Happy New Year 2017! - Day 923 (Year 3, Day 190)

Houston, TX

First, a word about Shabbat.  We went to a community Shabbat / Chanukkah dinner on Friday night, which was very lovely, with a lot of singing, interesting words of wisdom, good conversation, and delicious food!  We also went to services on Saturday.  This is a great congregation and I hope to return some day.

Saturday night was New Year's Eve - the 40th one Mitch and I are ringing in together!.  I think we have become real old fuddy-duddies, in that neither of us had any desire to celebrate or do or go anywhere special (we heard that they drop a giant sugar cube in Sugar Land).  We didn't even play our annual game of Scrabble over nachos and drinks.  Mostly we just watched our shows on the computer, stopping at 11:00 (Central time) to watch the ball drop in NYC (then we saw it again an hour later).  We did manage to stay up until midnight, which was pretty good because people in this area LOVE fireworks.  Starting at around 5pm, you could hear and see various displays being shot off, but it went absolutely crazy at midnight.  We stood outside and were able to see a panorama of fireworks - from all directions.  Nothing near Macy's Thanksgiving display, but it was pretty nice.  I just hope 2017 is a much better year.  Personally, other than cleaning out our savings once again for repairs, we still have a lot of blessings to count.  The world, however, is a very scary place right now and we can only pray for peace and stability.

On New Year's day, we mostly just vegged out.  In the evening, we went to our friends (mine from HS) - Miriam & Ira for dinner (she made an awesome salmon, quinoa and spaghetti squash casserole).  I can't believe none of us thought to take any photos!!!  I hope another 40 years doesn't go by before we see each other again!

Today (Monday), I did a little bit of work, although most companies are closed, so it was very quiet.  Mitch is undertaking a huge electrical project today -- rewiring the lights above the stove which somehow have a short in the system.  They run on the DC system, which means when we're not hooked up to electric, we can't use the main kitchen lights, so this is the next best thing.  Except they haven't been working.  I'm trying to stay calm and ignore the total disaster area in the kitchen.  I know he will clean up the mess when he finishes.

Tomorrow we need to start packing stuff up and getting road ready once again, since we'll be out all day Wed. and we need to leave Thurs. morning.  I probably won't write again until the weekend, at which point I will tell all about our trip to Johnson Space Center - NASA Mission Control.