2013

Happy New Year!!

I hope everyone had delightful holidays, and were able to enjoy friends, family, and food without overindulging in any of them. I have to say that my entire break was blissful, despite my complete and utter failure to accomplish anything on my to-do list. I had developed grand plans for extended exercise, draconian housecleaning, and unbridled poetic creativity throughout the last weeks of 2012...but alas, none of these came to pass. As those who know me well could probably predict, I ended up with a plethora of uncompleted projects strewn about my life and my living room. I started out really well, but there simply aren't enough days between Christmas and New Years to get everything finished. (Especially if you throw in unscheduled naps, spontaneous lunches with the kids, and a few movies that you didn't intend to watch but somehow got sucked into. Sigh.)

Tanner arrived on Christmas Eve, and did an excellent job of pretending that he wasn't completely mortified to be spending time with his parents. He played music for us (I'll post a video in a few days), showed us some of his latest accomplishments in his new chosen career field (computer programming), and was a continual delight to have around.

After Christmas, Tanner's mom threw a party to celebrate Tanner and Caitlyn being in Denver. I made cinnamon rolls, which went really well with the chili and bacon-wrapped sausages that were featured as the main course. Tanner entertained the crowd with Christmas Carols, and he and Caitlyn led an old-fashioned sing-along that sounded pretty darn good (considering the amount of wine that had been consumed.)

As for the remainder of my holiday break, well, I would love to bore you with the inconsequential details, but I'm trying to follow some blogging wisdom that's been shared with me: Keep it short. Ergo, I'm going to summarize a few things, throw in another photo or two, and call it a day.

First, here's a picture of me with Tanner and Caitlyn. They are actually a delightfully charismatic couple, but the photo was taken at about noon, which means they weren't yet fully awake.



The photo was taken with one of the Christmas presents I received, a groovy Nikon DSLR camera. My other presents included a blender (for making healthy smoothies as part of my "stop being such a lazy fat guy" program), a TV antenna (so I can stop paying for cable), and some luxurious sunscreen skin lotion (to keep me young and radiant forever). And though they weren't strictly considered Christmas presents, I also received a couple of guitar amplifiers, a mic and mic stand, and an extra 5-octave keyboard. (OK, those already belonged to either myself or Tanner, but had been in the custody of various band members for the last couple of years. We decided to keep them at my condo so that when Tanner is ready for them, we can get them back into his musically gifted hands.)

As for New Year's Resolutions, well...I'm still thinking about that. One thing is that I'm planning to separate my "Day in the life" musings from my obnoxious geek trivia -- so be expecting an entirely new blog site where you can go to test your 1970's TV and movie knowledge. This site, then, should feature more comments about athletics and training, as well as all the political philosophy and general life wisdom you've come to expect from your street-saavy host. Other resolutionary stuff includes the goal of a comeback marathon, participating in some interesting swim competitions, and a few vague dreams of doing something that will put me in situations where I'm somewhat more likely to meet a slightly nerdy hot athlete chick to hang out with (suggestions are welcome.) I will also scan through the archives and see whether I made any resolutions for 2012, and will report on their status if they do indeed exist.

For now, though, I shall leave you with some other random photos from the holiday break. Enjoy, and have a great start to the New Year!