It's Christmas Day. This is probably the second best time to post a blog entry. Of course, the best time is any other day of the year, but today you only get second best.

Every Christmas since going on the road in 2012 has been different. This year we have seen the mountain top. Shannon played for the Christmas Day service at a Lutheran Church in Roswell, and we ate a Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant sans the staff singing carols. She has been filling in for the organist most of the month of December and will end her gig on January 1. It has been a rejuvenation for her, and it has been fun for me to hear her again. We even drove around last night after the service and looked at Christmas lights in the neighborhoods of Roswell. Today we FaceTime with the kids and grandkids; so, it kind of feels a little like Christmas.

Writing this blog feels like getting back on the horse after having fallen off and cracking my coccyx. It's been almost three months since last making a blog entry, and the bets were running against a resurrection of the blog. So, the horse is standing in front of me, but I'm not quite sure my coccyx wants to try out the horse once again.

When I started the blog, my intent was to make it a travelogue of our RVing and volunteering adventures. But over time, we have settled into a sitting and staying pattern rather than a life of traveling down the highway (we generally avoid back roads). How can a blog even with glossy color photos make the sitting and staying exciting and luring enough to want to tune into it much less write the darn thing? And, I have tried to avoid using the blog to write down my deep, esoteric musings and political rantings. I know you're muttering a silent prayer of thanks right now, and you're right to do so. When I do get back on the horse, (yes, my coccyx feels better already) I don't want the blog to turn into the very blog I have tried to avoid. So I'll be doing a non-travelogue, muse-free, apolitical blog. Bland? Yup, but I do have lots of years eating and living with Northern Europeans where the word "bland" has been used more than a few times to describe diet, clothing, and temperament. And I've managed to have lived through the bland, and maybe you will too.

So love the chilis, but get ready for the bland.