What the hell are we going to do for New Years?

I figured I would just get right to the point with that title. Why beat around the bush?! But seriously, what the hell are we going to do???? It's a lot of pressure deciding what to do. Supposedly what you're doing at midnight is what you will be doing for the majority of the year....or something like that. I don't know how true that is but it is an important night for "plans". Your cool quotient rides a little bit on that. Deny it all you want but if you're sitting at home watching Dick and nodding off on the couch at 11:30, you feel a little less "cool". But how "cool" is it to pay $30 (and up!!!) to get into a bar that was free to get into last week, only to push your way through hundreds of strangers to get a $5 beer every hour or so that you actually manage to get the bartender's attention?!?! You could have a party at someone's house.... too many people, and it's cops showing up and neighbors pissed off...too few people, and you're back to that nodding off with Dick thing. So what do you do?????????????

For those of you who may not know, I live in Charlotte, NC. We have plenty of bars and cool restaurants to choose from. I have a decent amount of people I know that live here......yet here we are two weeks away from New Years Eve and I have nothing planned! My husband and I were invited to a friend's get together but she lives kind of far out from us, which would put us out with the crazies. We like to stay as close to where we live as we can....it just cuts down on the potential for drama. But we do live in a great area with close proximity to lots of choices ($15 cab ride to uptown) so we're not limited there.....it just brings us back to the "cool" but expensive bar. We have a few people that are planning to join us...once we all decide what to do....but we're not sure that we have enough to have that party that falls between the pissed off neighbors and nodding off number. None of us have children yet so we want to do something fun that hopefully involves a decent amount of alcohol while we still can!
So again I ask, what do we do??? What are your plans? What have you done in the past? If you didn't have kids now what would you do? Any suggestions, ideas, invites ;-), recommendations would be greatly appreciated....