Happy New Years!!! Silly fun on a rooftop

I keep repeating myself but we are still shorthanded at work. There's only two of us on my midnight shift so we were required to work all holidays, Christmas and New Year's Eve. I managed to get out of Thanksgiving only because I had already pre-purchased a ticket to the big island. So I brought in the New Year 2009 with the people I love, my coworkers. Hee hee...that's what I kept telling Jasmina. She was on the shift before but she stayed late to watch the fireworks with me. I kept saying "oh, to spend New Years Eve with the person I love" and then sighing..."and I guess it's Jasmina. She actually came up with an idea of going up on the helipad to watch the fireworks at midnight and we got real excited. We took up our cameras and tripods and it really made the night so much more fun.

Unfortunately, the two big public firework displays (Off Sand Island and off Waikiki) were both blocked by tall apartment buildings in our view. However, we can count on the good people of Hawaii to have choke 'illegal aerial fireworks. Jasmina had a shutter cord so she didn't have to press the actual camera button, to cut down on the camera shake (because we used long shutters for the night lights). But, I don't have a shutter cord. So, I kept my camera on a tripod and used a timer. I'd press the timer...listen to the beeping for six seconds...and pray that there would be fireworks going off when the shutter actually opened. It was hit-or-miss with a lot of misses. And town definitely didn't have as much illegal fireworks as Kaneohe would have...I guess the lack of yards might be a factor.

(Thank you for illegal aerial fireworks...the haze was so thick you couldn't see the mountains in the distance)

(I was worried that we would get in trouble for being up on the roof...but now, instead we were joined by a crowd of other poor souls working on New Year's Eve)

(Hey, I have a twin)
I used a long exposure on my camera to get the city lights...then held the flash in my hand and fired it on myself by pressing the flash button. Then I ran to the other side and flashed again before the shutter closed. Because I move, the city lights also shine through the picture giving it the ghost look.

Jasmina trying to do the "Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil"
Except that when she covered her eyes, she couldn't tell when I fired the flash so she ran out of time to do the third one.

(I love 2009 already!!!)
Used hand-held flash to light up ourselves and a flaslight to draw a heart.

BTW, good thing this cheered me up...because the rest of the night was crazy hard. I never want to work New Year's Eve again. Alcohol...fireworks....people roaming around all night...not good.