiva which for whatever reason was absent) will be the Key Lime cookie without any chocolate at all. (It was, I must ay, one extraordinary cookie. I appear not to be alone in this thought; the website, Brecks Cookies is dead from the number of people who, like me, were rather hoping to find out what drug was in that cookie.)

15. You can, in fact, spend a significant amount of time at a chocolate festival spinning wooden tops around and around, gleefully high on some of the Peterbrooke selections

16. An event calling itself a festival of chocolate, can, shockingly, have table after table after table and not one offering of hot chocolate. Not one. The closest was a café mocha offered by an apologetic coffee vendor. This will cause you to question your entire relationship with chocolate, the meaning of chocolate, its place in your life and the universe, and also cause you to realize that this problem can only be dealt with by tasting a few more samples of chocolate.

17. A festival of chocolate is an excellent place to explore the very evil places not all that well hidden in your soul.

18. Baby alligators are kinda cute, even when not consuming chocolate.

19. Even museums of science, apparently, cannot resist broad and false statements like "Women were forbidden to have chocolate..." No. No. And No. Even in the context of European history, no, no and no. Chocolate was absolutely an upper class luxury item until the 19th century in Europe, not because of gender issues, but the cost. Statements like this can be avoided with specifics: "The convent of St. Why Have Fun banished chocolate from its premises for fear of its effects..."

20. When Dove Chocolate announces, in some alarm, that they may be running out of supplies for chocolate mousse, it is a signal that you will be leaving the festival rather sooner than you anticipated.

Ordinarily it kills me to link to anything so desperate to sell bad chocolate. (And most of what the Mars Chocolate company creates, alas, is bad chocolate.)

But this not only has Seth Green in it, but it's a pretty clever marketing ploy, actually making use of the internet to engage people in a combined multimedia/mental puzzle/interactive/Oooh Shiny Cash Prize! deal. Now, if only Butterfingers actually tasted better...