New Year | Snorkeling the ABC Islands

After a difficult three-stage series of flights home from Aruba, we arrived in Seattle to no snow! I think this is the first time in six trips that we’ve done that. Seems every year, we’d take a trip around Christmas, and come home to snow. Not so this year. We grabbed the car, crossed the border and picked up Max, the wonder dog. Usually he’s a bit annoyed with us, and gives a good barking to, to let us know. This year, he was pretty eager to see us, and gave us only a bark or two of greeting while the gate was closed, and then came running over. It was a nice reunion.

Christmas was quiet, as Pam worked the 24th, 25th, and 26th. While there, she picked up the new strain of flu going around, that the head of the BC Centre for Disease Control says makes “You feel like you’ve been hit by a truck.” And trust me, she is not kidding. A couple days after Pam picked it up, I got nailed, and we’ve been struggling to just sit up since!

For basically a week, we struggled to do anything other than lay down and sleep, getting up to be sick, or let Max out. Today is the first day I’ve been able to actually sit up for longer than twenty minutes without getting dizzy and nauseous. Another couple of days, and we should be back to normal, whatever that might be for us!

Hope you all are having a healthier start to the New Year! Best wishes to you all!

(I’ve got a couple other things to post about our trip to Aruba, so hopefully I’ll get to them sooner, rather than later.)

New Year’s Eve day has dawned cold again. The snow is still hanging around in big dirty piles, like so much laundry. The rains have come to take some away, but the drifts are still several feet high on the lawn. We have a small patch of green showing! ha – spring is coming.
Here is a picture I took of some ice crystals. It struck me as interesting when I took it, now not so much… guess with coffee comes cynicism.

2008 was a difficult year for a lot of people. It’s hard to wish people Happy New Year this year, but it seems this year especially it’s more important to do so. Because I truly hope 2009 is a better year for you all.

I hope there is less war and killing and dying. Enough of our soldiers dying in countries we know so little about, for reasons we seem to care less about, as the world economy teeters on the brink of collapse. We pour billions into war – enough of it already. Let’s try half that amount on peace instead.

I’m glad to see 2008 recede away into the past…. let the pundits begin to peck at it’s carcass. It was a rotten year in a lot of ways.