I can’t take credit for either the photo or the title today. Both were sent to me by our northern correspondent Paulette, from her end of the beach known in my blahg as Fin Family Moominbeach.

I love this photo. It makes me a little homesick. Even though, in the grand scheme of things, I also love my adopted hometown, aka The Planet Ann Arbor. It can be beautiful down here in the winter sometimes. More often it is just kind of bitter cold and gray. And that’s kind of okay if you have to commute to work because usually it means dry pavement and if you go to work in the dark and arrive home in the dark, you aren’t missing much.

Our beach, the one that I share with Paulette and lots of others, is beautiful in every season. Even on the days that it isn’t. It is different every single day of every year. At this time of my life, I can’t easily get up there for Christmas. I remember when I still did travel to the Yoop for Christmas. I remember a Christmas Eve once when I hadn’t met the GG yet. We had a wonderful Christmas Eve celebration at Radical Betty and Duke’s then new chalet on the lake. I remember sitting on the snowshoe chair next to the fire eating chocolates and sipping brandy and looking out at the trees behind Radical Betty’s house on the shores of the moominbeach. Nowadays, my kids still come home to the Planet for the holidays and I work and long ago I decided it was probably better to schedule paid vacation time in the summer than break my neck traveling to the Yoop for Christmas. It’s okay. I’m used to it. And I have a particularly interesting project going on at work right now. But this photo did make me feel just a wee bit homesick. I miss you, Paulette. And Radical Betty and Cam and all of those who went before them. I am not a religious person but all I have to say is, “sleep in heavenly peace.” Except that I’ll always believe that most of those folks are having a wild and wonderful time somewhere in (or out of) the universe.

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