I Liked BHydden’s suggestion for “make 2025 great again” but that title may be more meaningful for the time-travelers amongst us. So, given that the Orange Idiot will be making lots of meaningless statements, with ill-intent, and generally devaluing the language I’ll go with this alternative title instead.
Just five and a bit hours to go for me. The city council was going to put on its usual free NYE party in a park in the middle of the city, with a fireworks display that is visible over most of the city (modulo trees). Buts its been a day of bad weather statistics here - 60% rain, 70% drizzle, 90% dampness, and 10% blocked drains so the party has been cancelled. It looks like most people locally will be seeing in the new year indoors. Me too.
Tuesday is club night. We usually finish around 11-ish, but sometimes later, and on rare occasions we finish after midnight. I’ll see if anyone wants to finish extra-late today, and maybe I’ll see in the new year playing Go.
Since it is not yet clear what the theme of this 2025 thread will be, I will share a story in what I call the be the change category.
I live in Nijmegen in the Netherlands (Europe) close to the city park. With some of the other people who live in the apartment building I live in, we decided to adopt our communal garden. After decades of being taken care of by a not very inspired gardening company it was rather neglected collection of shrubs and bushes. Because of this we grew more and more frustrated and finally ended that service contract. And started to do it ourselves. That was almost two years ago.
The changes were enormous. We created a garden with several sections devoted to different aspects of gardening: a bee and flower garden, a forrest garden, a mountain garden, a savanne garden and more.
Instead of blowing away all the leaves in autumn, we only removed the leaves of the grass into the borders.
Our garden became so much more diverse. The garden was visited by significantly more birds and butterflies. In the borders beneath the leaves and the hedges, there lived many more insects. The number of worms in the ground increased (and that is always a good sign).
On the human level: much more contact with the people who live here, sitting in the garden with a beer and a book, chatting with the neighbours or just taking a nap.
Life has definitely become more worth living.
I suspected that it was not “party clubbing” when he said 11… here the clubs used open at that time. Nice idea though, playing Go during the change of the year
I assume that it is already past midnight there, if I read the time of the OP properly.
In the end, hardly anyone showed up. People who said they would show up didn’t and people who said they might didn’t. And I lost every single game too And we left well before midnight.
And its still drizzling… There were a few people setting off fireworks though.
Hope other people have a better start to the new year. Happy 2025 everyone.
And we left well before midnight.
