A party across the road spilled out into the street around 10:30pm, and there was a sudden confluence of fireworks, loud music, and guys doing burnouts. Very unusual for my neighborhood (or at least, all three at once). I held off on calling the cops because our dispatchers can be dicks about noise complaints ("It's NYE, what do you expect," etc), and SWMBO and I tried to go to bed anyway. Fortunately either they all went back inside, or somebody else called the cops, because there was nothing after 11:00pm. Thank goodness.
As far as the new year, I'm happy that on Dec 19th I was promoted from GS-07 to GS-09, and on Sunday I'll be getting the 2.1% COLA boost. Just like that I'm earning an extra $8,000/year. It would have been nice to happen sooner (I've been at the full performance level since April), but it happened.