New Years Around the World - 2012/2013

Celebrating

 [ New Years '13 home]

Our 28th Year

New Years Around the World?

I know, a lot of you are saying, "New Years around the World? What the heck is that?" Well, it all started New Years day, 1985. After spending New Years Eve proper at Bronco Billy's Good Time Saloon down town, a bunch of us when back to (my future cousins) Mary and Terri's house in Alexandria. We kept celebrating the hours, 2:00 - Denver, 3:00 - LA and I had an idea, "Hey, why don't we celebrate every time zone next year?"

Well... I guess no one else took me seriously or remembered (I was probably the only one sober) but in December that year, I found some trivia about New Years in Bangladesh (the husband throws a bucket of water on the wife) and so for New Years Eve 1985/1986, I was looking up locations "around the world" using phone books and address books to see if I could actually find a location for every hour of the day.

Well, I did pretty good and managed to "find" one for every hour. That year I learned a lot. I started at 7:00 in the morning, drinking a standard champagne glass every hour. This worked pretty well, taking pictures every hour. My sister Kathi and I celebrated most of the hours alone until about 7:00 pm when we were joined by Tammy, Larry, Phyllis, Matt and Steve.

We then went over to Joe's house for the "real party". Once I got to the party, I started drinking like I normally would at a party and I almost didn't make it until Midnight. The pictures show it (not online).Well I "got better" and Tregon and I were the only two to make it until 6:00 am.

I used this same 24-hour schedule for six years until, in December 1991, I got Defense Mapping Agency map number 76, World Time Zones, for Christmas. It shows that, rather than 24 "New Years" there were 36 time zones recognized by the United States government.

That worked fine for the next 9 years. Then, in 2000, as everyone else was trying to do what I had been doing for 15 years, I discovered that I had forgotten something - Daylight Savings Time in the Southern Hemisphere! Well, I made corrections for that and that brought us to our current schedule.

In 2009, I used a number of other sources and updated the times for a number of different locations due to changes I found (Nepal moved forward 5 minutes!) and even added one that got lost along the way (Iran). This year we added 3 more (Christmas Island moved to 0500 on the 31st; Eucia, Australia and Venezeula have their own timezones). That brings the current total upto 40 timezones!

Sometimes the party has been big, sometimes small. But, at least for me, it is always fun.

Here are a list of links for 2012/2013... partylivwith.us Home [ New Years '13 home]