Happy Holidays

Just sitting here on Christmas eve. Family has all gone after opening presents and sharing a meal...Way too much food...but delicious. I was thinking it's was time to send holiday greetings to my readers. You've been faithful although I have not written much this past year. A New Year's Resolution...No. But I will try to do better. Off to the cabin after Christmas to spend six days with old friends. Eat, sleep, tell tales, watch movies. We've been doing this for forty years. Why stop now? I'll return to civilization on New Year's Eve. Unless we're snowed in.

Meantime all of you have a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I'll catch you in 2011.

Weather

With nothing else to talk about, should I talk about the weather? By chance this morning we were watching Canadian television, the one channel that we receive down here in the states. The weather news from the Maritime Provinces was pretty bad. Cape Breton and the eastern side of Nova Scotia were especially hard hit, with much rain, flooding and high tidal surges. Beaches are getting ripped away, a boardwalk through a wildlife refuge swamped. I am particularly interested in these things because I've been to many of the places the newsperson talked about.

And then my friend, Andy Porter, of jolly old Brooklyn, sent me a message about photos of the snow in Devon, England. Devon is one of my favorite places in England and I know it pretty well from a dozen trips there. The website can be found by googling "BBC E-mail Snow Across Devon" I found the photos very interesting. The Exe River is frozen. I've hiked along the Exe. The shingle beaches are covered with snow. I hope the people weather it well. The photos seem to indicate that they are taking it in stride.

We've had our bit of snow here in Seattle a week ago. We don't deal with it very well and it brings the city and environs to a crawl. We hope that it is finished for the year.

Terrible! Terrible! I haven't blogged for a month. Surely even an old guy should find something to say in a month. I've been catching up on reading other blogs. One such mentioned the writer's favorite CD for the year. I don't know that I could name my favorite but I've been listening to several good things in the last week or so. I felt in the mood for some vibraphone music and pulled out a Modern Jazz Quartet CD and listened to Milt Jackson. I decided to follow that up with other vibe players. Cal Tjader came next, then Gary Burton, then Lionel Hampton and Dave Samuels.

Recently I replaced my turntable. The old one went kaput. Now I have access to a rather extensive collection of LPs. Yesterday I suddenly had a yearning to hear some Atlanta Rhythm Section, a rock banmd from Doraville, GA in the 70s. Fun to hear them once more in a live concert. The record is called Are You Ready?

Well, that's it for now. At least I've put down a few words. Maybe I'll write more often if I select mundane topics.