We still don’t have all the concrete, and the weather is freezing, so I won’t bore you with that (you’re welcome). But— hey hey hey —my heart positively sang when I learned from our loyal community that seven, yes SEVEN , building framers were hard at work on our house today while we’re away. The beat goes on… even without a slab.. There is real hope—actual, tangible, don’t-jinx-it hope—that we might have this expansion buttoned up before the depths of February. Hope is doing a lot of heavy lifting these days, but we’re sticking with it. With that optimism firmly in place, I wanted to pause and wish all of you—mostly close friends, neighbors, and a sprinkling of distant relatives—an absolutely fabulous, joyful, and, in these complicated global times, especially peaceful Christmas. Peaceful in the physical sense, and peaceful in the psychological sense too (the harder one). Since the slab has become something of a taboo subject, I’ll pivot to what is decidedly not taboo: travel. We mana...