Time for somebody to start a New Year’s diary.
Haven’t starting drinking yet. Honest! But I’ll start with a toast to 2014. Welcome aboard, 2014, I’m thoroughly sick of 2013. Even if the year does start with me drafted to work the holiday and five inches of snow with single digit temps are predicted. Hell, we’re the USPS! We don’t let a little snow stop us! That’s those little boys at UPS and FedEx. Uncle Sam is an abusive employer and we’ve got our share of goldbricks (so did the US Navy), but there is a pride in doing the People’s business, whether it’s shadowing Russian submarines or delivering a child’s birthday card. I’ll be sure to drink a toast to the men and women, in and out of uniform (no, not a double entendre) who work lonely hours so the People can sleep safely and get up warm and snug to curse those lazy gubmint workers. And one very special toast to my fallen brothers and sisters at NAVSEA, who, in the widest sense, gave their lives to the government that despised them.
But enough of Auld Lang Syne! Here’s to David who’s finally getting extended Medicaid from the President he so passionately cast his first vote for. And for Cindy, who finally had her baby son come home. Be careful what you wish for, Cindy. Here’s to Robert who finally wised up and got off the student loan treadmill. Here’s to Jacob, another new year in which to search for that special someone. And here’s to Stephanie, David’s special someone and the newest member of mia famiglia. I love it when you say, “Love you, Grandpa Tony”. I’m counting on you, girl, to give me my first great-grandbaby. Here’s to hoping that you name him or her, Tony or Toni. OK, you can wait until one of you gets a job. But not too long, I’m not getting any younger and as my own departed grandfather taught me, family doesn’t just come first, it’s everything. There is nothing else.
And finally, a toast to my friends at the Frog pond. Your much like family to me. I’d name names but would inevitably forget someone and make them blue. Keep the Faith! Even if I’ve lost mine. And to Booman! Last, but not least. Don’t let blogging get in the way of special time with Finn. They grow up so indecently fast.
Hey! I haven’t even started the alcohol! Time’s a wasting!
A toast to you, too. Slainte.
Salute!
A New Year’s toast and best wishes to you, family and the Booman frog ponders.
Thoughts are with the Antarctic dwellers (pinquins), uninvited guests hopefully stuck in ice for another 365 days and to the earth’s arctic, its rightful dwellers of polar bears, whales and Inuit. May a little ice age freeze over the North Pole for a few decades and keep its treasures hidden.
Craziness in this new age just doesn’t know boundaries. Mainstreet is asked to scrape a few millions for Middle-East refugees suffering through winter weather as the Syrian war continues and French president Hollande agreed to a $3bn deal with Saudi Arabia to supply arms to the Lebanese army. Pouring in money for arms in a region on a treacherous slope to ethnic/sectarian civil war.
.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, freedom for the Iron Curtain nations, who would have foreseen a former KGB leader being the protector of Orthodox Christians in the Middle East in 2013?
Skoal!
Bottoms up, vän!
Wish the end of 2013 would herald the end of the “Reagan Revolution.” Unfortunately, it looks more like we’re entering the thirty-third year of the gipper. Be happy the USPS has yet to be sold off to the highest bidder that would leave the workers either unemployed or earning half as much.