I finished spending a week with family and friends at home in Texas. The weather was warm enough to sit outside, and a single afternoon of guitar and lunch outside reminded me of all of the days I spent on the lawn for the last 22 years. While home, I ate a wide variety of food (but not any good Thai food) and gained an alarming amount of weight that I hope is simply in temporary storage. For New Year’s, old friends and I drove to a state park in Oklahoma. The cabin in the woods was under a clear panoramic of the night sky. I had forgotten there were so many stars up there, a vastness that doesn’t deserve to be so easily forgotten.

Today I am back in Portland and ready to work.

Last year was the best yet. Let this year be the same.