The 43

No flashbacks tonight. No resolutions to share. No reflections on the past or the future. I'm just enjoying an easy night, waiting for midnight, doing some iTunes maintenance, and maybe having a beer later. Everyone else is asleep, though I might wake Wife up at midnight. All that said, Happy New Year! Bring on 2010.

I declared this to Wife a few days ago, and I'm reiterating it for everyone else -- this decade that is coming to a close was officially a blur. What brought the blur into focus was remembering working the night of Y2K -- 10 years ago. It doesn't seem that long ago. So what blurred this decade so brilliantly? Kids? 30s? Just being busier, trying to get through every day, week and month that we don't appreciate each day, week and month? I'm not sure. I just know the 1970s, '80s and '90s didn't zoom like this. Twenty years ago, celebrating New Year's Eve with some friends, I tried to explain the significance of the 1980s to them, each of whom were born in or around 1970. I wanted to explain how we defined ourselves by the previous 10 years, and how the '80s were what we knew best. Unfortunately, after several beverages, I didn't make as much sense as I wanted, starting off by saying "The last decade lasted 10 years ..." Twenty years later...

Yes, it's almost been two months since my last post, but I had a good reason -- I wrote a novel. I participated in National Novel Writing Month , which challenges would-be writers to pen 50,000 words in November. After years off wanting to write something beyond a short story, and after a few mis-starts, I did it -- I wrote 50,000 words in the form of a complete short novel. I haven't yet to read anything I wrote, giving myself a little more time before I delve back into it. And I really don't think I wrote anything that interesting, but in a way, that's not the point. I wrote a fictional book, fulfilling a lifelong dream. So, last month I poured all my creative efforts into the novel and didn't blog here. I have no excuse for December, but at least I started again before the end of the decade. See you soon.

Yes, the title says it all, I'm annoyed with winter and it's still fall. It snowed here in the Salt Lake Valley yesterday, and was in the 30s again today. Yes, it's supposed to warm up and feel like Utah autumn again, but the snow lost its novelty on me quickly, especially this morning when I had to brush the car off. I do like bundling up and going for walks when the weather is this brisk (and there is now snow to navigate -- fortunately, nothing really accumulated on the sidewalks), but that has been the only redeeming quality of this cold spell. That will wear off soon, too. I'm ready for next baseball season, even though this one hasn't finished (go Phillies, by the way).

Fall finally seemed to arrive in Salt Lake City. By this time each fall, I've already raked a few times, but this autumn was odd. The leaves weren't changing colors and falling off by mid-October. Well, just in the past few days, our maple turned red, our other tree's leaves went yellow, and suddenly, our lawn was full of leaves. I took the boys outside after dinner to rake, and in 10 minutes, we managed a big enough pile for Littlest to jump into. I don't mind raking every fall; in fact, I kind of look forward to it. I know some people curse their trees for the leaves, but I see it as the tradeoff -- the trees provide shade, scenery and oxygen, we rake in return. And, it's a nice sign of fall, even if it was a few weeks late.

We live in Utah, but our family are barely skiers. Wife went a few times in the first few years we lived here, and I went twice, taking lessons both times. Then we had kids and I haven't gone since. As I type this, I'm looking at the used pair of skis we bought Eldest. We've been promising he could try skiing for a couple years now, but we haven't taken him or signed him up for lessons -- falling into the same no-time trap that has kept us from going skiing. So, we bought the skis, thinking this would force us to get him started. Many of his friends his age already are skiing, and we know he'd love it, so we made the commitment by buying the used skis. We figure he'll be able to pass them to Littlest, though I'm not sure if Littlest will be as enthused (he's more of a climber than a speedster). And maybe, we'll go again, too. I took the lessons six years ago believing that I'm never going to get the opportunity to ski so easily (the resorts here ...

I took Eldest to a high school football game tonight. I'm not working Friday nights during the fall, and I haven't seen a game in a long time. Eldest has never seen a football game outside of what I try to get him to watch on TV. With early Saturday soccer games the next few weeks, tonight was the best night to go if we were going to see a game this season. When the game first started, Eldest was simply taking it all in, I think. Football might be one of the tougher sports to explain to a 5-year-old, so I don't know how much he understood, but he seemed to follow some of it. The game unfortunately was a bit of a snoozer -- the visiting team took a 35-0 lead by halftime, and we were sitting in the home bleachers. In the first quarter, we walked to get hot chocolate, and Eldest saw a souvenir table where glow sticks were on sale. For the next quarter and a half, all I heard was "Is it halftime" because I said we could maybe buy one then. After getting the glow brace...