New Year's Eve and the Orange Bowl....

New Year's Eve. It always feels silly to call anything an Eve during the daytime. Anyways, it's exciting to see as Australia westward approaches January 1. I remember doing the same thing in Tel Aviv for the millennium--CNN had amazing coverage....

But alas, it's 2006 this time around. This past year was surprisingly happening--Abu Graib, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, the NSA spying on us with telecommunications support, Valerie Plame/Karl Rove and I. "Scooter" Libby, Michael Jackson, Tom and Katie, Brad and Angelina, the Chicago White Sox, San Antonio Spurs, no hockey, the NWA mechanics strike falling flat on its face, while the NYC Transit strike right before Christmas and Chanukkah brought the city to its knees. I know I'm missing some other biggies....Martha Stewart's release from jail, Chief Justice William Rehnquist's death, Judge Roberts, non-judge Harriet Miers. Pope John Paul II, when the world came to a stop for a few days. There was even speculation from Dan Brown's Angels and Demons.

And completely unrelated....

Sports. Penn State University's Joe Paterno switched things up a bit and led Penn State to a number-three ranking in the BCS. And to the Orange Bowl! Having met Joe Paterno and hear him speak, all the stuff they say is true--he's vibrant, energetic, classy. It's good to see my alma mater back in the football business. And while I don't think they'd have any chance against USC or Texas, who are playing in the championships game, if they could have stopped Michigan with ONE second left on the clock, they would have had a perfect season.

This year's Orange Bowl is January 2nd. I found an article on espn.com entitled: Bowden, Paterno do it the right way. I particularly enjoyed Rudyard Kipling's poem:

If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet not look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;
If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop, and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run --
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

Well--Happy New Year's