Happy New Year

We spent New Year's Eve in the company of some friends at a Chinese restaurant in the middle of a snowstorm. The food was good, especially the the duck.

The snow kind of obscured the fireworks, although it was still kind of impressive to see my council tax dollars turned into pretty lights and big bangs. The sound of foghorns from the boats in the harbour were kind of overwhelmed until the fireworks stopped, but it is still becoming one of my favorite new year's traditions.

We're looking forward to another great year of Scottish adventures and European travels. We're hoping to try and do as many new things as possible. What does 2010 have in store for us?

1. More traveling. We've got our big trip through Switzerland and the Italian/French Rivieras set for April We're excited because it seems like a pretty cool combination of history, scenery, beaches and culture. We're also looking at a long weekend trip to Barcelona in February. We've heard so many good things about it and are looking forward to that too. Hopefully we'll be able to squeeze in at least one more, but we're having trouble deciding - Rome, Venice, Vienna ...

2. Heading home. We've got green card issues that will need settling some time in September, necessitating a trip back to Houston. It will be pretty jam packed with friends and family, with likely side trips to Indiana, San Antonio and Mazatlan. We're also looking at buying some property in Houston to give us a better chance at keeping our green cards. Like I said - jam packed.

3. More Scottish travels. We hope to continue our travels, likely heading further South to the border areas and a bit further North, perhaps even out to the Orkneys. One thing we'll definitely be doing again is going to Braemar for the Highland Gathering. What a spectacle!

4. The great outdoors. We've made a promise to try and climb Ben Nevis on my birthday in May. That's going to take some training beforehand, which means many weekends out and about climbing some minor hills. We've also been looking into some sea kayaking lessons. It looks like there may be some offered here in May.

5. Visitors. We only have one set of visitors confirmed, Roger and Cathy in March, but with the size of our new place, we're certainly hoping that some more people decide to take in the Scottish scenery.

6. Culture. We're going to try and make a concerted effort to get out and see a few more things this year. Ballet, concerts, movies, etc ... it all seems better than another couple of hours in front of the tube. We've also stocked up our bookshelf. We'll definitely be doing more reading in 2010.