What I Did For New Year's Eve

What I did was stay home and invite friends over for food and games. However, my folks had a much more interesting time last year. They traveled to Times Square and worked as Confetti Disbursement Engineers (threw confetti from the buildings) on New Year's Eve.

Yes, all that confetti you see floating through the air (this past New Year's Eve flying to Conneticut due to the wind) is thrown, by people, off of the surrounding buildings. Sorry to say I have no pictures but my mom did write a recount of their evening.

Happy reading:

We had a good trip to New York. We spent Tuesday night in Secaucus. On Wednesday morning, we took the bus into the city. We left our bags at the hotel and had breakfast. We then made our way to Times Square. At noon, we met with the coordinator of the confetti drop and got our IDs.

Eventually, we got back to the hotel sometime after 2:30. We had said our rooms would be ready around 2:00, but it was more like 3:00 and after. In fact, Denny and Marion got an upgrade to a suite, since their room still was not ready sometime after 3:15. It was just a little bigger than our room and had a couch and a chair. They call that a suite.

We walked back to near Times Square and had dinner at a pub near where we had to meet with the other Confetti Disbursement Engineers at 6:00. We had to use our passes to get past the police lines.

After roll call and get our assignments, we separated into our groups, at least 4, and went to the various buildings from which we were to throw the confetti.

All this took a half hour or so. We were on the setback of the Minskoff Theatre, where The Lion King is playing, no show last night. The setback is like a balcony on the side of the building. Ours was only on the 6th floor. High enough for me.

We spent most of the next several hours, talking, eating, (they supplied food), and getting more instructions. Occasionally, someone would brave the cold and wind to go out and see what was going on. We had a good view of the screen that shows the acts on the main stage and the ball. We could see the backs of the performers on the main stage in the opposite direction.

At 11:00, we threw green and silver foil confetti for a Three Musketeers promotion. At 11:54, we dropped large balloons for a Pepsi promotion. They didn't drop very well because of the wind. Then just before midnight, we started throwing the confetti. It was unreal, with the wind, the stuff was carried way up, at least to the height of some of the buildings. It looked like a blizzard and was difficult to clean off the setback.

We also had to clean up the hallway where we had been waiting. Every time someone opened the door, the confetti blew in. I'm not sure how many were in our group, but there was a number of us, so the clean up went fairly quickly. We went to a party afterward for the Confetti Disbursement Engineers. We didn't stay to late, still had to walk back to the hotel, about ten blocks.

It was quite an experience. There were volunteers from California, Arizona, and I forget where all. It's going to be an early night tonight. I can feel myself fading already.

Passes to get through police lines, throwing confetti off of balconies, a warm place to hang out in Times Square, and free food. I need to ask where I sign up.

Like I said, no pictures, but I did find this YouTube clip from New Year's Eve 2007. Being as windy as it was this past year I can only imagine that it looked similar to this video.