Here we are in a new year again. Where does the time go? Even for those of us that ushered in the New Year in a sedate fashion, it is still exciting; the feeling of renewal and the promise of something great to come. Barb and I had the best steak that I have had in a long time, broiled in the oven with some Blue Cheese crumbled onto the top to melt in over the last few minutes of cooking. Yummm! Medium filet - slurp! We even made it to midnight for the toast and smooch. Quite impressive considering that we still haven't shaken the cruiser's midnight syndrome, well, I haven't. Barb often stays up all the way until 23h00 to knit or have a flurry of clean. Last night, however, we were both snuggled under the ranger blanket watching the countdown on Grand Parade. The count down is about all we could stomach. Where do they find the "unknowns" to drag out to play the music, and can't they find someone to mix the sound properly? I mean, perhaps the unknowns are pretty good but they always come across as flat or not in tempo with their own music. The people on the square don't care. They are usually in such a drunken frenzy that you could play taped music of warthogs mating backwards and they'd cheer. Perhaps that's the secret. Most people at home in private parties are in the same state so it's only we silverbacks just looking for the countdown and still relatively sober that would notice. It's the same with pretty much all of the New Year's shows regardless of where they originate. Unheard of performers rolled out by shrill announcers as if we should all immediately know who they are with poorly produced sound. Ah well. Maybe they didn't want to be there either.

This morning we all loaded into the car and set off to give Peri a New Year's treat of a walk in a new place, new to him that is. The spot that we decided to go to was Graves Island Provincial Park and Barb had been there tons of times when she was small with her parents to picnic. In fact, so had our kids for the same reason. It was only Peri and I who had never been there and once there I couldn't understand why not. It's a lovely spot, especially in the winter season when we had it to ourselves. Normally in the summer time there are loads of folks there as it is set up as a picnic and campground, but this morning we were the only ones there until just as we were leaving when another lucky dog showed up with his people,

After there, I decided to take Barb out to show her where Michelle Stevens has her sail loft out at the end of Second Peninsula. That little excursion was made particularly memorable as we saw a whole bunch of people stopping at a small beach for their annual New Year's swim and noticed that they had been joined for the event by a seal that had crawled out on the beach. Unfortunately, I think that the seal would probably have preferred to be elsewhere and had only crawled out of the water to either recuperate or to pass away. I had a good look at him and although there were no obvious gaping wounds there did seem to be some damage to his right eye. We took some photos and were hoping that with a little rest he would be well enough to get back in the water.