This is my first time ever to not be doing something strange, interesting, or exciting with people on New Year's Eve. I came back to Abilene deliberately yesterday after spending some quality time in Norman, so it is by design that I am at my Abilene house alone tonight. Last year at this time I was shouting with 100,000 people in Bricktown, Oklahoma City, in the middle of a group of close friends. The year before that I was driving two of my closest friends between the Festival of Lights in Chickasha, OK, and Oklahoma City, drinking hot chocolate in the car and watching fireworks from the top of a deserted parking garage. The next day I would be leaving for Alabama. New Year's has always been accompanied by great experiences.

Which is why I guess I chose to drive the lonely roads back to west Texas this year and sit at home with a book and a blog. Those memories, particularly the last two years, have been made fresh for me lately and I suppose instead of writing them over with new experiences (as logical as that is), I'll just be content right now to ponder their meaning for me. Those experiences feed very deeply into what may be a giant fork in the road coming my way in the next few weeks and months, but I don't know. My life for the last few years has been a fascinating series of surprise events, the pattern of which has yet to cease. A new chapter on an old story may be about to be written, but I don't know.

But for now, wherever you are and whatever you are doing, I pray that God blesses you with an amazing 2006. Now back to Mr. Thoreau.