Happy New Year!

A new year, what will it bring?  We are hoping there will be quite a few changes this year.  We have a lot of plans that I will reveal as they develop.  Not sure if the stars will align and let us accomplish what we would like, but it will be fun and challenging to find out.

After we returned from our epic trip to Buffalo to get rid of our storage unit, only one thing was left to do, toss the trash, donate some clothing, sweep the floor and go in and tell them we were done, and then, CELEBRATE!  So nice to have that monkey off our backs.

Other than that we haven't been doing too much yet, other than eating and visiting.  A lot of folks went home for the holidays, so it's been a bit quiet here.  Jan has been cooking a bunch, as usual, and we have gone out and tried some new restaurants as well as the regulars.  Different vibe here this year, don't know if it is a result of Ian, or just the normal evolvement in the park.

We did do something out of the norm for us.  I got an invite to be able to buy a bottle of Blanton's, perhaps my favorite bourbon, basically unavailable anywhere for being a loyal customer of Total Wine, one catch though, I had to pick it up in Kennesaw, GA:-)  500+ miles one way.

We thought initially, oh well, but the more we thought about it, especially now that we are footloose and fancy free since we said goodbye to Bert, why not?  We asked our good friends, John and Diane if they could accept visitors, they said yes, and off we went for a very nice visit, some great bourbon, good cigars, and of course the bottle of Blanton's.  Fun!

Spending quality time in their beautiful home

And John and I TRYING to solve the world's problems:-)

So now I'll leave you with something very different, food pictures, as we start working on several projects which I will share going forward.

Awesome fish chowder following Helen's recipe, 
a great restaurant in Machias, ME

Part of our lunch at a new place, Deep Lagoon
shrimp tacos and conch fritters

And a very good clam chowder

A fantastic beef stir fry with bok choy and glass noodles

Part of the prep

A shrimp and snow pea stir fry

And finally Jan and my very quiet, but nice, Christmas dinner.

So enough for now, and of course, the posts will come a little more infrequently now.  I'll catch you up on our projects and eventually our future plans for the new year.