A New Year has Come !

Although I think they are very entertaining when other people make them, I'm really not much into making New Year's resolutions. Seems to me that they're mostly about denying oneself pleasures anyhow, and every year I get older I find myself thinking less about what I'm going to deny myself and more (MUCH more!) about what I am going to allow myself.

It was a glorious, cool sun-shiny winter morning here in Middle Tennessee today. Since it's Sunday, the one day of the week I don't have a lot of work waiting for me between morning and afternoon chores, instead of rushing around like a fool I took the time to fully enjoy the morning and being outside with the animals. For me, having warm sunshine on my face while working on a quiet, cool, still morning is more refreshing and rejeuvenating than any church service ever could be. This is especially true when I don't have to drive anywhere to experience it ! Melissa went to Lynnville in my place this morning, leaving me to tend the farm here by myself. My New Year's resolution is to allow myself the time to appreciate a lot more mornings like the one I just had.

My phone died on me on Friday so I am in the process of learning how to run the mini-computer that I replaced it with. I believe if I knew how to program it properly the consarned thing could likely replace the laptop on which I am typing this diatribe. But I don't know how ! Thankfully, today's interfaces are pretty easy to learn, even for dummies like me.

Back in the day I used to call computers.....*all* computers....a geeks revenge. While the rest of us were outside playing sports and farming and generally getting into trouble, all the sun-starved and sallow children of my generation sat inside with a lot of time on their hands. Eventually, all that free time must have warped their heads together somehow because at about the same time they all of 'em started inventing incomprehensible computer programming languages and difficult interfaces that confused all but the most intrepid of THEM ! Fortunately, twenty years later, we seem to have found some middle ground.

Happy New Year to each of you !