It's going to be a good year, because I like to eat smelly food.

While I was growing up, we always threw big New Year's parties--my family came, we invited friends, and had a really good meal and a game of Bunco before the (always videotaped) countdown to midnight. Then we'd do something like play board games or work on a puzzle until 4 or 5 in the morning. That was the fun part.

The part I didn't enjoy so much was the getting up around lunchtime to go eat at my grandparents' house. Why? Because we were eating saurkraut and pork chops for good luck in the new year. Inevitably, I would try to eat just a pork chop since even the smell of the saurkraut made me feel sick, but because they'd all been cooked together it was a lost cause. At some point, though, I must've tried it and liked it because now I am a saurkraut fan.

You thought this would be a pointless story, I'm sure. But I'm getting there.

Last night Christina and I lugged a LOT of stuff upstairs, and finally at 10:30 we decided to go get some groceries. Christina picked out saurkraut and sausage, which after not having eaten all day sounded really, really, REALLY good to me.

So after we finished eating, I remarked that it was a good sign for our first meal of the school year to be a traditionally lucky one, but neither Christina nor Brendan (who came to check out our AMAZING place) had ever heard of the lucky saurkraut thing before. And while I'm definitely going to run with this luck thing, hasn't anyone else heard of this tradition?