We’re really vacationing. It’s a true holiday. Okay, we’ve got to do our regular ‘exercises’ of keeping up with online correspondence, blogging and business, but are limiting the time spent at those tasks daily for the duration of our few days here in central Texas. So I’m savoring the rustic charms of small-town and Hill Country and riverside and tourist-friendly parts of the state while crossing the bridge between 2012 and 2013.

It seemed, then, utterly apropos that during our New Year’s Day brunch today I looked up at the cafe’s lovely wood rafters and saw a fittingly old-fashioned, Texan pseudo-firework to get me in the mood for the occasion: I was sitting at precisely the right angle for the joist joinery to overlap in a nice Texan Lone Star. I highlighted it here for those of you who might not spot it immediately, and to fire off my own modest firecracker in celebration of the flip of the calendar, and to wish all of you a genuinely joyful and prosperous and fruitful year in 2013. Peace, love and happiness in abundance!