Musings at Year's End

Merry Christmas world!  As the year comes to a close, I find myself taking time to reflect on another year past.  Mostly, though, I find myself wondering just what the hell it is I did over the last twelve months.  Unfortunately, the only way I have left to keep track of my own comings and goings is by reviewing my updates to this blog.  The fact that there have been no posts -- absolutely none -- since sometime in September, leaves me in a particular bind.  How did I pass the time?  Was it time well spent?  Did I better myself in some fashion, perhaps finally learning the fine art of origami or the intricacies of long division?  Did I better the world in some fashion, perhaps replacing an incandescent bulb with an LED or stockpiling garbage in our spare bedroom instead of the landfill?  Did I better a neighbor, perhaps with a well timed application of the Heimlich maneuver or by simply staying out of someone's way while he or she was having a bad day?  I'll never know, and as a result, unless I helped you dislodge a poorly chewed piece of meat from your esophagus, you will never know either.

Be that as it may, I spent Christmas in my pajamas, which seems like the way it should be spent.  And someone was thoughtful enough to wrap up and gift me a pair of white clown gloves with rainbow cuffs, which seems like the way hands should be clad.  So the year is coming to a fine close.

Long time blog readers (Hi Mom!), will recall that this blog started as a chronicle of a cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment.  (And, yes, long time blog readers that are paying close attention will also recognize that the Mom joke, and indeed the entire first sentence, are pretty much recycled from an earlier post).  Well, to bring things full circle, be advised that 2012 marked the last of the maintenance Rituxin infusions.  I was scanned for positron emissions (after injection with a radionuclide tagged sugar) in December, with what my oncologist described as no signs of uptake.  That means, in short, no cancer.  So, treatment worked as hoped and expected, and until anyone tells me otherwise, I pretty much wipe my hands of the whole thing.

In the meantime, I look forward to a 2013 filled with jet-packs, entire meals packed into a pill, technology that will finally let us all live a life of leisure, and all the other wonders that the future promises.  I also fear the inevitable rise of our new robot overlords and the evaporation of our oceans, but those are small prices to pay for the convenience of jet-packs.  Happy New Year everyone!

P.S.  Please let me know if anyone recognizes any of the people or places in the following photos.  It might go a long way towards helping me reconstruct the last three months.