A late thanksgiving

Snippets of conversation with people you will never see again. Recommending books to strangers while waiting for luggage at an airport. The infinitesimal connection you feel with someone when you realize that they also love to bury their noses in a book.

Recapping the past year, there were so many trips, so many new places. Museums at Washington DC, Afghani food in Maryland. Watching others gamble at Reno and driving around Lake Tahoe. Revisiting Universal Studios, zipping past Highway 1 breathing in the air from the sea, and getting burned on the beach. Yosemite in the last dregs of winter, Aspen in autumn. Started off the year in New York, drove ATVs over sand dunes, hiked to a bunch of places. Got a motorcycle license, but never managed to get one for my very own. So many plans made and forgotten about.

Discovered geocaching, flew an aircraft and threw up mid-air. Made multiple trips to San Francisco, had camping adventures and visited the lovely Khushboo in Milan. Drove her nuts dragging her forcibly from one place to the next, managed to get directions to a teensy hidden bookstore in Italian - the small victories.

Experimenting with my new camera as the year waned, participating in multiple secret santas and attending more birthday lunches and dinners than I can count and completing my Goodreads goal. I'm sure many significant events have been left out, but this is my way of giving thanks, counting my blessings and being sappy.

Vagaries

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine. - Milan Kundera

Even if you don't plan to read the entire book, at least read the first page of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Then, ping me. To put such a universal concept into such powerful prose makes for arresting reading.

I'm off to Milan soon. Off to traipse through the canals of Venice and sit at cafes and imbibe copious quantities of limoncello. To spend hours on the train gossiping with Khushboo, to shop and to get more stamps in my passport. To forget about life for a while.

All this anticipation, for all of three days! A huge chunk of my day goes in living out my vacation before it even begins. I can already smell the post vacation blues.

As the fiscal year closes, here is some obligatory complaining about tax forms and all it's associated fanfare. Moan, whine, moan. Why do we have to grow up so fast. Time runs merrily along assuming that we can keep up, while people like me, hardly athletic, stumble and clutch at our asthmatic inhalers of youth, hoping to catch up.