"On New Year's Eve my boss, Leana, had a party at her house. Leana and her partner have a very nice house with a backyard and everything. At the party there were three men in suits playing Blackjack while this kid about the same age as my son was dealing. My son, Jake, wanted to play and he ended up winning $3.50.

This party had the classiest of everything. They had all kinds of finger foods arranged nice and neat, and turkey, and they even had some caviar. Also, they had all the best liquor and wines and champagne you could ever find. Everything was the finest.

Not too long before midnight Leana and her partner had everyone get into a circle and say this chant that had to do with forgetting about the past and looking into the future. Then they started to sing Row Your Boat. They had a fire out in the backyard where we were having the party, and Leana pulled out this sage grass. She lit it and started putting smoke on everyone as a blessing. As it got closer to midnight, more and more fireworks started going off in the distance. People started to sing more quietly. The wind started picking up.

By midnight it was really windy and the trees were swaying back and forth. The fireworks started going crazy at midnight. The people in the circle were still singing Row Your Boat and Jake told me that this whole thing was dumb. The whole ritual seemed Pagan or Wiccan or Druid, and it was kind of eerie. I was sitting on the back porch watching them while I sipped a Glen Libets single malt scotch. Then Leana told everyone to look to the east, look to the south, and so on. When they looked to the north, everyone was looking at me because I was north of them and that was sort of embarrassing. When they quit singing and sat around the fire and talked. Then Jake wanted to play Blackjack again, but nobody else wanted to."