2023

Spring has returned after the cold blast on Christmas so we've been walking through ice and mud all week. The neighbors next door invited me to Taco Tuesday at a local bar where they've established a weekly tradition that I was happy to participate in. The next day the dogs and I walked to the park and around the boro then returned to the couch for more snacking and more TV. I worried a little about all the things I could be doing instead so I wrote a list of ideas to get them out of my head and concluded that my idling these last few weeks has at last amounted to a vacation from this vacation.

I did return to work Thursday to help clean up the historical society building and pack up the decorations we put up for the open house last month. On my way out the member that recruited me gifted me the Marley doll that was setup in the same room as I and that has become one of my favorite seasonal pieces, now perched on my mantel next to this year's cards and above the stockings. I stopped at the car wash on my way home then stocked up on groceries. The wash was the most crowded I've seen it, and I lamented later that I didn't think to count the cars in line ahead of me. The sun was out and the air was warm so we walked some more after my errands.

I left the house early again Friday morning to drive up to visit Leo. I looped Challengers twice on the way there and Mass Romantic twice on the way back with no skips for either, though I did repeat Adventures in Solitude once. That was my number one play on Spotify in 2020, which had been a sort of anthem for the year of quarantine and grief-stricken isolation. I hadn't been streaming for the second half of 2022 but I logged in to check my wrapped list to reflect on the first half of the year. The top three songs were from In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, which I'd been playing the last time I went to see Leo in the summer, and the fourth was I Remember by bbno$, which I'd been playing on my way out of work. I stopped at his parents' on the way home then grabbed the dogs to meet friends for a hike around Prophecy Creek. We passed four or five dogs and splashed through the mud over an hour and change looping around the trails. The dogs and I hopped in the bath as soon as we got back then piled up for a nap on the couch. I went back out for a round with the same friends then visited another group to celebrate New Year's Eve Eve. We watched a recap of the year, offered toasts to our own reflections on it, played darts and Overcooked, and dished on our most and least favorite celebrities.

The rain returned Saturday so we spent the day inside preparing food and eating. I made nachos from the book I was gifted on Christmas with pickled onions, lettuce, tomatoes, black beans, walnut chorizo, queso, and sour cream. Everything was vegan and from scratch so the labor was an all day affair, but the result was decent and I've had leftovers for lunch since. I had the nachos that night with a bottle of Champagne friends had brought to the party two weeks prior. I used some of the winnings from the lottery tickets I was also gifted on Christmas to buy more tickets, one of which won another two dollars. I rolled a little fatty that I smoked while scratching the tickets then flipped through the network broadcasts. It was then I realized that it was the Illuminati who used their weather machine to send the rain to drive party goers inside onto sound stages to promote Paris Hilton on the meta-verse. We counted down to midnight and fell asleep watching performances by singers I didn't recognize.

After the rain came more sun on Sunday. The King of the Forest had also conspired for the occasion by coordinating park walks for the first of the year to lure us back off the Internet. We participated but carved out our own path then spent the evening horizontal.

Yesterday we met friends for a walk at Peace Valley, ironically named for the anxiety we toss into Lake Galena while away from work like coins into a fountain. New Year's Steve marks one of their dog's birthday, and a trip to Evansburg last year kicked off the annual tradition of hiking together to celebrate. The park was a little busy, which we conjectured was in part from resolutionists and in part from those squeezing the last drops out of their time off. We passed dog walkers, nature photographers, runners, and boaters. Whatever reasons attracted them might be lumped up with ours under one more layer of abstraction called gravity. Strengthened through the weighted exercise I returned to battle with Boost customer service emerging as the presumptive victor before tending to my normally scheduled Monday reset. We went to bed a little earlier than we have been lately, though I was restless through the night in a dream about Leo where we walked and talked about his absence, a ceremonial offering to two-faced Janus. We slept in this morning, then I read the paper and went out walking with the dogs around town.