Happy 2017!

Happy New Year! This New Years Eve was the first one in several years that I skipped First Night. We had company arriving right around the time I would have had to leave to get into Boston, and looking at the schedule, there wasn’t much I wanted to see. The whole event has become rather anemic; besides the fireworks, there was only one event I wanted to see, the organ and brass performance at Old South Church. Given that, I decided to skip it.

For some reason, the number 2017 is weirding me out a little. The last two digits are getting big enough to force home the point that we’re really in the 21st Century. (So where’s my hover car?)

I’ve been off the past week, but I’ve been experiencing some health issues that kept me pretty close to the house most of the week. After the snowfall up north Thursday, I decided to head up to Windblown Friday, despite the fact that my back still isn’t feeling great. It was a good decision; I did about 3 miles on touring skis before the battery in my phone died and the GPS tracker stopped. I had a great time, and in fact, my back felt better the next day. I guess my body is telling me it needs more exercise.

Today, we had Christmas part II at our house. My two sisters came, and we exchanged gifts with that part of the family. I got my nephew a watch, and it looks like he liked it. Tomorrow, the tree comes down. It’s been a pretty good tree – it’s starting to dry out a bit now, but it’s held its needles pretty well. Looking at it in the afternoon light – today was the first day in a while that it’s been sunny – a couple of the ornaments caught my eye, so I took pictures of them for possible future use.

I saw this post on Brent Simmons’ blog last week, which fits my feelings exactly:

If 2016 was a tough year for a number of reasons, it was tough especially because we agreed to hand a machine gun to a monkey.

So we can all agree that we’d like to put 2016 behind us. Good riddance to a bad year.

The problem is that 2017 is the year that the monkey pulls the trigger.

I am still deeply worried about Trump. Probably more so than I was right after the election. Nothing he has done since the election has reassured me.