Happy New 2024 Year From Alaska

Happy New Year! A new year, a new wall calendar. The theme of the 2023 wall calendar was The West.

As in scenes of the American West.

I'd seen many of those scenes of the American West. Such as Monument Valley, Canyonlands National Park, Badlands National Park, Cannon Beach on the Oregon coast, Glacier National Park and Dead Horse Point.

The theme of the 2024 wall calendar is National Parks. As in American National Parks.

I have been to Alaska, but not to Glacier Bay National Park, which is what you see above.

I think I have been to all the national parks west of the Mississippi. Except for the national parks in Hawaii and Alaska and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.

And Texas.

Have yet to make it to either of the Texas national parks. Big Bend National Park and Guadalupe Mountains National Park. 

Maybe I will make a New Year Resolution to finally visit Big Bend National Park... 

Happy New Year !

I found that which you see above in my email this morning of the first day of the New Year of 2023.

Sent by my Favorite Jason Nephew, who took a photo of his TV screen when Seattle's KOMO NEWS showed photos of the Final Sunbreaks of 2022, with one of those photos being a sunbreak lighting up Birch Bay.

Birch Bay is a shallow bay in Whatcom County, a short distance south of the Canadian border. Being shallow, the water of Birch Bay gets warm in summer when the sun heats up the sand at low tide, which heats up the water when the tide rolls back in.

The past two summers I have expected to be spending some time at Birch Bay. But little things like COVID have thwarted those plans.

I am now sort of expecting to be in Washington this coming summer of 2023, but am not too confident that there won't be something that once again thwarts being in Washington...

Happy Ice Free New Year So Far At My Texas Location With Me Not Being Manly Man Enough To Hike The Tandy Hills

In this view you are looking through the bars of my patio prison cell at a steaming hot tub where a few minutes prior to taking this picture I was having myself a mighty fine first day of the new year hot tubbing.

In the middle of the night when I heard my window being hit by what sounded like little pellets I thought the Ice Storm had cometh just as predicted, along with no morning hot tubbing being likely due to a too slippery walk to the hot tub's location.

However, upon the arrival of the sun, and its daily lighting duty, I quickly learned that the Ice Storm cometh not at my location.

Despite my temperature monitoring devices indicating the temperature was cold enough to freeze water, as in, 32 degrees, which remains the temperature.

Even now, hours after the sun's arrival, the only thing frozen at my location, that I am aware of, is in my freezer.

As has been the case every year since the turn of the century, I did not manage to stay awake til the arrival of the new year. When 1999 turned into 2000 I did manage to join the HUGE throng in downtown Fort Worth to do the countdown to the new century.

This is the first year in several years that I have not started off the new year resolved to get my hefty weight back under 200 pounds. At the start of 2015 I am already well under 200 pounds.

Near as I can remember I am pretty much resolution free at the start of this new year.

At the start of each new year I always notice an increase in the number of people getting exercise in the various parks I visit. That increase quickly dwindles as the New Year's Resolutionaries lose their resolution resolve.

I have not received any notification regarding the status of today's scheduled Manly Men Wild Women New Years Day Hike on the Tandy Hills.

Unfrozen water continues to precipitate at my location. I suspect this is also the case four miles to the west, on the Tandy Hills.

Anyway, anyone reading this I hope you will be having yourself a mighty fine Happy New Year.....

Frigid Happy New Year From Texas Without Manly Men & Wild Women Hiking

The temperature was a degree or two above freezing when I went for my first hydrotherapy session of the New Year of 2014, this morning.

Almost freezing, hence the combo hot tub and steam bath hydrotherapy.

(Miss Julie, please note my correct use of the hence word, thus proving I am teachable...)

This morning, on the Tandy Hills, the 5th Annual Manly Men & Wild Women Hike the Hills event is underway.

I attended the inaugural Manly Men & Wild Women Hike. I quickly found out I was not manly enough to keep up with the hiking speed demons who attend this event.

The Queen of Wink and Princess Annie were a Wild Woman (and Girl) at that first Manly Men & Wild Women Hike.

The Queen of Wink and Princess Annie were also quickly exhausted by the brisk pace, and so we discreetly absented ourselves from the grueling hiking to go on a much more slow paced drive around the D/FW Metroplex, eventually ending up at a Sweet Tomatoes in Arlington.

I am appalled that it is 5 years since I hiked the hills with the Queen of Wink and Princess Annie.

Time really does fly when you are having yourself a really fine time. I guess.

For 2014 I have no New Year's Resolutions of any novel sort. Just the regular type New Year's Resolutions, like lose 20 or 30 pounds, hoping the weight loss might rid me of those man boobs you see above, floating in the hot tub.

If I was not so overweight, carrying so much extra adipose tissue, I might have considered driving to the Tandy Hills this morning to go on the Manly Men & Wild Women Hike, with some hope that I might be able to keep up with the brisk pace....

Happy New Year From Texas

I am up after the sun, looking out a frosty 29 degree window at this first day of the New Year of 2011, which appears to have dawned with a bright blue clear sky.

I was greeted this morning with a message sent from Long Beach from the Scrabble Queen of Washington, telling me they got their razor clam limits on the last day of the Old Year and were having oysters from Wilkie Bay, crab cocktails and razor clams for their New Year's Eve dinner.

The Long Beach part made me homesick for the sound of big waves crashing on to a Pacific beach. And that seafood make my want seafood. I do not know where the nearest razor clam is in my current location, landlocked deep in the Heart of Texas.

My New Year's Eve Party went well. I was back in my domicile before the start of the New Year. I'm not a big fan of the whole ringing in the New Year thing. It really is just another day, with the calendar just an arbitrary passage of time recording device.

Well, it is time for my first swim of the New Year. It'll be a cold one.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Only 365 days til the new year. Only 20 more days til the world can breathe a sigh of relief, with the source of the sense of relief moving to my part of the world. Only 8 more days til my Mom and Dad are in my part of the world.

And here I am, up early in the new year, no hangover, having gone to bed early on New Year's Eve, with no resolutions for the new year.

I don't need to lose weight.

I don't need to exercise more.

I don't need to eat more fruits and vegetables.

I don't need to read more.

I don't need to watch less TV.

I don't need to have more fun.

I don't need to learn anything new.

I don't need to quit smoking.

I don't need to be a nicer person. (I couldn't get any nicer)

I don't need to blog more.

I don't need to do anything different, near as I can tell.

I guess I could stand to put on a few pounds. But I don't feel compelled to make a resolution about it.

Speaking of weight loss resolutions. Last night I was reading a particularly pretentious blogging about a person's New Year's Goals. This person was pondering a variety of possible goals. One of this person's ponderings was perhaps the possible goal of losing 100 pounds! 100 pounds!

I read that and thought, good gawd, if you are 100 pounds overweight you shouldn't need the start of a new year to motivate yourself to lose the blubber. I've heard of people making a resolution to lose that last 10 or 20 pounds. But, 100 pounds? If I lost 100 pounds I'd weigh 75. I'd be dead.

How can anyone stand to carry around that much blubber all the time? It is so unfathomable to me that so many people are that self-destructive. I used to know a morbidly obese person who easily weighed 600 pounds. She'd have to resolve to lose 450 pounds to get healthy. That'd take a lot of time, likely a multi-year resolution.

Anyway, it's the first day of 2009. I am not on a diet. I am going up to Lake Grapevine today. It is supposed to get to 72. I may go on a Polar Bear Swim this first day of the new year.