I don't remember the last time I didn't party on New Year's Eve. Ok, to be fair, I don't remember most of the New Year's Eve parties either, but I know I partied because I remember the mornings after.

You see, for a guy like me, New Year's Eve is like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Halloween, a birthday, graduation, and a briss all rolled into one. Granted, a circumcision at one of our parties only happened the once, and it was accidental, but it still counts. I don't do other holidays. I'm a single guy with no family obligations, so the only celebrating I do is when my other buds are free, and New Year's Eve is the only time of year that the whole world is partying.

This year panned out a little differently. Sure, I had a few options. There was a house party I could have gone to, a party at my favorite celtic pub, and an option to spend NYE in NYC. I could have also likely gone down to Toronto to party there. There were options.

So the party of the year, and arguably of the decade, came about. I had no idea which way I wanted to celebrate. I was sort of leaning towards NYC, and every day of the week leading up to it, I kept saying to myself "meh, I'll buy the plane ticket tomorrow." Well, that just didn't turn out. December 31st arrived and I still hadn't bought a plane ticket. It was pretty clear by about 5pm that I wouldn't be leaving the country that evening.

7pm rolled around, and I found myself chatting on Windows Messenger. I figured after I was done with that conversation I'd go for a quick nap, and then get up and either head to the house party or go downtown to the bar.

I woke up at 9pm. It was starting to get a little late, but I still had some time. I lazily strolled over to the PC to check my email, and started posting on some forums. 30 minutes passed by doing this, and I then received another IM on Windows Messenger. One of my other buddies wanted to play some Borderlands.

Borderlands is a kick ass game when played multiplayer. I had been enjoying it for several nights at this point, so thought, what the hell, I can play for an hour or so, then head to the bar.

We hopped in game and started doing our thing. We were having a ton of fun. Soon enough, the crackling of gunfire in my headphones was drowned out by the screams of some people downstairs.

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed over Ventrilo. "Someone's partying hard downstairs."

"Yeah," replied Jeff, my gaming friend of the night. "The ball just dropped."

"What the hell??" I then realized New Year's Eve was over. Everyone outside and around the city was already drunk, the kisses from the hot girls who'd regret it in the morning had already been handed out, and I was in my apartment, only half dressed, with not a single beer in the fridge let alone in hand.

I then came to the realization that maybe I'm not as party-hearty as I once was. This was the first New Year's Eve I had missed since puberty. The clincher of it all? I don't regret it at all today.