Happy New Year!!!...

New Year's Eve has always seemed to me (at least once I was old enough to really go out) to be a night when everyone tries desperately to have fun because they're supposed to, but in the end, it isn't really all that great.

Nevertheless, I will be out celebrating with friends in the hope that this is the year NYE is all it's cracked up to be. I wish everyone a happy and safe 2010, and may this be the year you accomplish all your resolutions.

The Wall Street Journal published an article today with six tips to help you keep your resolutions. As is the norm with the WSJ, the suggestions are common sense and illustrated by three examples of real, live resolution-keepers.

As I said above, I will be celebrating the end of 2009 with friends tonight. However, I am old enough to know better than to stay out all night and smart enough to heed my own advice. However, for those who still want to party like they are still 18, the French government has decreed all French nightclubs are now allowed to stay open until 7 a.m.

Prior to this surprise new law, local officials held sway over the clubs' business hours, which meant confusion and a lot of drunk driving as revelers traveled from one club to another in the wee hours of the morning. According to the Boston Globe, this new law is supposed to curb all of that. Bon chance!

A friend of mine is choosing to ring in the new year in Times Square with several million of his newest close friends. Being extremely enoclophobic myself - ie: really hate crowds - that sounds like a level of hell that Dante missed. But I guess there is a certain allure to being in New York City and seeing the ball drop. The New York Times published an article on a tour one of its reporters took through the "vault" - the storage facility 50 feet underground which holds New Years balls from years past. The story is a bit confusing in the middle when it talks about how many balls there actually have been, but it is enlightening in terms of NYE trivia.

I used to be all nostalgic, sitting and remembering all the things that happened to me over the year. But the past two years have not been necessarily something I care to remember, so I think for 2010 my resolution is going to keep going forward (see, Stef, I did make one!). Sucky things are undoubtedly going to happen to me, but I'm going to charge through them.

What about you? What are your resolutions?

Have a happy and hangover-free New Year's Day! I'll be back with a new post on Monday, Jan. 4.

Exponentially cool...

This man to the left is Stephen Wiltshire. Diagnosed with autism at an early age, his teachers at school noticed he communicated to the world through art. One eventually taught their formerly mute pupil to speak - at age nine - by withholding his art supplies to get him to ask for them.

He progressed from animals to motor vehicles to buildings. Wiltshire has been featured in several documentaries on the BBC, including "Fragments of Genius" in which the BBC filmed him flying over London then creating a meticulous, to-scale drawing of the city within three hours.

He has created similar aerial illustrations, including one of Tokyo on a 10-meter long sheet of paper.

Entirely from memory. Again, ENTIRELY FROM MEMORY.

His artwork has been shown all over the world, and he has his own personal gallery in London in addition to multiple published books. The third, "Floating Cities" (1991) made the London Sunday Times Bestseller List.

PS - His birds-eye panorama of Rome may just be my favorite of his aerial skylines. The store section of his website is one that keeps you clicking through. Some pieces appear in color, some are oil paintings and some are simple black and white sketches. But all are amazing. I'm not much for art made after 1750, but I'm now Wiltshire's newest fan.

Hand touching hand, reaching out...

Sweet Caroline is my karaoke song. I only sing it, in a group, in Boston since the entire bar jumps in and sings both the words and the bah, bah, bahs. But the line from the chorus which graces my post title really encapsulates my theme for today: people connecting.

The Daily Record in the UK is based out of Scotland and had a story on the power of photographs. It seems there is a cancer center there which aims to connect its patients with reminders of the joy of living. The center has established a scrapbooking program in which participants choose photographs that mark the highlights of their lives. The story features three women - Freda Wilshaw, Elaine Doran and Christine Hague - who share their photos and the stories behind them.

Several of those women's photos are of them men they loved. One San Francisco couple got a second chance at first love, as recently reported in the San Francisco Chronicle. After a separation of 30 years, Darrell Holdaway and Nevin Valentine reunited just before their 30th high school reunion. Holdaway and Valentine each married and had children after breaking up in high school but found themselves single as the reunion approached. They met for coffee, and the rest, as they say, was history.

CNN reported on another reunion, one that has caught the nation's attention and held international trade implications. David Goldman was granted custody of his son after his former wife took the boy to her native Brazil for a two-week vacation that never ended. The little boy has been living with his extended Brazilian family after his mother died in childbirth. Goldman and his nine year-old son were reunited on Christmas Eve and planned to spend Christmast together in Disney World after flying home from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

(Photo courtesy of Stroller Derby)

Cheerio, pip, pip...

I'm a little rusty after my week-long holiday break. I'm not sure if it's due to getting in late last night or just the typical holiday hangover, but I'm going to apologize in advance for any choppiness or lack of coherence in today's post. I promise to do better tomorrow. : )

I know I did a post recently on weird, wild and wonderful sea creatures, and this next story from Yahoo! is along the same lines. Australian scientists have recorded an octopus collecting coconut shells for shelter. The little leggy creature emptied out the shells and then carried them up to 65 feet before reassembling them for a hiding spot. The scientists believe this is the first recorded instance of an invertebrate using a tool.

Staying in the British Empire (and Yahoo!) for a moment, the search engine giant's news arm reported Great Britain has started to phase out checks as a monetary conveyance. The British governmental body in charge of such things has chosen 2018 as the target date by which they hope to no longer use checks. While this is not great news for the elderly - some of whom have never used an ATM - I'm a huge fan of this spreading to the US.

A lot of children's stories have spread the world over - including Alice in Wonderland, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Wind in the Willows. All of those stories and several others had their birth in and around the English city of Oxford. An anonymous benefactor has donated 2.5 million British pounds for the building of the real-life home for the Museum of Storytelling. Previously housed online only, this donation allows the collection to find a permanent, brick-and-mortar home. The new museum will allow children to hear stories and to walk through exhibits of their favorite tales, according to the Guardian.

(Photo courtesy of Yahoo!)

Is your house on fire, Clark?...

That is one of my favorite lines from the holiday classic "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." Aunt Bethany utters it after Clark Griswold finally gets his 25,000 imported Italian twinkle lights going and blazes the neighborhood.

One of my favorite things to do every Christmas is check out the lights and displays along Hampden, Maryland's 34th Street. Every Christmas the whole street gets into the act with traditional and artsy holiday displays. It's not a neighborhood association thing, people just participate because they get into the spirit. The photo on the left is from someone's Flickr account and shows the (in)famous street.

For the past couple of years, people have posted videos online of lighting displays timed to Manheim Steamroller. But this year, as my friend Michelle forwarded to me, someone has timed his lights to Guitar Hero. Featured on Holidash, Ric Turner, a former Disney special effects engineer, found a way to plug his Wii into his Christmas lights. Visitors can try their hand at playing "Cliffs of Dover" by pushing the doorbell. God love this guy's wife...

Visual displays are a common way to spread Christmas cheer. As written about in the New York Times yesterday, a lot of people have turned to picture cards created on any number of online photo-sharing sites. However, a few photographers banded together to share Christmas tidings the old-fashioned way (and do some good in the process). PBS posted a story on the PhotoImaging Manufacturers and Distributors Association - hundreds of photographers - which has volunteered to take free portraits of military families. Deployed soldiers keep photos of their loved ones close to their hearts - often literally - while on missions, so these will be particularly welcome gifts this season. The network will show an actual new story sometime near Christmas.

And finally, Xerox has a promotion online where individuals can send holiday greetings to our fighting men and women overseas. Xerox is taking designs created by children and printing them on postcards. All you have to do is pick a card and then a greeting (or write your own), and Xerox will print the card and mail it for free. It only takes a few minutes and will brighten a soldier's day. If you only click on one link today, I hope it's this one.

Christmas kindness...

So today I'm going to metaphorically kill you with kindness. As if 10 months of good news weren't enough, today I'm piling on the Christmas cheer. I am perhaps using the warm fuzzies from these stories to help me ward off the outside temperatures here. When I turned on my car, the little man in the radio said it was 16 degrees out, on the way to a high of 24F.

So here goes...

Last Friday, Clinique held a Happy Day according to MediaPost Publications. The brand responsible for the perfume "Happy" named Dec. 11 "Happy Day" in order to raise awareness for their partner charity Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Participants in the organization designed holiday cards which were given away free with Happy-to-Go fragrance pencils at Clinique counters all over the country.

As part of its series "Giving in Focus: The 12 Days of Goodness," CNN featured the "Baby Buddies" program in Georgia. Trained volunteers provide the TLC needed for babies in neonatal intensive care units. Nurses rush around taking blood and doing tests, but the volunteers keep the baby company - rocking in a chair, holding, stroking a cheek - when the baby's parents are unable to be at the hospital. The story goes on to profile Cami Walker, who has stemmed the on-rush of her multiple sclerosis (MS) by being generous.

Wrapping up (hee hee) today, I have snippet from Google News about a UPS driver who played Good Samaritan and Santa all in one fell swoop. John Piontkowski saw a bank deposit bag in the middle of the street, which turned out to contain $5200. The deposit slip showed the money belonged to a liquor store. Piontkowski promptly returned the money to the bank.

'Tis better to give than to receive...

There are a lot of platitudes that get trotted out each year around this time. The one often used in conjunction with the one in the blog title is "it's the thought that counts." I imagine the person who came up with that one received his or her fair share of wildly inappropriate presents.

But the point is it's better to do something for others than yourself. I'm one of those nerdy people who gets a high off people's reactions to presents. I love seeing the utter delight and pleasure pass over someone's face when s/he open a gift that is exactly what s/he wants or suits him/her to a T.

This holiday season charity has become widespread. Whether it is through fear of looking gauche for spending too much in a recession or actual altruism, I don't know. But I'm a fan.

MSNBC.com posted a story on the growing trend of companies swapping lavish holiday parties with participating in a charity instead. The story talks about companies who forewent snazzy get-togethers for donating to needy families and children and volunteering their time to help those who are out of work.

Even though Facebook apps and the movie "The House Bunny" still come to mind when I think of Greek life, sororities and fraternities were founded on the principle of good work in the community. CFNews 13 reported on an alumnae chapter of Delta Sigma Theta who returned to those Pan-Hellenic roots when its members rented out a movie theater for a screening of the new Disney movie "The Princess and the Frog." Four hundred and fifty members of the chapter and their family, friends and supporters came out for a free movie and movie-themed activities this past Sunday.

Free passes are also available for residents of the city of Boston to skate at Fenway Park, according to the Boston Globe. Yes, that is a baseball stadium. But this year's NHL Winter Classic will be held in the 97 year-old institution, with a college game pitting Boston University against Boston College a week later, and over 3000 tickets are available gratis for public skating on Jan. 3 and 10 as part of the city's New Year's festivities.

(Image courtesy of Disney)