December 2018 Favorites

1. Boston. What a delightful city! The beau and I spent the first weekend in December exploring.
2. Pando, or the Trembling Giant—a clonal colony of an individual male quaking aspen. The single organism consists of about 47,000 trees, spans 107 acres, weighs an estimated 6,615 tons, and has been living for the past 80,000 years in Fishlake National Forest in Utah. No big deal.
3. Wild Scotch Pine (Pinus sylvestris) essential oil. The Christmas smell without the tree killing! (hopefully)
4. This New York Times article about career changes. For example, how one man, Mike Lewis, quit his job as a venture capitalist to become a professional squash player: “The unintentional hilarity here is that Lewis’s bold leap is more of a whir forward on a Segway.”
5. This former NASA engineer’s response to package thieves. To hell with them! (+glitter)
6. Endings. No matter how arbitrary our human method of timekeeping, at least it is conducive to reflection and introspection! To 2018 I say: “Boy, bye.”
7. Beginnings. Cheers to a hopefully propitious 2019!

◊