Martha says: This is a good time to express my attitude of gratitude. There's so much going on in the world that's distressing but it helps me to focus on what is positive.

I'm grateful that I married the right guy 54 years ago and we're still together, helping each other as we get old. We were able to have 2 healthy boys when we were ready and they've grown up to like each other and chose to raise their 3 sons nearby. At 76, I'm lucky to be alive and well. I’m still enjoying exercising with Jazzercise, workouts at home, kayaking all summer, and skiing when global warming still makes it possible. Then there's the little things to be grateful for: my new dishwasher, our whole house generator, the mouse I caught stealing cat food this week and sent out of the house.

Our last cat, Pixel, had a lump removed from his neck in March and we feared he'd soon die of cancer. We're grateful that our vet says, since it hasn’t grown back so far, it won’t, so he’s old but healthy. Bob dotes on him and dreads the day when we eventually have no cats because he’s allergic. I hope he’ll cough less, and we can visit Jonathan and Larissa, where there are now 5 cats right around the corner.

I’ve been volunteering in the New England Quilt Museum library for more than 25 years, cataloging books, answering visitors’ questions, and coordinating a small team of dedicated volunteers. Someday I won’t be able to continue. and I worry about who will take over. but I'm grateful that day hasn’t arrived yet. I’m also still the volunteer coordinator for the Massachusetts Quilt Documentation Project, which has studied about 8000 quilts since beginning in 1994. It's a miracle of technology that our photos and data are shared on the Quilt Index, along with others from all over the country and world.

As our grandkids grow older, I’m not doing childcare as often, but I'm grateful that Elijah still plays at our house after school twice a week. It was fun boating, hiking, and playing with all 3 grandkids at Timberlock this summer. I’ll be celebrating the long New Year weekend by skiing with Jonathan and Elijah as far north as possible, and we're hoping the snow will be soft and sparkly.

I spent a few days in Rochester in June and then a whole week in October seeing cousins and friends. I'm especially grateful to spend time with all these people who remember me when I was a child and still make time to reconnect when I'm in town.

Though it's hard seeing Bob's sister Lee having to deal with multiple health problems as she ages, I'm grateful that she's still able to manage and is living right down the street from us in Assisted Living. When I retired from nursing 48 years ago, I had no idea that my training would allow me to help her navigate a health care system that's so challenging. Then in May, my brother David was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. His wife Carole is there to take on new responsibilities but, again, I'm grateful to have knowledge that sometimes makes it easier for them.

Every year, I share the stories and photos of the quilts I've made here. I've been doing this for nearly 50 years and never get bored. There's so many fabrics, colors, patterns, techniques. Sitting and quietly stitching is as calming as petting a cat. I'll keep finding destinations for my projects since I enjoy making and giving them.

Bob says: At 76, it’s really hard to avoid falling into the conversational patterns of other Boomers, which invariably start with complaints about their health. So instead, I’ll talk about Pixel’s health (Pixel is our cat). For several years, he had a soft swelling on his neck that gradually got larger. It didn’t seem to bother him, and the vet assured us it was harmless. But starting in late 2022, it grew much more rapidly. Pixel started scratching at it, and it risked becoming infected. So we took the plunge and scheduled its removal.

The surgery went smoothly, and Pixel didn’t pick at his stitches, so the incision healed up nicely. But the post-operative biopsy had bad news. While the swelling was mostly fluid, the margins were cancerous. It was very likely the surgery didn’t get all of it – the vet didn’t know it was there. The expectation was that the swelling, now a tumor, would re-grow.

Instead, nothing. The incision has healed, and there is no sign of it returning. After seven months, the vet gave Pixel a clean bill of health. He’s even regained the weight he lost in the run-up to the surgery. I feared this would be his last year. But he’s the same cat as ever, interested in attention, food, and sleep, more or less in that order. In fact, he’s lying across my lap and right arm as I type now, getting two of his three favorite things simultaneously.

For me (and Martha), this was the year our luck at dodging Covid ran out. When Martha’s Jazzercise class resumed in person, she didn’t wear her KN-95 mask. (After all, it’s hard to do strenuous exercise in a really effective mask.) At the end of January, she came down with what she thought was a cold, picked up from a grandchild. She tested negative at first. By the time she tested positive, I was infected too. We both took Paxlovid. It worked for her, but I had a rebound infection. In all, I was down and out for three weeks and felt tired and muddle-headed for another month. My friend Jim, he of the friendly Golden Doodles Zipper and Button, also contracted Covid, along with his entire family. Not a good winter.

Once I was completely recovered, I went down to Florida to visit my ex-brother-in-law, David, and his wife Sandy. The recovery at their Sanibel house, battered by Hurricane Ian, is remarkable, but they had constructed it to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, so the damage was mostly to the soft structures and the ground floor, due to flooding. Sanibel itself was not so lucky and was a very sad sight to see. Most of the historic structures had been destroyed or damaged beyond repair.  Tourist accommodations won’t reopen before next winter. Without the tourist trade, the island’s economy is depressed, and most shops remain closed.

I then stayed close to home until Timberlock in August. After Timberlock, I intended to start Personal Training for my back. Instead, I had a close encounter with an angry swarm of yellow jackets and was stung eleven times. Systemic inflammation followed, requiring emergency treatment; but worse yet, it triggered inflammation of my spinal stenosis. Thanks to medical bureaucracy, I was unable to get a cortisone injection until mid-November. I’m okay once again, and I look forward to PT next year.

So overall, not the best year I’ve ever had. But as Buddy said in Follies, “It’s not just the bad times I remember. It’s the whole damn show.”

My sister Lee is at a nearby Assisted Living facility and doing okay-ish. Her spine has also acted up, and she too has had a cortisone shot. It’s too soon to know if it will provide relief. But the coming election will keep her giddy with alarm (and me as well).

My project to refurbish discarded computers and keep them out of landfills continued without a pause. I worked on 85 computers this year and delivered 44 to refugee support organizations for incoming families. The countries of origin have diversified beyond Afghanistan and Ukraine, but regardless of where they started, refugees need to be online to survive here.

My anime work  took a hit because of Covid but released more than twenty shows. Belying the saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” I became a serious user of Discord, a social media platform – you know, the one where Jack Teixeira spilled all those secrets. Anyway, Discord allowed me to “meet” younger fansubbers and interest them in my projects. So 2024 looks like it will be a good year for my anime team.

You know, I’ve been fansubbing anime for more than 17 years. You’d think I’d have grown up by now.

The simulation work  has slowed a lot, but I remain the “go to” guy for obscure hardware bugs. Sad to say, they are still being found, even in code I wrote more than twenty years ago. Does the world really care that a magtape positioned before its first bit of information is not actually positioned at beginning of tape? Apparently, some software written in the 1980s does…

That’s it. Having tired (briefly) of my lap, Pixel is now climbing up the side of my chair, chirping for attention. If I don’t give him some soon, the claws will follow. See ya!