The winter solstice occurs when either of Earth’s poles reaches its maximum tilt away from the sun. This is the day with the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year, and when the sun is at its lowest daily maximum elevation in the sky. It marks the symbolic death and rebirth of the sun; the gradual waning of daylight hours is reversed and begins to grow again.

I have chosen this day to share our year in review, starting on last winter solstice and carrying it through to today.

  • Sold our condo over the Christmas break
  • Helped my brother visit my dad for the first time in a really long time
  • Went to New Zealand (not just because of Lord of the Rings and Maori, but a lot because of that)
  • Moved to London, Ontario (away from some friends and closer to other friends)
  • Got a treadmill again since we have space
  • Figured out the basic 3 km route for morning walks (still working on a 5 km route)
  • Learned where most of the free chargers are in town
  • Got bird feeders (piles of them) and a bat house. The time from seeing the first oriole to getting the oriole feeder was less than one hour… we can stop any time they let us.
  • Planted an herb garden
  • Proved that nothing in London is more than 22 minutes away (mostly by driving back and forth across the city for fun)
  • Barbecued stuff… it’s fun being able to do that again after 6 years of condo living!
  • Watched an osprey hunt in the pond outside my home office window
  • Watched a blue heron catch a 14” trout on a flooded pathway from our back porch
  • Found the okay Legion and the good Legion
  • Took the Via train in to work in Toronto a few times (I’m thinking commuting isn’t for me, because the trip home takes 1 to 2 hours longer than the trip in, which was already too long)
  • Conducted a short turf war on the back porch with a family of seven racoons (none of whom were named Rocket)
  • Lost Helen and Eric one month apart from each other
  • Lost my dad
  • Watched movies at the Mustang Drive-in (Barbie was soooo worth it!
  • Visited Port Stanley as part of our transition from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron
  • Made an offer on a house in London (a rather extreme reaction to yet another condo fee increase)
  • Scattered my dad’s ashes
  • Visited Goderich (while Lake Huron isn’t our lake, it’s nearby, and much more importantly, Cowbell Brewery is fun)
  • Did Tesla club meetings including a drive in the countryside and an afternoon at a winery
  • Moved my grandmother to a hospice
  • Lost my grandmother and got to see the remaining members of the family for the first time in far too long
  • Decorated a garage with racing stripes, epoxy flooring, and Tesla branding
  • Figured out where to get the good cannolis (Angelo’s)
  • Listened to my brother-on-law in concert (and bought his first blues album)
  • Joined a bunch of pickup hockey leagues (ordered a set of Huff and Puff jerseys and leggings)
  • Closed up my grandmother’s house and transported enough paintings across provincial borders to open my own McMichael Gallery
  • Found a lump that turned out not to be cancer (woo hoo!)
  • Used a laundromat for the first time in decades (and eventually got our new washer and dryer, so we stopped going to Tommy Suds also)
  • Put our names on the waiting lists of a bunch of family doctor (it’s like a lottery, you can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket)
  • Seen our first London Knights hockey game
  • Punched a hole in the beautifully-decorated garage to bring a 2,500 pound steel I-beam into the house because no one could figure out a better plan… that thing is supposed to be supporting a small apartment building, not our wee house
  • Renovated three floors of the house (mostly, sort of, ish… we hope to finish in January, cause right now we’re still playing with missing bits of walls, floors, ceilings and so forth and the fridge is in the garage and I cook on a hotplate in a bathroom that never got to be used as a bathroom)
  • Finished a bunch virtual walking challenges (still grinding my way through a Game of Thrones-themed set)

We’re hanging in there. Parts of this are working great. Parts of this are a hot mess. Time for another trip around the sun.