Alright, now. Let’s have a show of hands.

How many of you have checked your distilled water supplies, freeze-dried rations, spare cash and emergency pharmaceuticals, this week?

What a difference a year makes.

This was the millennium that wasn’t. The year 2000 that officially ushered out the end of the second thousand years A.D.

Those who make a living correcting the rest of us assure us the real new millennium starts at the stroke of midnight this Sunday night/Monday morning.

So as it comes to a close, what can we say about the year 2000?

It was one frustrating year.

For starters, not many of us can say we were disappointed not to be bitten badly by the Y2K bug. I think some of us were both grateful and feeling a little bit let down. Frankly, not many of us knew what to expect last New Year’s Eve…but the lights stayed lit, computers cooperated as well as they usually do and food pantries suddenly received massive donations of surplus canned goods about February 1st.

So, perhaps all those preparations weren’t a total loss.

A scandal-weary America gave Bill Clinton a permanent pass, in effect, labeling him "morally challenged." In one of the great sales jobs of our age, New York voters were willing to pick up the tab for Hillary Clinton’s six-year visit from out of town. And weren’t we surprised when just weeks after her Senatorial election, she decided she couldn’t keep up with the payments on her Empire State home?

Speaking of politics, the Presidential election was bitten by the Y2K bug. A six-week illness that left us with badly chewed finger nails, a wailing fraternity of self-flagellating news anchormen and Sore Loserman signs stored away in the attic for our grandchildren.

At long last, the better candidate won…which really wasn’t saying a whole lot.

2000 was a year with more questions than answers. Some hard. Some easy. Like why have our gasoline prices shot through the roof? Or, "Do you want to be a millionaire?"

With the gas prices we paid this year, we all needed to be millionaires. And with the electrical prices tripling in California and brownouts and blackouts threatened there, many of us chose to rethink living along the West Coast. Too bad we all forgot about nuclear energy.

2000 gave us ho-hum Olympics…bad movies…bad TV…a subway series featuring New York and New York (yup, New York won) and Dennis Miller in the Monday Night Football booth. I never thought I’d say I missed Howard Cosell and Don Meredith.

In addition to all the other promises shattered by 2000 were hopes for peace in the Middle East. Someone forgot to tell Yassir Arafat that negotiations are a two-way street. And someone forgot to warn Ehud Barak not to play in traffic with the grown-ups. It looks like a full-scale, head-on truck crash is getting ready to happen in that part of the world…and not even a self-appointed policeman like the U.S. will be able to prevent it.

Christian bashing continued unabated from Hollywood to the Sudan. Moral values evaporated from more corners of the globe while a remnant of those in love with Jesus Christ clung to His word and found Him sufficient to see us through even the valley of the shadow of death.

We had our Ebola scare, terrorism warnings and even the tragic attack on a US naval destroyer parked in the Middle East. We had our share of weird weather, economic reverses and the standard mix of celebrity deaths…from Steve Allen to Jason Robards.

In short, we had another year. And despite all its shortcomings and abject failures, 2000 still gave most of us an extra 366 days to serve our God, love our families and celebrate life, such as we know it.

So, maybe 2000 wasn’t a total failure after all.

Here’s to you, 2001.

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