New Years in Pasadena

This has got to be the place to be on New Years.  Colorado Blvd is one forever-long street party, where people set up camp on the sidewalks, playing cards, sleeping on air mattresses, spraying silly string and filling tortillas with shaving cream to launch on unsuspecting cars passing by.  It's really a fun atmosphere.
My New Years didn't start out so fun.  I willingly signed up to work the parade, and was told to report for duty at 2:30am.  So I went out amongst all the drunkards to find out what my job was going to be.  I figured we'd be doing some sort of crowd control or ushering people to their seats in the bleachers.  I was mistaken.  My job for the next 8 hours was to guard residential driveways from people parking in them.  And I was about 5 blocks from the parade route. Not my idea of a fun time.  Long story - short, I was never briefed by my supervisor, and after waiting 2 1/2 hours in the cold, with 2 coyotes running by within 10 yards of where I was standing, I decided I had had enough and proceeded to walk 4.5 miles home - virtually the entire parade route. 
I was a glutton for punishment, and decided to give the company one last chance to redeem itself and I worked at the Rose Bowl football game.  I mean, it's the Rose Bowl...how many times will I get to go to that game?  So I was assigned to guard a tunnel of the stadium.  After checking about 5,000 tickets, I was over the whole event staff job. I finished that shift, but have steadfastly determined that if I want to go to any other events bad enough I'll pay the money to see it rather than try to make a buck! 

Anyways, all was not a loss (except for Oregon!).  I got to see the end of the football game, and then Sunday my aunt and uncle and I toured the floats, so we got to see the amazing work of the designers and decorators, who work all year on those floats!  They told us the base cost for a float is about $200,000 and it goes up from there!  I love flowers so much and thought about how much my grandma would have loved to see the breathtaking display!