Last night we headed for bed just before midnight. The New Year’s Eve gunfire was like the opening battle scene in “Saving Private Ryan,” to the point that the dog followed us upstairs to cower by the bed. My wife asked me what my hopes for 2018 might be. She asks things like that. I hadn’t thought much about it, but the answer came pretty quickly: “To […]
Morning on the water
Today we took the kayaks out to Thomas Creek, which is as a good a way as any to start out a new year. Our friends Ryan and Jackie joined us for an easy paddle on glassy water, a four-mile round-trip under cloudy skies. Temperature was a little under 60 — a pleasant coolness I don’t experience often enough in this part of the country. We met […]
So much for Christmas
Here’s a sad sight on New Year’s Day: a fully trimmed Christmas tree taken out with the trash. I know some people get sick to death of holiday details, but wouldn’t you want to save some of those ornaments? No doubt there’s a story here that I really don’t want to know. As I’ve mentioned before: We live in an odd neighborhood.
Happy New Year. Even if it isn’t.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot? Probably not, but life goes on, you know? One of the few things I really loved about the movie When Harry Met Sally was Billy Crystal’s frank admission that he didn’t know what the hell “Auld Lang Syne” was supposed to mean. I don’t either. But if I’ve had a bit too much drink on New Year’s Eve — and that is […]
I recently had a heart attack
Remember that scene toward the end of Dr. Zhivago, when Yuri sees Lara out a trolley window and rushes after her, only to collapse in the street and die? Now that’s a heart attack. My own was less cinematic. It started as a dull ache high in the chest on the last day of 2012. The pain waxed and waned over the next couple of days. Because […]
For 2013, a few small repairs
New Year’s resolutions have a half-life of about 14 days. So you can’t make them just once a year and expect them to hold. You have to make the same ones every single day. Eventually, the resolutions become habits. And the habits become the sturdy lumber with which you build a better boat. Or so I’m told. The fact that I’m writing again about New Year’s resolutions […]
The guns of New Year’s
The New Year is happy so far: I am beginning it with no hangover. Last night we ushered out the old year by watching a lightly-attended showing of War Horse. Later at home we viewed brief snippets of the movies Charade and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. We opened a bottle of cheap bubbly but only sipped at it. Outside, the rattle of semiautomatic weapons started around […]