We’re now in the home stretch – six days left in 2021 including today. What a year!

Today is the last day here for our guests. It’s been a marathon of cooking, cleaning and chatting. But it’s been good. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that the good things and people in life should not be taken for granted. Seize the day…

In spite of COVID, we managed to do some traveling:

• Kentucky, ten times (!)
• Hawaii, the Big Island
• Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
• Seattle, for a very short weekend
• New Orleans (just me, golf trip)
• Oakmont, PA (another golf trip)
• Pagosa Springs, CO
• Napa Valley, CA
• Gardnerville, NV

The breakthrough was getting vaccinated and feeling OK-ish about flying again. Looks like we’ll go through a similar cycle this coming year, as we sit January out to see what the latest variant does in terms of travel risk. I fully expect another good travel year in 2022.

There was a lot of tragedy this year, beyond the millions of COVID deaths worldwide. Modern media and communications systems make it possible for us to hear about any/all tragedies across the globe, and the net effect is that we get numb to it. Every day we hear stories about a hundred people dead here, another dozen there, thousands upon thousands homeless and hungry. Another species extinct, hundreds more endangered. They become statistics and fail to summon up our empathy. I don’t know what the solution to this is, other than to define your tribe, your circle of friends and family, and take care of each other. The bigger the circle you can define and support, the better.

On a happier note, the rains have finally come to Socal. We’ve had about three inches of rain this week, with more on the way. The decades-long drought isn’t over, but in the short term the plants and I are happy.

Finally, according to WordPress I’ve written over 63,000 words in 2021 on this blog. That’s about 2/3 of a normal-length novel. I’ve got a lot of work to do in 2022 if I want to do both.