And so it begins again. Pooped from the parties, stuffed from the stuffing, and drained from family duties, another new year has snuck up and begun without me.

Back when I was an 80’s rock kid (minus the perm hair-do), the New Year’s would begin with the returning of duplicate gifts, unendearing hunks of plastic in the form of tape or video cassette, to the music store in exchange for something else. When I happened to venture into the store’s encroaching aisles of shiny round discs (those new-fangled CDs) I played safe with an album I already had on trusty tape. But it didn’t take long to get hooked on the technology of the future.