See, What Happened Was (A toast to '24 - bet it's shorter than last year's)

 

Good riddance, '24 (and yet - we'll miss you)

Here we go again. It's time to toast the passing of another year. If you're unfamiliar with how this goes, see the 2023 and 2017 and 2013 versions. Not sure why I must always wait until the New Year is just a couple hours away, but it is what it is. Hey - maybe the limited time will motivate me to be brief! We can only hope.

Here's to January, another blur of year-end gift processing heroics by yours truly, conducted in the quiet offices of Beloved Employer, in the fashionable West End of Washington, DC. It was exceptionally cold. Then it was SEVENTY, and all the Metro platforms turned to weirdly-slippery death traps, for a couple of days. You should have seen DC's subway commuters, shuffling along like Tim Conway's old man persona in a desperate attempt to remain upright. It was less fun than it sounds.

Cheers, 70-degree January evening!

There was some cooking, as well. Here, because I thought they looked pretty...

Korean veggie lettuce cups. Pretty, non?

Here's to February. Cheers. Yay, February.

My tree! Look what you've done to my tree!!

Here's a sad fact. February 19th was the last time I posted to my poor neglected bloggy space. At least it was a HOBO STORY.

No cheers for March. I lost a water heater and another of my beloved uncles. Yeah, we had the Madness, but it was a bit meh. Better luck next March...

Big cheers to April, though! [Maris] and I trekked to Lake Erie, where we photographed lighthouses for the first time in 13 years - and covered bridges after an even longer drought. We also hung out with family from all over, and oh yeah - there was a total solar eclipse...

I'm ready!

No photos will ever do justice to the experience of witnessing this with one's own eyeballs, but here's what the old Nikon saw...

See ya in a few, sun...

[gasp]

I'll have a corona, thanks.

See? It's all downhill from there. Trust me - it is. Cheers to May for baseball, a nephew's hope-filled high school graduation, and a teeny turtle...

Let's lose to the O's in 12!

What the hell, man? Put me down!

I don't remember anything about June, except that we had a little outbreak of weak Maryland and Virginia tornadoes, and they were too close for comfort. So, no toast for you, June.

Mostly cheers for July. The Olympics were fun. Helping a relative move for the third time in five years was not. Biden dropping out of the election put a bit of a charge into a lot of people. DC was kind of abuzz, really. Otherwise - hazy, hot, and humid.

Cheers, August. You too were hazy, hot, and humid. 

"It's too freakin' hot - even on the white part of the car."

September. meh. Thanks to [Maris]'s employer, we got to experience ballpark amenities to which we're hardly accustomed - and a great view of our scrappy young rebooting Nats...

...and keep 'em comin'

Still not really baseball, to me, but fun!

Predictably (unless you don't know me - hi, I'm Joe!), I can almost always raise a glass to October, because OBX gluttony and sloth vacations are the BEST...

First, fancy drinks. Food not pictured.

Don't wake me for sunrises that don't look like this.

I fell asleep again. What day is it?

Visible aurora in Kill Devil Hills, NC. WHAT??

Mostly, November can just go eff off and die. It knows what it did. Even if I was utterly ignorant of politics and democracy and autocracy and oligarchs and all that stuff - to feel the energy in DC on the 5th, versus every day since is just criminal. We'll see how it all unfolds. As Yoda said, "Always in motion is the future." *sigh*

Finally, let's give December her due. Here's to you, final month of 2024. We got all kinds of busy with trees in convertibles (they know me at the fire station, now), and we took [Maris]'s gnomes to work, and we rocked out with our old friends the Trans-Siberian Orchestra...

Sometimes it's unseasonably warm for this. Not so, today.

First Class, all the way...

"Morale here must be through the roof!"

"Get some big donations - we wanna ring the bells!"

Trying to match Chris' energy...

A lot like the eclipse, it's hard to adequately photograph.

((devil horns for these two on the cranes))

That's all, folks. Raise a glass to 2024. Whether you're saying "good riddance," or "OMG you're gonna look like paradise, a few weeks from now," cheers to you, and you, and you - wherever you are. Enjoy yourself - it's later than you think.

And I'll leave you with these gentle reminders...

(probably)

"We're ready. Keep your hats pointy, everyone!"

Good Night, and Happy New Year!

See, What Happened Was... (A Toast, Probably A Short One)

Here's to you, 2023. You could have been worse.

I've done this sort of post several times before, so I guess it's a tradition, at this point. My favorites were 2013's See, What Happened Was... (which includes the origin story of that goofy title, and 2017... It's Not Me - It's You, one of my many breakup conversations with the inanimate. We have just under three hours of 2023 left, so let's be brief. 

Here's to January, which is mostly a blur of overtime and end-of-year gift processing for Beloved Employer, aided by my trusty endangered black-footed helperferrets...

"Is this really only one day's worth??"

Here's to February, the first half of which [Maris] and I spent with COVID. Yeah, I know. We were at least two years late. All the cool kids had caught it ages ago. What can I say? We've both spent our lives being unfashionably late for every fad or trend, ever. Why would COVID be any different? Our cases were relatively mild, which was still BLEAH, but made us grateful for all those shots.

February was also the month in which we learned that not only had Beloved Employer sold our dingy-but-cherished HQ building (5ish minutes from home), but they had also changed course and would not be finding another suburban space for us in-office personnel. We would be asked to commute to the fashionable but 75- to 90-minutes away "West End" of DC, where we maintain another mostly-empty office. I'm not exactly "cheers-ing" that... yet.

Here's to March, with its requisite Madness, made all the madder by the rapid preparation for leaving our HQ. If you've ever moved out of an apartment or house, you're no doubt familiar with being fully overwhelmed at seeing how much STUFF has accumulated and needs to be packed or thrown away/given away etc.. Yeah - try that with an office building that once held several hundred employees who apparently never got rid of anything over the past 35 years. So that was fun - and it was just beginning.

Wait - you know what? No cheers for March, either! I forgot Mom dislocated her shoulder for maybe the 30th time, and sat in an E.R. waiting room hellscape for about 13 hours. I was literally searching for an open walk-in clinic when they finally called her name. Next time, we're just going to slam her into a door frame, a la Mel Gibson's character in "Lethal Weapon."

Hmm... Cheers withheld for April, too. I grudgingly started shedding cubicle stuff in preparation for a downsized and not nearby cube in DC. Started taking wistful pictures of the old, rapidly-emptying office...

See? Sad.

Here's to May, because I feel bad not clinking glasses with one month after another. I worked my last day in the office right down the street...

Bye, cow painted by famous guy whose name escapes me...

...and worked my first day at the beautiful but distant DC office. To be fair, I love it there. There are some fabulous colleagues who, like me, actually come in to the office quite a bit, so that's been fun. The commute isn't even really that bad (when the weather is good and Metro's not broken). It just takes so LONG to get there. I marvel at you people with two-hour commutes for years and decades on end. Here's to you!

We're *DC* black-footed ferrets, now!

Here's to June! Nothing happened! Worked on my commuting skills, did some cooking and grilling and got a teensy idea for a possible twelfth novel, and a friend said, "do it," and [Maris] said "see you in August..."

Here's to July, during which I managed to crank out over 56,000 words, several of which might actually go together in ways that make sense. I don't know. I haven't reread it, yet - or finished it. I just kind of kept going. I can do that. It's a gift.

Here's to August! Nothing happened! It was hot, or something. Probably humid, too. Kept writing. Got a little bogged-down, but stayed in the fight...

Cheers, September. I'm sure you were a nice month. I appreciated learning of my promotion, which came a mere eleven months after I took on all that important, time-sensitive work. And the continuing wordiness that had my little novel #12 at over 80,000 words by month's end. Also, I was pretty much finished decorating for Halloween by then...

"Help!"

Here's to October, because vacation. 'Nuff said...

That'll do, OBX. That'll do.

Hi bird! Could you just scootch a bit to the right?

Here's to you, November, when I inexplicably decided to have another go at "National Blog Posting Month," and write a new post every day (which here means night) for the entire month. Actually, it's pretty explicable - it's because I am some sort of masochist. I did it, though! And one of those 30 bits of drivel was MY 300th POST!

Is that a lot? Also, do you dig our hats?

Also in November, we found The Last Spider. You can read about it in one of the "Thankfulness" posts from that month...

Hi. I'm not even hiding, dude. Sheesh.

Here's to December, still echoing in my exhausted ears. There was the Trans-Siberian Orchestra...

((Christmas Devil Horns))

There were [Maris]'s gnomes, and their 12 days of shenanigans...

They had a lot of help, this year. Merry Christmas, fellas.

There were downs, there were ups. Sadly, there was NOT peace on earth (not enough, anyway). But in my tiny sliver of the planet, the month ended strong.

So let's raise a glass to 2023, and eat, drink, and be merry. Most of us are keenly aware of what kind of show 2024 promises to be. I'll regret saying this, but tonight I say BRING IT. The good people of this country and others will find our way through this. We shall breathe in, breathe out, and stay in the fight - together.

Cheers...

Twelve Hoboes on Christmas, 1934

Hobo Wine, made from weeds

They came from three of the four corners of the country; from Bangor and Seattle and the Everglades - and from all sorts of starting points in between. They gathered in the West Virginia woods, between the Tygart Valley River and the frozen steel of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, just north of Grafton. Twelve of them, all told. To call their ragged assembly a celebration would be a stretch, but these homeless drifters had come together to eat and drink (mostly drink) and mark the occasion of Christmas, 1934. 

Sally Hoot-Hoot, who had organized the gathering, mostly by scrawling hieroglyphic invitations in mud and grease on telegraph poles and boxcars for the past year, had envisioned many rounds of toasts to the first Christmas since the end of Prohibition (which it wasn't, but as 1933 ended, booze was still scarce), and a few words from each of her hobo brethren about their respective 1934s. 

"Like what," asked Gin-Bucket Greg, so named for his insistence on carrying his belongings in an old bucket, instead of the traditional hobo stick-and-bindle. The "Gin" part of his moniker was just wishful thinking.

"A few words - nothing fancy," Sally Hoot-Hoot said, "Something good that happened in 1934 - you know, like something you're grateful for."

Microbrew Stymie scoffed. "Sounds like maybe you're thinkin' of Thanksgiving."

Sally groaned and rolled her sky-blue eyes. "It'll only take a minute. Just humor me. And somebody help me with the fire. It'll be dark soon."

"Fine - I'll start," Stymie said, "but it sure sounds like a Thanksgiving thing, to me. Let's see... 1934 should have been a swell year for me, what with Prohibition being over, and with the CWA and all that New Deal stuff. But no. Still no jobs that last more than a day or two, and when I finally did come up with my ticket home - my recipe for small-batch artisanal beer - some wicked 'bo stole it. Also, I lost two toes to frostbite last winter."

Sally looked at him expectantly for a moment, hoping there was more. There apparently was not more. "That's it?"

Microbrew Stymie shrugged. "Well, Prohibition's over. So, we got that goin' for us."

"I'll drink to that," Lonnie Pina Colada declared, holding a rusty old cup of hobo wine aloft. 

"You'll drink to anything!" Beery Clive The Eunuch sneered.

"Shut up, Eunuch!"

"I told you not to call me that! Call me Beery Clive."

"Whatever you say, Eunuch."

"Say, why are you called that, anyway?" Gin-Bucket Greg asked.

Beery Clive sighed heavily and stared at the ground. "I don't wanna talk about it. Why are any of us called anything?"

"I like Pina Coladas, that's why I'm called that," Lonnie offered.

Gin-Bucket Greg laughed loudly. "What the hell is a pina colada?"

Lonnie looked lost. "I don't know. Anyway, I'm thankful for that New Deal, too. I worked more this year than I have since '29. Still not enough to afford a new coat or shoes, but I can't complain."

"Maybe Saint Nick will bring you some shoes for Christmas," Sally said. Who's next? How 'bout you, Farley?"

Weedwine Farley, The Weed-fermenter, at forty-something years old, was the eldest of the group, and the only one to have chosen the hobo life prior to the onset of the Great Depression. He had dropped out of the real world in 1924, after several unlicensed-distillery-related encounters with the criminal justice system, and immediately found belonging. He lived happily among the wandering dreamers, dropouts, and fugitives of Hobo Nation. He was able to thrive on the road because as long as there were weeds, he had weed wine to trade for the things he needed. It was his wine - a special Christmas blend of dandelion, clover, and milkweed, aged in dogwood buckets - that they drank, tonight.

He raised his cup. "You," he said simply, looking around the group, "I'm glad to know ya, and even gladder to spend Christmas with ya."

"Hear, hear!" they chorused.

"Back at you, Farley - and thanks a million for the wine," Chiptooth Berman, The Bottle Biter said.

Microbrew Stymie snorted. "I bet you'd prefer a nice bottle of beer, though. You know - something you can really break your teeth on..."

Berman shook his head and laughed. "Nope, nope, nope. I told y'all I was gonna quit biting bottles, once every tooth was chipped, and I did. Haven't bitten a bottle all year - so I guess that's what I'm thankful for. I finally kicked the habit."

"What? When did this happen?" Sally asked excitedly, moving closer to Berman and trying to look into his mouth. He opened wide and pulled the corner of his mouth back to the left, revealing nothing but damaged teeth, including the back lower molar that had been the last holdout. "Oh, I see it! Gosh, you finally did it - congratulations!"

"Thank you. It was last Christmas, and it was a whiskey bottle."

There was a round of congratulations from everyone in the group except Stunned Silent Hopkins, who naturally was stunned silent - although not at the news of the end of Berman's bottle-biting days. He had been struck dumb on October 29th, 1929, when during a lunchtime walk with his fiancée on Exchange Street in New York, he watched in horror as she was crushed by a stock trader falling from the sky.

"I got one," offered Acid-Saliva Curly Stokes. "I'm grateful for the so-called god who made my own spit so acidic that it can accelerate the fermentation of grain into alcohol tenfold, and also dissolve metal, because the alcohol part is good. But mostly, I'm grateful for my freedom. I steal rides on trains, sure - who doesn't? But I also walk from town to town, and if I mind my P's and Q's, nobody says nuthin' to me. In the summer, I sleep with the stars as my night-light. I know I only joined this hobo world on account of there being no jobs and all, but I ain't lyin' when I tell you, if it was all fixed tomorrow, and jobs was suddenly a dime a dozen, I'd tip my cap--"

"You ain't got no cap!" Stymie heckled, to no effect. 

"...I'd tip my cap and say 'no thanks - I'm a hobo now, and I ain't goin' back."

"Damn straight!!" Jan, The Jager-Meister declared with a stomp of his ratty boot. He was called the Jager-Meister because he possessed some innate ability to keep seabirds away from his food, though unbeknownst to his friends, the birds were in fact repelled by the smell (which only they and some dog breeds could detect) of Jan's hyper-aggressive multi-system cancer. "I have a toast. Here's to good health, and a life without seagulls trying to steal your food."

"Cheers to that," Sally agreed. "Anyone else wanna share, before I retire to my gals-only, no-boys-allowed tent, where almost NO boys will be allowed, wink wink?"

"I'll wink to THAT," Curly enthused, winking at Sally.

She gave him a sympathetic smile and shook her head. "Not you, Curly. Sorry."

"On account of my acid saliva?"

"Yep."

"Pooh."

Doctor Hall, A Slang Term For "Alcohol" cleared his throat and lifted himself from the log on which he'd been sitting.

"Everybody hush," Lonnie Pina Colada said. "Doc's got something to say."

"This should be good," Sally said.

Doctor Hall, A Slang Term For "Alcohol" was a man of few words. In fact, only Stunned Silent Hopkins said less. So, when the doctor (who wasn't really a doctor, but had gotten through a year of medical school, before the economy collapsed and he was forced to drop out) spoke, his friends listened. "I'm glad my parents are not around to see what's happened to this country," he said. Then, he sat down on his log and took a sip of his hobo wine.

"Well, that wasn't very good," Gin-Bucket Greg and Weedwine Farley chorused.

"That's what I'm thankful for," the doctor said with a shrug.

"Yikes," Sally said. "What a sad thing that is. How did your parents die, by the way? Were they very old?"

"Blizzard," he said. "They were both still in their fifties."

"That's terrible," Barrel-Aged Milton Oakbreath said. They died in a blizzard?"

"Murdered," Doctor Hall said flatly. "They were murdered during a blizzard. And when did you get here, Milton?"

"What do you mean? I've been here the whole time!"

"Huh."

"And I'm grateful for this life," Milton Oakbreath added. "And everyone in it. You gents - and lady - are the nicest hoboes and just about the best people I've had the pleasure of knowing. Here's to you - even you, Hopkins. Cheers - and Merry Christmas!"

Stunned Silent Hopkins laughed, and finally spoke. "God bless us - everyone."