Happy New Year!

Goodbye, 2023!

On New Year's Eve we finally had a little snow overnight, just enough to cover the icy glaze on the driveway and patio. I finished up a few end-of-year tasks before shoveling the driveway for the first time this season. There was too little snow for the neighborhood plow and it felt good to be out in the cold for even a short time. As always, I felt happy at the prospect of new geginnings in a new year.

• After being very healthy during the worst of COVID, I fell back into my old upper respiratory virus winter routine beginning in January. It was a really bad year for me for coughs and colds. As I write this, I'm recovering from yet another bout of feeling absolutely terrible for several weeks.
• I cleared more snow last winter season than I had since I was in Grade 9 in the winter of 1964-65. That year I had recklessly agreed to shovel our house steps and walkway, front and back, using a heavy steel shovel. The snow stuck to the shovel and the winter seemed interminable, much as it did last year.
• We went back to the Space Coast of Florida for two weeks in March. We stayed in a condo with a beautiful partial view of the Atlantic. The pool was great and so cold at the beginning of our stay tha, predictably, I was the only one using it.
• I began work as a teaching assistant at St. Croix Catholic School in Stillwater. I help Caroline Bauer with 3rd, 4th and 5th grade music classes one day a week. Some days are grueling and I'm glad I don't work fulltime anymore.
• I sing in the choir at Guardian Angels Church in Oakdale. This is the church my beloved father-in-law, Harold Hennessey, attended before the "new" church was built in the 80s. It's also where I attended confirmation classes with Bob's granddaughters Angie and Dana, so the church always seemed somewhat familiar to me. I love choir. The members were very friendly to newcomers like me and one woman was particularly welcoming and kind. Now, almost four months in, I happily take my seat in the alto section on Thursday evenings and most Sunday mornings.
• The Wild and Vikes both lost their games, to the Jets and Packers, respectively. Let 2024 begin well for both teams.

Welcome, 2024!

In my hometown of Temiscaming New Year's Day always seemed cold and grey. I usually went to early Mass "to get it out of the way" and remember sitting in St. Theresa's Church feeling overheated and itchy. The pastor, Monseigneur Latourelle, would give a variation of the same homily every year and we always sang the same song:

Mon Dieu bénissez la nouvelle année

Rendez heureux nos parents, nos amis

Elle est toute à vous et nous est donnée

Pour mériter le Paradis. 

Pour mériter le Paradis. 

I enjoyed watching the Rose Bowl parade on our black & white TV and made a resolution to attend the Rose Bowl in Pasadena someday -- one that I haven't yet kept but I still watch the parade, so beautiful on the large, high-pixel TVs we have now. When I was a teenager, I often went skiing on this day and in my twenties, during a time when I liked to party, I decided that New Year's Eve was NOT a good night to go out. I got into the habit of going to bed early so that I could wake up clear-headed and energetic on New Year's morning.

Bob is pretty much in agreement with my on the revelry issue so we rarely venture very far on New Year's Eve and "partying" is limited to one drink for him and a couple for me. Today, I hope to deliver our grandson Johnny's third birthday present, a parking garage so that he doesn't have to appropriate (read "steal") his sister's doll house to park his vehicle collection.

Happy New Year! May 2024 be the year we see peace in Ukraine and the Middle East.