Soooo, It's Really 2010, Huh?

It has been a bit of a rough start to the year for me, at least mentally. It was a shocking transition from five wonderful weeks of travel and family to back at a desk for 77 hours a week. The island, while beautiful as ever, looks stunned from the big storms of December and darkness clings to it like a greasy film. I literally had not seen the sun until today, when its brief appearance prompted me to race home at lunch and take the bike out of the storage shed so I could take a ride into the pass after work - as you can see, the torrential rains have almost scoured away all the snow, even on the mountains.

2009 was nothing like what I planned, but everything I could have hoped for in many ways. Goldfish flew home for a couple weeks for family time and to get her wisdom teeth pulled (she is still as smart as ever); I flew to Idaho for a couple weeks to have shoulder surgery (it is healing nicely, they did a great job). On a whim, we attended an Open House by one of the members in Book Club, and ended up buying the house (REALLY did not see that coming, but we love it). My brother flew out to the island for a visit, and we went what I called our Second Annual Vacation of a Lifetime - a vacation we had planned well before buying a house and filling it with furniture, but that went pretty perfectly, despite everything.

For last years goals, I came up short on many - only 30 books read, way too few bike miles logged, and still chubby - but what a year! And although family time and seeing the sights was wonderful beyond belief, when our dear friend Elaine picked us up at the Unalaska airport and then pulled over by the lake on the way to our house to take a cell phone call, I sat and watched an adult eagle showing a small immature eagle how to bathe just 25 feet away and my heart smiled, it was good to be home.

So I'm back to blogging, it was a nice two week break (and because I blog to keep in touch with family, I found myself writing note cards and calling more in that two weeks, to fill the gap), but the island beckons and it is a new year, ripe with possibility. And besides - due to technical difficulties that are mostly my fault involving no batteries in the good camera and the wrong setting on the backup camera, I have no pictures worthy of next years calendar, so I need to find something else wonderful for January!

Cheers everyone, I'm looking forward to getting caught up on everyone's blogs. I had to go to comment moderation, unfortunately, due to a large volume of spam over the past couple months, spam I don't have the time to clean off as it is scattered over many older posts. Sorry!