I see my grandkids that live in town every week or oftener and we are in a process of living through another onslaught of relatives at the holidays. I actually look forward to our winter invasion which happens in the week between Christmas and New Years. They all come and shop with my wife while I sit in the Jacuzzi with the men and burn an offering of tobacco to the gods of winter. For fifty years now my wife's family has descended on Palm Springs during that week and the result has been amusing at the worst during the years that I have watched them come and go.

When they have all left us the new year will truly begin and I can try to find a few resolutions that will shape my life during the coming four seasons. This year will be different than some because we are going to reshape our entrepreneurial life this year. My wife and I are embarking on a new project . We are going to look at the phenomenon of off the grid housing that should develop in our nation during the next two decades. There are several markets developing in homes that are independent of outside connections to electricity gas and sewer that are interesting to us. It is clear that our nation needs a boost in the direction of replacing foreign oil and we are going to try and help that process along. We are both serial entrepreneurs and have built small businesses for a lot of years now. This may be the last one but who can tell about the future? In that area of time faith and hope have to replace knowledge much of the time.

The next year will open its pages one at a time as years always do, and as I grow older they do seem to flash by faster. I move slower but father time speeds up, it hardly seems fair. But then if life were fair I would have as much energy as my grandchildren do. Isn't that a scary thought, a geriatric bowl of jelly with the legs and energy of a five year old child? I guess that nature has some reason for helping us along in the attention span derby as we age. I know that it is as pleasant as ever to sit and read a good book and watch our cats play their chase game through the house. No one can predict what course they will take but one sure thing is that they will end up curled up on the chair in front of the fire sleeping wrapped around one another after all their mock ferocity.

It is in this season that I have the greatest pleasure in my walks around the town I live in. We have visitors from all around the nation and Canada who come here to escape winter for a few days up to six months. The seasonal crowd drives worse every year. That may be because they are getting older but not all of the bad driving is done by the elderly. There are always a few young folks without the sense to obey simple traffic rules. Since they make their mistakes at speeds higher than those often reached by those of us over sixty they are the most dangerous ones on the road. A right turn executed in slow motion from the leftmost lane is easier to dodge than one done at speed.

Walking around town is a real pleasure in this season because everyone here has escaped the worst ravages of winter and feels better for it. Our blissful appreciation of the sun may be hampered by the short days but the warmth of the midday sun on your body is still a welcome sensation. The presence of all those people makes the people watching excellent, I recommend it highly. My wife and I indulge in it over and over again and it never fails to bring moments of amazement. People are after all the most interesting animals on our planet. I look forward to this time of year every year and enjoy its' passing as much as its' coming. God bless and keep you all safe in this season of joy, love, hope and new beginnings.