Happy Holidays 2017 to all my friends and family!

If anyone finds themselves on this page, I just put together a 2017 holiday “card” which can be seen by following this link:

https://www.canva.com/design/DACpfQpblUk/VyxBKbbBTdqiI_aOInUZFA/view

Exclamation Point, June 3, 2017

           Welcome to my Exclamation Point blog!
I am beginning this on June 3, 2017, and it is my intent to add to this with some regularity, but my record on that sort of thing has been spotty at best. We shall see! 

















I want to live life with an exclamation point,

and I’ve tried, goodness knows I’ve tried. I’ve worked as an urchin diver, a general contractor, a substitute teacher, a librarian; I've sailed long distances (not always successfully), flown hang gliders, driven recklessly, skied far into the woods and slept on the snow, built a kayak and took it camping among the islands of western Canada; I’ve loved and lost and loved and lost, but I also raised two fine young men in a long and wonderful marriage.

I’ve learned and learned and learned and learned, but I’m pretty sure I still don’t know crap. No doubt many would agree.

And now I'm single again and it’s time for a new direction. I've set my sights, for now, on a new profession. Once again I find myself studying, this time it's grammar and Czech. The grammar I'll need, the Czech I'll want so I can at least find a bathroom. My plans are generally written in sand, but as it stands now I will be off to Prague in September.

I'll go to school for a month to earn my TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate, and then teach English.  I figure I will either like it or not, but I will be in Europe for the first time in my life and I should be making enough money to afford it.

I hope I like Prague. Everybody says wonderful things about it, but I also hear it’s cold as hell in the winter. And the spring. And the fall. Apparently it’s not very warm in the summer, either. Who knows, I may find myself in Ecuador or Thailand or Mexico or Vietnam, or just scurrying back to Southern California with my tail between my legs. As far as I'm concerned, however, the only way I can fail is if I fail to try.

So, life goes on, and I’m trying to get better at seeing and appreciating the here and now, the wonders all around me. For now, however, I’m off again, in search of the exclamation point.