Happy New Year!

I know this evening at midnight is just an insignificant spot on the time continuum but as a calendar aficionado (or freak) I want to wish you a Happy New Year.  I have many calendars.  I don't wear a watch but time is important to me.  I have one calendar on my kitchen wall, a small one on the dashboard of my car, one hanging in my office, a fake leather bound one which I carry everywhere at work, an electronic one connected to my email at work, and a teeny tiny one attached to my computer monitor.  I might splurge on one of those page a day calendars next week when the prices go down.  Anyway, it's time to take down the old calendar and put up the new one; start a clean slate.  I wish you a happy and prosperous new year.  2011 has been a good year for me.  If I, like the newspapers, put in my personal highlights, I would include the following:  that moment when I was ziplining in the cloud forest in Ecuador when I thought I was going to slam into a tree and die, that moment when a 5 foot Galapagos shark swam underneath me and I screamed into my snorkel, that moment I saw a waved albatross, that moment when I knelt behind a HUGE Galapagos tortoise for a photo and hoped this ET looking fellow would not notice me, that moment when I saw sap had collected into the jug below the maple tree, that moment our bird class watched a night hawk sitting in a tree, that moment when I saw and heard my red-shouldered hawk had returned in the spring, that moment I saw a Blackburnian warbler splashing in a puddle in my driveway, that moment when I saw my beans and pumpkins and potatoes had sprouted and were pushing their green stems out of the ground, that moment I rode neck and neck with a horse while I was on my motorcycle, that moment a fish jumped into my lap as I kayaked under a bridge in St. Paul, that moment when I saved Meredith from being eaten by a gray fox, the moment I ate the first ripe tomato out of the garden, that moment we canoed across a lake in the Boundary waters and the wind took us really fast, that moment when I had two black admiral butterflies sitting on my hand, that moment I fell backward while trying to land a canoe and landed safely on a rock shaped like a chair, that moment I held a loved one's hand as she died, that moment on Thanksgiving when my house was full of people and noise and smells and merriment, that moment we watched thousands of sand hill cranes take off at sunrise, that moment we saw a road runner, that evening we spent in a hotel room in Taos with a fire burning in a fireplace, that moment a car struck me from behind during a blizzard on a Colorado mountain pass, and this moment where I realize I am so incredibly lucky to have so many friends and family who love me.  Happy New Year!