Auld Lang Syne

At last. We've reached the final day of 2008. There are a few exceptions, but I think most of us will be quite happy to see '08 over and done with.

Some things were good. I made some new friends, both in the blogosphere and in real life. I lost a cat but gained two more. My wife and I got over a little crisis that unexpectedly popped up a couple months ago.

In 2009 ... well, who knows? I want to visit some friends and see some new places. I always say that, don't I? Whether I make it happen this year remains to be seen. The biggest impediment is the demands that my job puts on me. And I must say, just having had another birthday, that I'm looking forward to/hoping for less work and more free time in the future. Read that however you want.

Our plans for tonight are extremely quiet. Maybe we'll watch a movie. Maybe we'll go out for supper. We'll probably watch the ball drop at Times Square (at 11 p.m. local time) and then head upstairs to end the new year right. Most likely we'll be asleep by the time 2009 actually starts.

Sooner or later they will play Auld Lang Syne, and I will get nostalgic about friends who have ... gotten away from me. Friends who are out there somewhere -- somewhere I don't know. Somewhere over the rainbow.

In many cases, it's not due to a falling out or illness or even death. It's due to efx2's ongoing problems over the last two years. Several times efx2 had seemlingly gone down for the last time--but a couple weeks later, it was back up and running (after a fashion). Backups were lost. How many times have we had to restart/reogranize our blogs here? A new efx2blogs.info was formed. Haven't heard a progress report on that for some time now.

Along the way, many gave up and either set up sites at Blogger or Vox or Facebook or elsewhere ... or else simply gave up on blogging altogether. It's understandable, if unfortunate.

So as I hear Auld Lang Syne this year, I'll be thinking of Squilla and Zarafa and Honeychild and Honeyvizer and Miss_T and grnidlady and Vampyre and a few others who don't write so often any more. I think about them as lost friends, and I wonder what they are doing and how they are doing, and I wish that, wherever they are, that they are happy.

Because they were dear to me. And I miss them.

****
We got back home from a fast trip to Oshkosh late yesterday afternoon. In all, we were gone for only 26 hours or so.

We got away much later than planned Monday afternoon, finally driving south as still another cold front blew into the area. Hardly any snow was falling, but a lot of it was blowing around and around, from west to east--crosswise, from right to left, as I drove. One section of road (which works well as a shortcut most of the time) was icy because snow had been drifting across it and was mashed down by car tires. Some places were just plain icy, and we had to cut our speeds accordingly.

For that reason, we didn't get to Oshkosh until about 6 p.m. Then things happened quickly. S, her husband and her 4-year-old grandson came to the motel, and we left for a restaurant with a big buffet selection. We ate well. Yumm.

From there, we went to the motel, changed into swimsuits and enjoyed the motel's pool for an hour or so. We started in the pool, then went to the whirlpool. (The last time we had been together, back in August, we were camping at a small farm and didn't have to bother with swimsuits.)

At first we were the only people there. Then, a big group of high school kids--30 or 40 of them--invaded. Several busloads of kids were at the motel, too. For a while, I shared the whirlpool with four or five nubile young ladies. But that was about the time we had to go back to the motel room. S, her husband and the grandchild changed clothes and left.

We rejoined them (minus the grandson) on Tuesday morning at their house, for breakfast. A nice meal--omelettes, bacon, toast and a homemade Orange Julius. We met their newest cat, who seems to be bipolar. He can be very sweet when you hold him, but he also is a little devil--very destructive, according to S. He used to be called Helen Wheels. Then they discovered she was a he, so now he's officially known as Trouble.

We exchanged some gifts. S gave us cookies and other baked treats. We gave them some blueberry muffins and poppyseed cake that my wife made. I gave S's husband a Three Stooges DVD set--we have many similar tastes, and the Stooges are one of them.

The overriding issue was the weather. I had resigned myself to facing some weather problems--yet another system was blowing through Wisconsin. It left about an inch of snow on my car overnight, but it seemed to be moving away Tuesday morning--no snow was falling as I drove to their place and no snow was falling later as we drove back north towards Green Bay and then Iron Mountain. Packerland was quiet with very light snow. It snowed harder about 40 miles north of Lambeau Field, but just for maybe a half hour--we drove out of it as we got closer to Iron Mountain. We arrived back home about 5 p.m.

At about 6:30, I called S to let them know we were back home safely. She reported they were having a blizzard back at their place.

****
To start the new year, we plan to sleep late, watch the Rose Parade from Pasadena and then the outdoor hockey game between the Red Wings and Blackhawks from Wrigley Field. That ought to be cool!

Nothing more to say this year except this: Despite everything that seems to be happening with the economy, I hope all of you have a happy new year and that 2009 will be better to you than 2008 was.