Happy New Year!

I haven't been blogging much lately because of the holidays, a personal vacation, and a concentrated push to complete a handful of other writing projects... But I think that's all pretty much past, now -- so I'm looking forward to more regular maintenance of this space in the coming year...

Christmas was spent in Florida this year, and it was lovely. I really enjoyed the opportunity to experience a siginificantly greater exposure to sunshine... and to family (my Mom's whole side of the family congregated on Siesta Key, on the Gulf Coast, for a three-day reunion). The weather wasn't all fabulous frolicking in the sun and surf -- but it was a whole heck of a lot better than the weather in Amsterdam. For those who would like to see pictures, I've posted a bunch on my Facebook page (which can also be accessed by non-Facebookers). Just go to the album entitled Christmas in Florida, to see how the holidays and vacation part of things went.

New Year's, then, was spent on an airplane -- flying back from Orlando to Washington to Amsterdam. I'm not exactly sure where I entered into 2011 (since there's an unusual dynamic of racing to meet the sunrise, out over the Atlantic)... But I really did spend some time doing some amateur calculations on this -- and the best I can figure, I was about a third of the way between the southern tip of Greenland and the western shore of Iceland, when our plane passed over from 2010 to 2011. Here's my pinpointed map of the location:

The first day of 2011 has thus been a day of getting our house back into working order and caring for two jet-lagged kids (Elliot and Olivia are with me now, while Marci and Cor don't come back until the middle of next week). So far, I can't complain. Even with the typical unpleasantries of jet-lag and post-vacation ennui, 2011 seems to be off to a pretty decent start...

The one thing that I will be particularly interested to follow up on in the coming year is some of the writing projects that I've been working on lately. Most notably, the Proverbs 365 project has now officially come to a close -- the figurative dossier stocked with 365 installments of short fiction, essays, and personal anecdotes collected over a year's worth of daily meditations -- still, I have high hopes for what it all might become in the long-term... so stay tuned, here, for further review, analysis, and announcements about the future of this project (among others).

In any event, I'm looking forward to the year to come. I hope the same is true for you, anticipating much pleasure and/or productivity in 2011... Happy New Year!