Some highlights of 2025

2025 has been quite a ride and it will soon end. The year, at any rate. The ride, perhaps not.

My divorce is likely the biggest event of the year for me. But 2025 has been more, much more, than just the beginning to the legal end of my marriage. Several people have entered or re-entered my life since being served papers. I found myself in the company of people that I would never have thought I'd be spending time with and have experienced quite a bit this year that was new and/or unexpected.

There were countless final things done with my wife and first times without her. Traditions were laid to rest and new ones born. Many new places, many new people. Some adventure was had in the UK, majesty in Concord.

A modest look back at 2025 in pictures.

HONK! was fantastic and Boston has become an annual trip for me. I love this Trump's Cthulhuy coif.

A most unexpected find on a hike.

Thanksgiving this year was the first in 20 years or so that I didn't spend with my wife. Instead I spent the day at the homes of two kind and generous people. At one I got to see Piper's brother, Gibson. 

While there I sampled a luscious mango turmeric ginger tart. Or was it a torte?

It was simply delicious and I befriended its maker. I now have someone to visit should I find myself in Evanston.

2025 was the year I attended my first Chicago International Puppet Festival. It was fantastic!

Back in October I moved out of our marital residence and over to Eken Park where I found that one of my neighbors was rather fond of Halloween.

My wife and I visited the Northside Lounge. Despite some awkward moments, we managed to have a decent time. I like the contrast in this rather spare photograph.

Our last trip together was to Milwaukee in May where we caught both nights of The Magnetic Fields. It was also the last time that we managed to spend any significant time together in something resembling harmony.

I made multiple trips to the lovely Morton Forest, a real treasure. 

In a seemingly never ending parade of attempts to spend as little time at home as possible, I finally made a visit to The Cat's Brew.

My friend who lives just a couple blocks away has a neighbor with this wonderful greenhouse. 

It's been great living so close to this friend as we now see each other fairly frequently and Piper has a new caretaker for times when I am out of town.

My trip to Boston saw me visit Walden Pond where I experienced the sublime.

While in England, I ran into this statue of Lucifer rather cunningly placed just outside the Ozzy Osbourne exhibit. 

The same museum also had a really cool exhibit about disabled people of color.

At another museum I got to stand before a steam engine from 1799 that was designed and/or built by James Watt himself. A piece of the Industrial Revolution that transformed the world. It still works. Amazing!

There were some nice pubs over in the UK.

Inside the Craven Arms looked like Sherlock Holmes' drawing room.

While I continue to get used to my new digs and still need to buy bookshelves, I do not miss my wife's clutter which occupied so much of our home. 

Earlier this month I made a return trip to the Christkindlmarkt in downtown Chicago.

I may have a marzipan addiction.

Chicago TARDIS was a blast again this year. My wife and I began attending in 2009 and, although she stopped going last year, it was this year that made me really feel like the tradition that we built together was truly over and now I had to make my own.

And so I have. I now meet my mother and a cousin at a nearby Greek restaurant. Making a visit at the Qamaria coffeehouse threatened to become a tradition but, since they opened an outpost here in Madison, I'll be going to the other Yemeni coffee place in Lombard.

I attended a panel hosted by the indelible Tony Whitt.

A gentleman and a scholar, Tony is the master of all things Target Novelizations. He approached me at another panel discussion to say thanks for attending his and chat for a bit.

My downstairs neighbor has a dog whom I caught staring at me one day.

My neighbor is a nice lady. She waves when either of us drive by the other. If the aromas from her kitchen are any indicator, she's also a fine cook. I am still getting acclimated to having downstairs neighbors as it has been a while since I've had any. But, if I am to have one, she is a good choice.

2025 may have marked the second anniversary of Grabby's death but she's never too far from my thoughts. 

 

 

2026 promises Chicago TARDIS once more and another trek out to the Boston area. But before any adventures in far off lands I plan to start a new tradition on the first day of the new year.

Out East, a breviary

Some scenes from my trip to Boston. Well, the Boston area as I was only in Boston proper when I was at the airport. Rather my trip was spent in Concord, Framingham, Haverhill, Somerville, Groveland, Methuen, and Beverly.

I landed at Logan and got a car. Then it was off to Concord for a pilgrimage to Walden Pond.

Massachusetts had a lot more color than we do here and it was gorgeous. But more importantly, it was absolutely sublime. My heart was beating out of control as I crossed the road and entered Walden Pond State Reservation. I went down to the main beach and hit the Pond Trail which runs along the shore, 1.7 miles, if I recall correctly. My excitement could barely be contained at walking where Henry David Thoreau's footfalls landed and I became consumed with awe.

My nose was enraptured by the smell of pine as I ambled down the trail. It smelled wonderful! I felt like a little kid and ran my hands through the evergreen needles on the boughs I was walked past. Looking up into the trees and then over at the pond, sniffing the pine, feeling the sun upon my skin - it was the blooming and buzzing awe at the majesty of Nature. 

At one point I realized that I had missed the site of Thoreau's cabin and so, after I finished the loop, I started it again. The caretakers of Walden aren't exactly enamored of signs so it took a little wayfinding along with some wrong turns before I found it.

I took in views that Thoreau did, I walked the earth he walked. Glorious!

A reproduction of his cabin has been erected by the visitors center along with a statue of the man.

Just perfect. I love this statue because it captures one of Walden's main themes: how to live one's life?

What a tremendous, soul shaking experience. I shall never forget it.

I wasn't through with Concord and returned the next day to investigate Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. 

It features Authors Ridge where the graves of Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and Ralph Waldo Emerson lie. It took me a while but I finally found it.

Thoreau ran the family pencil business, you see, in addition to being a writer.

I was also in the area to visit an old friend and his family. He and I went out sightseeing one day and I caught St. Joseph catching some rays one evening at St. Basil's Seminary.

We also went out to sample some seafood which I had neglected to do last year in Boston. 

Why yes The Simpsons did come to mind.

My friend and his Frau got their daughter a kitten. She was adorable with the cutest ear tufts. 

My trip was timed purrfectly for another reason: HONK!. HONK! is an activist street band festival and my friend was formerly in such a band, Chicago's Environmental Encroachment. We spent several hours at the festival on Saturday.

Madison's own Forward Marching Band represented the Dairyland. 

I kinda sorta vaguely know one of the members. When I said hello between songs I was most unexpectedly given a big hug which meant more to me than I think this person knew. (Hugs mean so much to me right now so thanks!) I was representing Wisconsin with my Ski-Hi Fruit Farm t-shirt and 2 of the band members knew someone who worked there and so I got a nod of approval from Anna Purnell during a song and the other woman came over to me afterwards and asked to take a photo of me with her so that she could send it to her friend who worked there.

HONK! was marvelous and I "danced" the whole time. It felt great to move my body.

Afterwards my friend and I had dinner. I ate a Korean Hot Cheetos corn dog so you don't have to.

With our bellies full, it was off to The Cabot to see Steve Hackett. It was a special night as I had gotten my friend into Genesis back in the sixth grade when I handed him my copy of A Trick of the Tail and said knowingly, "Listen to this..." He'd never seen Hackett live which only added to the magic of the night.

It was a fantastic show. "Shadow of the Hierophant" was fantastic as usual and the extra soloing at the end of "Supper's Ready" was again transcendent. Plus The Lamb material was simply spectacular. And I love love love "Circo Inferno", one of Hackett's newest pieces.

Besides all of this fun & excitement, it was sheer joy spending time with my friend and his family. His daughter has grown into a precocious nine and a half year old and I am slowly getting to know his wife. We all watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail and played Cards Against Humanity, Family Edition. And his wife cooked a tasty Lebanese dinner.

My friend and I also found time for some heart to heart conversation where we discussed our marriages and our lives.

The trip was only a few days long but it was packed with activities and music, with shared meals and communion. It was an intense long weekend and I am still processing it all. So many thoughts fill my mind about what I experienced and heard.

In Walden Thoreau asked how one should live one's life and I find myself asking that question frequently lately as I move into another chapter, as I start mine over in certain ways. What do I want my life to be like once my divorce is over? Is how I feel now going to continue when I am a bachelor once again?

I am preparing to move out of our marital residence and will soon be living alone for the first time in my life. Well, living without another human as I will have Piper. That I shall feel lonely is certain and I need to figure out how to confront the loneliness, to keep it at bay. Perhaps to use it for my own ends?

Having said all this, I do feel that I have been living more deliberately since my divorce began and I take solace that this can provide a foundation for building a new life, for figuring out how to live.