Finally

By every standard -- personal, professional, political -- this has been one long freaking year. It's hard to find anything good to say about being as unwell as I was for so much of it, but the fact that I spent months unable to follow current events with my usual passion was definitely a blessing.

Of course I couldn't muster much passion for anything beyond my bed for most of that time either. Being sick was a huge, tedious black hole in the history of this year, but I am bloody grateful for every second all the same. I still managed to see penguins and icebergs, medieval masterpieces, and mountain gorillas, even while spending far more time learning about all the varieties of cardiac dysfunction than I'd ever dreamed possible.

Here are the preparations in progress in Times Square earlier today. I might wish that 2019 will be a little less dramatic than its predecessor, but at least I feel ready to take it on, whatever adventures it brings.

Happy Thanksgiving

Here's a giant elf somersaulting down Sixth Avenue this morning, part of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

I've occasionally seen some of the balloons from a distance but I'd never actually gone to the parade before. I'm not crazy about parades for one thing, or crowds, and after standing in the rain for four hours in Ath, Belgium, watching their annual Giants Parade a few months ago, I would have said I've had enough of parades for the rest of this century.

But I have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, even if things haven't exactly gone the way I'd planned, that I decided I should maybe go to the parade once, just so I could say I had. And because I could!

I didn't stay long; it was 20 degrees and despite wearing a layer of my Antarctica fleece under my down coat, I couldn't stand in one place for very long. And it was very crowded, and the balloons, seen up close rather than on television, are a little creepy.