...



I HAVE A PERSONAL New Year's Day tradition that finishes off my year with a great big luxurious sigh, as in "ahhhh...that was just OTW!" Since it takes place twenty or so hours into the beginning of a year, the timing is perfect for a procrastinator like me.



It's a concert brought to me annually by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. It's delightful, marvelous, glorious even!



This concert has been performed in Austria on New Year's Day for over sixty years and I've kept my tradition of watching it on television for over a decade.



I anticipate it even as I'm carrying on the fine tradition of partying with friends...helping the women to beat the men at dominoes on New Year's Eve, and eating fantabulous pork and saurkraut with numerous aunts and uncles and siblings and cousins of my husband at noon on New Year's Day.


Preparations to carry out my tradition are simple...a fire must be built in the fireplace, and then I bring out all the leftover holiday chocolate and invite whomsoever will to join me...often my husband, always his Aunt Ann from the house next door.

I settle in with great expectation, and from the first strains of the Blue Danube, or whatever Strauss composition comes first, I go soaring. If you're a fellow huge fan of the Strauss relatives...Johann, Johann Jr. and Josef... you'd be soaring too!



The whole program is a feast for me and when they start into the Radetzky March and roll the credits, I wipe away a tear or two. Oh, I'm only kidding; I just wish they'd let me overindulge with another hour or two...



as I'm saying "auf Wiedersehen" to the year that is growing cold.
...