Where does the time go?

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Last Christmas season, I had undertaken a fabulous holiday journey that started at my friend Tom's house in Poole, Dorset, England. After a horrendous number of setbacks that made me believe I would never make it to Tom's, he picked me up at the train station. We had some great times, in a house full of kittens and new friends. We drank a lot of cider, and walked to the grocery store in the freezing rain singing Tilly & the Wall at the top of our lungs.

A year ago today, I left Tom's house to meet Rachel in Geneva, Switzerland, where everything was cold, beautiful, and expensive. We traveled to Lauterbrunnen and Zurich, too, and encountered such difficulties as coin-operated showers and respiratory illness.

We met up with Hunter in Paris and spent several days in a shuffle of hostels and holiday crowds. We saw an anniversary light show at the Eiffel Tower and met an excellent Danish couple under the Arc de Triomphe at midnight.

Hunter and I went on to Berlin and celebrated his birthday in a rotating restaurant on top of the Berlin TV Tower.

After a year that, in retrospect, feels like I watched it on fast forward, I'm home, and about to head to Claremore for Christmas dinner with my dad's side of the family. And I'm being confronted with the strange nature of time. I'm wondering what happened to the year, and wondering where I'll be next year at this time.

New Year's this time around will be spent among strangers at La Milpa, in Belize. Life is taking me strange and interesting places -- and it won't slow down.

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