Weaver has 'middlin” plans to ring in 2008

Fair to middlin'.

That's what I'm going for this New Year's Eve.

The last two Eves, you see, were the best of times and the worst of times, although by worst, I don't mean to suggest they were really all that bad.

I rang in 2006 with my best buddy, Tyson, who was visiting family in the area from Florida. He had been here every year before, and helped me to cover the annual Polar Bear Plunge (although I could never get him to participate) but this was the first time the weather was good enough we were able to roam the Columbia Basin, dining at favorite local hotspots and actually getting to show off the place where I live.

By far and away, though, the thing we were most excited about was our idea to purchase whole bottles of sparkling apple cider, and then drink the cider straight from the bottle at midnight.

We liked to pretend we were drunks. And when I say "excited," I mean ridiculously excited. Because we're nerds.

That fateful night, we proclaimed our motto for the year to be "Chicks in 2006," meaning we intended to find our soul mates in the forthcoming year.

Well, we were half right, as that year Tyson met the woman who would become his wife.

It meant the next year, though, Tyson would not be visiting, electing instead to spend time with someone he'd actually get to kiss at midnight.

Like any best friend, I teased him mercilessly, but held no grudges, since I'd have abandoned him completely had the opportunity been on the other foot.

But I anticipated a quieter evening than the glory days of 1-1-06 at the beginning of this year. In fact, I deliberately set out to have the most uneventful 1-1-07 possible, electing to stay at home - although that's not a hard decision for a master couch potato like myself - read Elsie Aidinoff's excellent novel "The Garden," which Voice of Youth Advocates magazine called "a banned book waiting to happen," and watch, on videocassette, Kenneth Branagh's 1996 version of "Hamlet," which doesn't extract a single word from William Shakespeare's most famous play.

I'd never seen it and had tired of waiting for it to come out on DVD, so I rented it from the library and settled down about four hours before midnight to welcome in the New Year. And as I watched - spoiler alert - just about every member of Hamlet's family die, I thought about the inevitable day when I get dragged out to trendy nightclubs by Future Bride and her bevy of supermodel friends.

In the midst of dancin' like a fool and thwarting shameless attempts to hit on me by every girl in the place, how I'll long to be back in my bachelor pad, alone on the couch in my underwear, an open bottle of sparkling cider at my feet and the words of the Bard in my ears.

And how to welcome in 1-1-08? I'd be happy if the night falls somewhere in between the start of 2006, hanging with a good friend, and 2007, listening to the almost musical clanging of empty cider bottles as they hit the bottom of my Dumpster and chuckling over what the neighbors must think of the noise.

This year, the motto is, "It's Up to Fate in 2008."

Then again, they did finally put "Hamlet" out on DVD …