:( Yes, I'm really home alone. Wife is in Minneapolis tending to her mother and stepdad, and daughter is at her friend's house getting ready to ring in the New Year. Before there are too many sobs of sympathy, understand I've been invited to go out to a neighbor's for an impromptu NYE party and I intend to go. But I also carefully planned parts of my evening beforehand. Yesterday I bought a Porterhouse steak, a baking potato, and a bottle of one of my all-time favorite Grand Cru Saint Emilions. I'm halfway through the bottle, have had a perfectly cooked steak and ate the whole huge potato and salad. I still have ice cream, hot fudge, and a decadent chocolate brownie to go, along with my coffee.

While eating dinner, I watched "The Bucket List" with Jack Nicolson and Morgan Freeman. I'm still a little weepy. The ending caught me entirely by surprise. I figured it was a great idea to start the New Year by thinking about my bucket list. I haven't started writing it yet, but I will. When I think about what the New Year might bring, I am scared shitless. My job has been reduced to what I used to do on weekends. It won't survive any enforced cuts and there have been tons of rumors about that. I've been hunting at the office, but the list of possible jobs gets shorter every day. Hopefully there will be something right after the holiday. The one I really wanted was managing the Giving Campaign, but they had a lot of candidates that were "better qualified" than me, so I didn't make it past the first round of interviews. Everything else has been pretty bleak.

The listing on our house expired tonight. It's been on the market for four months and nary a nibble. We've had houses picked out that we'd like to move to, but without a sale of this one there is no move. We've got enough to make it for a year if I'm unemployed, but that will only see my 60th birthday and it's not the greatest age to be looking for new work. Well, here's hoping that something comes up at the office.

On the bright side, the family will spend a month in Italy along with my daughter's best friend and her family. We'll be a week in Milan and Venice, then I've rented a villa in Umbria for three weeks. I may not come back if I like Italy as much as I think I will. We'll also be taking the first week of February to go to the ISU 4 Continents championships in Vancouver. The tickets are bought and the condo is reserved (exchange), so all we need is transportation and food. Hope that will make up for not getting to all the Olympics in 2010. We still haven't heard if we got any of our tickets in the lottery for that one.

I've started writing (in pencil on a paper journal) my concepts and questions regarding "Gutenberg's Other Book." It is fun to be doing some work on a creative venture like that. I've gotten many of the facts down, but I don't really have the story or the voice yet. That's what prevented me from writing it in November. I chose the "easy" route of doing a sequel to "Stn George & The Dragon." If you'd like to read the story that I redid for the guy who won naming rights, it is at http:///www.nwesignatures.com/blog/DisenchantedEvening.pdf. This is a special download in PDF that you can read and enjoy (I hope). I want to start recording the audio book for both Stn George and for "For Blood or Money", but I haven't been able to find my backpack with the recorder in it. I'm sure it must be here someplace. It wasn't in my office. I checked there this afternoon.

Speaking of the office, I went in this afternoon to make a couple of last minute donations and get them matched. I just did 15 hours of work on a new Web site for the skating club (http://www.kingsgateskatingclub.org) and I got it all matched for the club. MS matches volunteer hours at $17 per hour. Had a terrible time getting the links to work, but finally got a design that worked. Not happy with parts of it, but I'll make some more changes before I do the rest of the pages. So far I've just done the graphics and design for the home page. Pretty cool, though, that they'll get another $225 or so for the work I put in. That will just about pay for the hosting of the site. I want to do more of that this year. I'm going to try to make recordings, for example, for fundraising events. That might get something up and going. Maybe serve on a board. Regardless, it should be fun.

I bought a chainsaw yesterday. Put on jeans and just need a plaid shirt and a navy stocking cap. The storms here took out several huge branches from the trees in my backyard and the only way I'm going to get them moved is to cut them up. Just couldn't face doing it with a buck saw. So, tomorrow, I'm celebrating the New Year with a chainsaw! After I've ferried the daughter around to all the activities she is intending. I'd like to see one of several movies that are out, as well.

Well, that is my NYE rumination. Sorry there wasn't much profound in it. Hope you all have a great and successful New Year and that it brings you peace and joy!