2008 Holiday Form Letter

To all who hoped that the demise of snail-mail would be the end of my photocopied Christmas letter, my apologies. The blogosphere makes it even easier to serve up the mundane details of the year. In fact, with Twitter and Facebook status updates sharing such breaking news as what we had for breakfast or what color pajamas we’re wearing, the digital era seems poised to deliver even more, not less, of the minutae that typically fills Christmas letters. 24/7, as they say.

It’s called progress.

So to faraway friends and family who received this year’s Christmas card, and its message that the annual paper holiday form letter has migrated to cyberspace, welcome. Thanks for taking the bait.

I’ll begin with Christmas 2007, and the absence of either cards or Holiday Form Letters from our house last year. Procrastinating as usual, I hadn’t yet begun the annual outreach when on Dec. 14 I slipped on the ice while taking Mr. James, the dog, for a walk. The result was two broken bones in my right wrist and several weeks of very slow typing and utterly illegible handwriting. Tom, who has written exactly one letter in all his nearly 58 years on the planet, declined to pick up the task, so that was that.

After three months of occupational therapy and adjustment to a new normal in right hand flexion and function, I can type again. And if you received this year’s Christmas card, take that as proof I can at least now write legibly enough for the Post Office to figure it out.

Otherwise, the highlights of our year (or at least mine) are mostly in these blog posts: our kitchen spruce-up that morphed into a two-month bank-balance-draining renovation project, my adventures riding the bus to work and sticking my toe in the waters of Web 2.0, my failed attempt to read War and Peace, a couple of updates about the kids.

You’ll see, if you choose to rummage through any of the posts, that as I approach the last few years of f-word birthdays, I’m trying to be better about appreciating the here and now, and finding lots to like, or at least blog about, in the moment.

If you lack the will to read on, I can’t say I blame you, so thanks for visiting, come back any time you dare or can't sleep at night. If you’d like a little chuckle, at least check out the link to the blog about unnecessary quotation marks - it's somebody else's, and it's "a hoot."

And know that in this time of hope, uncertainty and abounding bailouts, in this little corner of the world are a couple of geezers who wish you enough health to stay out of the hospital (or enough insurance to pay for it if need be)… enough fortune to feed your families and enough time with your loved ones to know that’s what matters the most.