new year's picture

And one more picture, to finish up my last post. Actually, this doesn't completely belong, as it was taken after midnight on January first.

We spent New Year's just the two of us, doing what we like to do. Champagne and good food and a movie. For me, the food was cheese. For me the food is always cheese. A bit of delice de Bourgogne, (more than a bit) (and then more), a bit of mimolette, a bit of morbier. Stephen had two things. The first was bacon-wrapped steak. The second was bacon. Oh, and plantain chips. The champagne was two kinds. Cava, actually, for most of the watching of the movie and Veuve Clicquot for the New Year's toast. We opened the Veuve Clicquot at the start of the movie to be ceremonious, had a toast and a glass, and then saved another glass for the end. [hmm, that sounds like we drank two bottles. i want to go on record saying we didn't finish either.]

The movie was Yankee Doodle Dandy, the James Cagney biopic of George M. Cohan. Maybe it seems like a better movie for the Fourth of July, but the pageantry of musicals is always good for New Year's Eve, and there's nothing like ringing out the old year with James Cagney tap-dancing down the White House steps.

I like to play a game where the image that's on the screen when we clink glasses for a New Year's kiss is going to represent the coming year. I did it last year and got Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing cheek to cheek. [wrote about it here.] This year, this is what Stephen and I got.

If you look close, in the foreground are two glasses of the good stuff, and in the background are Cagney and costar Joan Leslie as an old couple drinking tea.

Two toasts for 2012. If you wanted to interpret this image, you might look at the whole film and note that in this moment this couple is looking back on a lifetime of accomplishments and about to embark on their greatest accomplishment of all. Or you might note that they're two old people drinking tea. Either way, it's cozy.