Okay! It's indeed New Year's Eve, and I'm going to try to do a year retrospective, as well as comment on next year and some resolutions. And I'll intersperse the blog with pictures taken during the year. Just to break up the monotony of all the talking about this last year.
First of all, Addy is still with me! She will be 21 years old in February, and her health is increasingly fragile, but she's holding her own so far. As long as she continues to eat and drink fine, she's still doing well. But anything that throws her out of balance is going to be more and more difficult to come back from. The day after Christmas we went to the vet because Christmas night she started vomiting and was still vomiting at noon the next day. So of course, not eating and drinking. We went to the vet and had blood work done and her kidney function tests were the same as a few months ago, but her white cell count was up a bit. So they gave her subcutaneous fluids, and three shots, one antibiotic for the possible infection causing her white cell count to be up, one anti-nausea shot so she'd stop vomiting, and a B12 shot to give her a bit of a boost. I really think the subcutaneous fluids to get her back on an even keel with her fluids, and the anti-nausea shot to break the vomiting cycle, are what put her back to status quo. She's again eating and drinking fine. And being a demanding and cranky old lady. On the day we go to the vet and her kidney function tests are getting worse rather than staying the same, I'll have different decisions to make, but so far so good.
So, the Presidency. Man, what a ride. It was way more stressful than I expected, and required way more of my time than I expected. A LOT of crazy things happened this year, requiring me to learn a lot about things I didn't expect to need to - like how to handle people who you don't agree with, and how whatever you say is coming from the association not from you, and how to talk to reporters. I never expected to need to know how to be interviewed by a reporter, or how to tell them the exact truth while not telling them everything. Crazy. I had 17 interviews this year, including with the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNN and CBS, to name some of the major ones. 
I ended up giving 25 talks over the course of the year, not counting the on-stage stuff I did for the Annual Meeting. I made 5 international trips: Birmingham, UK; Copenhagen, Denmark; Seoul, South Korea; Taipei, Taiwan and Beijing, China. The rest of my talks were scattered across the United States, starting with Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle last January and ending with Baltimore in December. Needless to say, I have a ton of frequent flyer miles available right now. And thankfully the long international trips were business class. 14 hours on a plane to Seoul or Beijing is much better in business class. 
The kind of sad thing about those international trips is that I had no time to take extra time and do sightseeing while I was over at the various places. The only place I managed to get any sightseeing in was Beijing. I went with a colleague to see the Forbidden City. Which was awesome. I'm glad I at least got that in. We were also lucky with the weather in that it wasn't as smoggy as Beijing usually is at that time of year.One of the good things that happened this year is that we hired a new junior faculty member at work. I do think it helped that I was gone so much. Someone realized they needed additional coverage help and probably also realized that I'm not going to be around forever. They need to start doing some succession planning. The new faculty member is amazingly awesome. She's such a go getter and so smart. We hired her in August and I have been amazed at how much time I gained back, just from her fielding the daily stuff that comes up, and saving me from having to deal with it. She's really great, and has a great personality too.
Let's see. Around the house. *laughing* Well, I've hardly been here enough to know what's going on around here. I think Addy thinks the pet sitter, Martha, is her Mom. But after being up at Monica's in September and seeing her Aerogarden at work, I came home and bought one. Sometime this Fall I started flowers in it, because I love to grow things and I love blooming things. Luckily, once you start it, it's self-sufficient except for adding water and occasional nutrients. It is great to have flowers blooming in the house. Actually I have flowers blooming everywhere. My four African Violets at work are all blooming, and I put the one here at home near the Aerogarden where it gets the light from that, and it started blooming also. I may try starting bonsai in another Aerogarden, since I have been unable to get sakura or red maples to sprout. I did manage to take two weeks for vacation this year and Monica and I went to Utah with Yasmeen and Jake. It was the usual great Utah/Colorado vacation, but too short. I'm going to take a long one this next year.
Things I haven't been able to do this year include exercise. I never could get a routine established, especially the back half of the year when I was traveling every week. So high on my list of things to do for 2017 is get back on an exercise program. And second on the list is revisit my diet. I managed not to gain a bunch of weight this year - still holding below 140, but my diet is horrible. I'm back to fast foods and processed foods. It's hard when you spend so much time at dinners and receptions and banquets and in hotels. It's probably amazing that I didn't gain weight to speak of, but I need to eat better. So that's # 2 on my list. I also need to put some work into the house. I haven't cleaned it well for a good year now. And I need to trim the peach trees. Today I started by cutting back all my roses. I want to basically just spend some time on the house. I had to pull all by bird feeders down though because I had rats. Which then moved into my garage (where the bird seed was stored) when I pulled the feeders. So now all the seed is in sealed plastic containers, but I won't be putting any back out until I'm pretty sure the rats have moved away.
I had peaches from my trees this year!!! Two of the three trees produced peaches, and the ones from the biggest tree were awesomely delicious. This was the first year since I planted the trees that I've had peaches. Let's see. I moved in here in summer of 2012, planted them in 2013, and the one that's now the biggest got buried by the foundation repair team in Fall of 2013. So it came back and they all grew through 2014 and 2015, and produced peaches this year. Not bad. The trees are badly overgrown though, so I do HAVE to get out there and trim them soon - before they start blooming this year.
I did have kind of a sad thing happen in late May through July. A feral momma cat took up residence in my back yard with her three kittens. I fed them for awhile, figuring they were safe back there with my wooden privacy fence, but they started disappearing. Finally only one orange kitten was left and he seemed so lonely and scared. I ordered a night camera and it came the day I found only orange fur in the back yard. The images from that night showed what looks like a bobcat! And his image shows up about 15 minutes after I put cat food out before I left in the morning. (Yes, I leave well before sunup.) So I suspect the cat family may have become bobcat food. I never saw them again after I found the orange fur. So overall, it was a pretty good year, but I'm glad to be over being President. I feel like I've gotten my life back. I'm glad to have done it, and glad to be through. So tonight I'm lifting my glass in a toast in honor of all the people who supported me and helped me make it through this year. They have my undying gratitude, and they know who they are. And I also toast to a year well spent, and a new year of possibilities.
I can't wait to see what 2017 has in store.
Happy New Year!!
