Newsletter for the World of Words by Elias Tobias

In a few hours, 2006 will be history, and the hopes and challenges of 2007 will be here.  I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I had Saturday off after getting the LMT Business Journal done early on Friday before both holidays, and took Christmas off. I promise my wife I would, but Tuesday was a workday.  The Year in Review issue was done by 9 p.m. I usually work to midnight or so.

Our fireworks will be the TV version, tonight along with a bottle of non-alcoholic sparkling grape cocktails and real glass wine glasses.  Last year we had plastic wine glasses since glass types tend to get broken around our house. We have four new ones, and we’ll see how long they last.

I didn’t make a Christmas list this year, and I was surprised.  I got a clarinet.  I played when I was in high school, and stopped my junior year to be the hiigh school feature editor. I didn’t play again until 1979 in the spring quarter of my senior year of my bachelors degree.  I took a class as one of my electives since I had most of my major and minors classes completed.  I also took badminton and co-ed jogging.  Throughout my moves as a journalist, the clarinet was sold as excess baggage.  Today, I put together the new instrument, and it came back to me after all this time.  I’m not ready for my debut at Carnegie Hall just yet, though.

I got other stufff. I received my Cowboy things: a John Wayne calendar, pocket watch and tree ornament; a Beatles CD, a five-DVD set of the unauthorized history of the Beatles and the John Lennon t-shirt with his dreamer quote; note pads and pens in my boot (we don’t do stockings in Laredo), and two packs of t-shirts to replace those that seem to shrink with every wash.  It was a challenge to open some of the presents considereing the way they were wrapped.

I have a poem for readers.  Saturday morning, my wife and I discussed what was for breakfast. After our discussion, this is a poem I wrote:

 Poem of the Month

French Toast

Come have breakfast with me,
and you can be
the coffee or tea.
I can be the butter and the French
toast and we can
have fun eating
each other as long
as the morning lasts.

Happy New Year 

Elias Tobias