A year such as 2025 can most easily be shared as a series of bullet points.

• We began the year in Worcester, Massachusetts. This was a five-day trip by air, delayed a week after I suffered a seizure with ER visit on Dec. 22, 2024. We visited our son and his husband. It was a good trip, during which we celebrated my 73rd birthday and New Year’s Day rather than Christmas.

• 

  In February, our son, Charles, had brain surgery due to the seizure he suffered in Oct 2024. We flew back for the surgery. The surgery was successful, and his recovery was much more rapid and complete than the most optimistic expectations.

• In mid-April, I suffered a second seizure, of about the same severity as the first one. This left my speech further impaired than it had been after my two strokes in 2024. But except for speech, I seemed to have no impairments from the seizures.

• 

  I completed out-patient cardio rehab in March. Recovery from my Sept 30, 2024 open-heart surgery for valve replacement has been good. I get a fleeting pain once in a while, but all in all I’m glad I went through with the surgery and pleased with the results.

• 

  The months of April-May-June-July were mainly taken up with decumulation tasks and yardwork. My blackberries did well. But I made only one cobbler and didn’t come close to picking all the berries. I lacked strength to do all the work required. Consequently…

• …I did no stock/options trading until almost the end of May. Of course, that means I had almost no exposure to the wild market gyrations of Feb. and April.

• 

  We decided to get away for a while, and built an almost 4-week road trip in August around my 55-year high school reunion. We spent a few days in Rhode Island with friends for the reunion, then a week on Cape Cod that included excursions to Provincetown and Martha’s Vineyard, then two weeks in the Berkshires, just enjoying our resort, taking easy hikes, walking the resort grounds, and doing a few tourist things. On the return drive, we spent two days at the Columbus OH zoo, which Lynda had wanted to see for several years due to its connection with Jack Hanna.

• We decided to drive to Lake Jackson, Texas in early October to visit Sara and her family. We hadn’t seen them since Thanksgiving 2024. We got to attend cross-country races and other things. It was an enjoyable trip, which we thought might be the last for te year. However, three more adventures awaited us.

• 

  In June, Charles attended a professional conference that included a keynote presentation about universities and slavery. That got him interested in where our black ancestry came from, and said, “We need to go to St. Lucia.” That’s been a dream of mine for years, to see the place my maternal grandmother grew up in. It turned out Thanksgiving was the best time, so we took our third plane trip of the year and spent seven days/six nights in Castries, using up all accumulated timeshare points (and some cash). It was a wonderful trip, one I’m planning to blog more about.

• Charles had finally convinced Lynda that if we moved in a downsizing, it would be better if we moved to the Lake Jackson-Houston area rather than to Massachusetts. So we made plans to move in about a year. Then, a week after we got back from L.J., and house very close to Sara went up for sale. It was the perfect downsize for us. We made another road trip to L.J., saw the house, it looked just right, we put in an offer, and bought it.
• So now our decumulation has turned into moving preparation. We took a U-Haul load on Dec 19 and stayed through Christmas. Now we are planning on moving for good around Feb. 1, 2026. I don’t want to be paying for two houses for too long.

So that’s our year. With all the trips and work, I put off having knee surgery, originally scheduled for Nov, then Dec, then Jan, until sometime after the move. I suspect it will be part of my 2027 story.

Also, I’ve said nothing about my writing activities. So stay tuned for another post in a couple of days to cover that.