Dear readers, I type this with blood flowing freely onto my white keyboard. 2012 has killed, the prime suspect of introducing my right index finger to a can of BPA-free black beans. I think we can agree that this has consequences far beyond the application of Neosporin.

And so it is with the wind howling permeating my porous pre-war (alliteration!) apartment that I welcome yet another year.

But first: two parties.

First on the NYE tour was a basement party / band sendoff. The only rule stipulated by the invite? “Don’t be stupid.”

We stumbled down some stairs and into darkness. It was like some sort of psychological torture chamber: hands groping for balance, pulsing music, strange smells. I brought along my only weapon, a new Fuji X10, and it was did well as a camera but quite poorly as a defensive weapon. I was barely able to get 1/4s at 12,800 ISO in that pit. My eyes didn’t fare much better. Occasional breaks were taken top-side.

About one of the party hosts – if I was ever forced to follow just one Twitter user on a desert island, it would be Nate. After recently breaking a chair in his own home, he left it in the middle of the floor and chalked a crime scene around it. That chair soon received a mate just in time for 2012.

We threatened to leave (not because of the chair, mind you) and he broke out a harmonica. That was obviously the last straw, so it was on to the next party.

This group was decidedly better dressed than the basement crowd: not quite Great Gatsby, but a mixture of 30-something former bandmates and their now wives/girlfriends. Throw us all in a festive house generously opened to us by the Maags and it was a remarkably fine finale to the evening.

Somehow, in the midst of prepping with noisemakers and booze, we missed the actual transition to 2012.