three hundred and sixty-six

it is 8:48 and the fireworks have been going off non-stop since before six.  well, they may have stopped temporarily for the queen's speech right at six, but then they resumed with a renewed fervor after her majesty's speech wishing every dane, near and far, a happy new year... telling them to take care of each other, and to encourage the youth to believe in themselves (and not live in cyberspace).  at least that is what i gather from the one 'rough translation' i could find on royalcorrespondent.com. (we tried watching online, but it kept stopping on us.) these two things, setting off fireworks and listening to the queen's traditional new year's speech, and a third, kransekage, a special marzipan cake, are how the danes (if you can generalize, and you can, to a much greater extent than in the u.s.) celebrate new year's eve.  and also, i believe, jumping off a chair at midnight.

but the fireworks... i have never known so many fireworks.  certainly denmark puts america's fourth of july celebrations to shame.  to shame!  and this is a very small country.  as greg noted (before six o'clock and then does not compare to now), they were going off at a rate of more than one every second, easily within our earshot, in our very peaceful part of the town.  we've had views from our house from three different directions, and i suspect we'd be able to see from a fourth, if not a fifth, if only we had more windows.  this incredible demonstration has been building up for days, if not weeks.  i can't remember the first day i began hearing fireworks here.  when we were in copenhagen there was a guy lighting off cherry bombs under his shoes.  greg and his mom saw a man carrying a rather impressive amount of fireworks from the super best this afternoon, where apparently they are sold (though i never noticed them there yesterday).  and twice within the last twenty minutes a reading of mary poppins has had to be paused to watch them from the sofa.

and... you didn't know this, but there was a long pause in writing this to have some more pie.  greg's mom made a second apple pie today to satisfy our completely over-indulgent whims...

and now, as i resume writing this at 10:17, the fireworks have not slowed down.  and we will drink a bit of glogg and play another game of scrabble now, so here are our random photos from tonight, where i am oddly in front of the camera for the first two shots... 

blue and green...

blues...

stripes...

green with blonde...

and a happy last day of 2012!  see you in 2013!  thanks for reading!