And so another year goes into the history books. While this year was a far improvement over 2016 – a year when we lost my mom and our beloved rabbit Cosmo – the shadows cast by this past month and the ongoing crisis at work remain long and deep, with the chaos promising to extend into the first few weeks of 2018, if not longer. As a result, my job security isn’t what it seemed to be just five long weeks ago; when and if the dust settles on this particular engagement you can bet folks are going to lose their jobs and everyone will be looking for scapegoats. I just hope mine is not one of them, but you never know. There’s nothing I can do about it except keep on working with our team to make things better and hope things work out for the best.

There were a lot of good things that happened in 2017, not the least of which was that, for the first time in eight years neither we nor my sister-in-law Tam lost a rabbit. It’s not that we’re bad rabbit owners, it’s just that, outside of a couple that passed far earlier than they should have due to things beyond our control, we had got all our rabbits at different points in their lives and it just worked out that way. Fortunately, Marlie, Peach, Midget Lee, Bailey, and Butterscotch all made it through the year unscathed. Nothing wrong with that.

2017 was the year we finally got our financial house in order, refinancing our house to eliminate our credit card debt and get a leg up on our retirement savings. To that end, we engaged a financial advisor with Edelman Financial to get our 401Ks and IRAs all in order and in the best place to keep building our nest egg. Of course, a big “thank you” goes out to President Trump and the impact his pro-growth, pro-American jobs agenda has had on the stock market! While CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the rest of the “fake media” focuses on Russia collusion and Democrat hopes for impeachment, a rising tide is lifting all boats and folks everywhere are seeing the benefit of the Trump presidency on their investments.

And there were more accomplishments: it took a while, but we finally got Tam’s divorce from many moons ago formally done. She’s a free woman, everyone! And we got all of her dentistry neessrtaken care of, so she’s got new teeth as well. It was good year for Tam, and I’m glad we were able to play a major role in making that good year happen.

And that’s really about it. Until December there were lots of good things going on. Not sure what the future holds for 2018, but there’s not a whole lot anyone can do about it except take it a day at a time. With the real estate prices in our particular neck of the woods being what they are – our Northshore / Summer Meadows subdivision is h-o-t hot right now, we’d be fools not to see what opportunities might be available to us, so we might check into some 55+ communities around here. We’ll see. I do know I would like to shave six strokes off my golf handicap, but I’m not sure I even remember how to play the game with everything going on at work. And I’m too tired, both mentally and physically, to venture out just to hit balls. Until I get out from under this wet blanket there isn’t going to be a whole lot of ball-hitting. Nor, probably, a lot of blogging. But we’ll see!

So that’s about it for old 2017. I’m ready for a flip of the calendar, aren’t you? As is custom every year at this time I’m pleased to say, take us outta here, George!