For New Year's Eve, Andy and I attended an extravagant dance in DC, volunteering to help set up in exchange for free admission. As a group, the volunteers inflated roughly 2000 balloons. That is a lot of balloons. After the first couple hundred, the air tanks showed up...

We enjoyed a pre-dance dessert in the hotel bar, and took some pictures:

At the stroke of midnight, they let all of those balloons drop, and people made lots of noise and jumped on the balloons, and we lamented the condition of the dance floor, now littered with bits of slightly damp rubber. Still, it was a wonderful time.

The following weekend, I drove up to State College, PA, to visit Donna Weimer. Unbeknownst to her, there was a plot afoot for a surprise birthday party that weekend. It came off beautifully -- a large gathering of people who all care very much for her.

Here we have Donna opening some of her gifts:

Later that evening, we were sitting around talking (up much too late!). Here we have Elizabeth carefully observing Donna's coffee-making skills, some shots of us on the futon, and even a picture of Elizabeth "playing a game"! (Thanks, Donna, for the cute Mars 2020 board game!)

On January 18, I got to attend YACN (Yet Another College Night) at the Chevy Chase Ballroom. For the first time, I brought my camera... and got these shots of Kim and Ben: