I don’t think the 14 year-old me would recognize the life the 34 year-old me lives, for many reasons, but one I keep thinking about these days is my current relationship with the weather and the outdoors. I see snow once or twice a year now, if I’m lucky, whereas in the first 20 years of my life, it was a constant from October to March every year. Lots of things are different when you compare Anchorage and L.A., but I fear I’ve gone soft in the last few years, in which time experiencing snow and cold has become an infrequent novelty, like shopping at King Sooper’s when visiting grandparents. But I digress…



We had a terrific, long trip to a quite snowy and cold Boston over Christmas and New Year’s, and returned Saturday night, ready for the new year, mostly. For the most part, all of our logistics worked out as planned, with my parents coming in from Alaska, my brother and his family in from Virginia (with a slight delay), and Aimee and I juggling our time among them, her parents, and her brother and his family.

We had a couple of Christmas mornings, one with Aimee’s family and one a day later when my family assembled in town, and it was great to see everyone in one place. The weather was a little bit all over the place, but it snowed just before we arrived, and most of the snow stuck around for the duration of the trip.

Some of the highlights were a return visit to the Union Oyster House (the oldest restaurant in the country, they’ll have you know), more than 24 years after the last time we were there; a trip to the ICA with our nephew, who enjoyed the exploded view Beetle and other work by Damian Ortega; and our annual batch of gløgg (the spelling I went with this year, as opposed to glögg, as I’ve used in past years), which was pretty successful, and was re-created at Aimee’s house for her family, as well.



I even got in a few runs, along my old path along the Charles – once unseasonably warm, another time face-freezingly cold – as well as on a treadmill, which helped by reminding me how lucky I am to not have to run on a treadmill.

More photos from the trip here.

So, here we are in the future, 2010. Time for the awards season to ramp up, only 75 days until the marathon, and lots of other exciting stuff coming up this year.