So here we are, January 1, the first day of a new year. Happy birthday to me.

Yep, ol’ @HuskerlandBob turns 64 years old today (thank God). Having your birthday on January 1 makes it easy to remember (an increasingly important factor in my day-to-day) though if I never again hear the haunting phrase “remember Bobby, that’s your birthday present, too” I’ll be just fine.

And another thing. About The Beatles and that song, When I’m 64. It sure sounds different today than it did the first time I heard it. You know, when I was 6. Or maybe it was 4. Can't remember.

Ahem.

Either way, the first day of the new year is always a time for reflection, increasingly true as the years pile up like discarded tires in a junk yard. No matter your age the future is what should matter most - life isn’t much fun without a carrot at the end of your stick - but making time to remember the good times should also be an important part of your overall gameplan for life.

Thank you, Dr. Phil.

Our family took a week-long trip to San Antonio as our Christmas present to one another, and getting home yesterday I had time to sit down and sort some things out. Like, for instance, what the next year in Huskerland might look like.

It can’t be any more stressful than the last year and change for myself and my wife of 36 years, Huskerland Penni. Since October of 2022 we sold our business of 31 years, sold our home of 22 years, moved two hours away from our adult children and into the Metro, where making eye contact in public or attempting casual conversation in a line at the store are to be avoided at all costs. Just an observation.

We started our move to Gretna on December 17, 2020 and after several weeks we mostly had things where we wanted them. Personally, professionally, I rolled from 2020 Huskerland football into a new world of 2021 Huskerland basketball while operating without a printed publication and from a new location, one without my comfy office of the last three decades. None of that was easy.

From there we went right into my outside work for University Sports Publications - the kindly folks who print our preseason football magazine - then on to the work involved in getting the magazine ready for publication. From there we went right into Huskerland football season 2021, followed by more multiple University assignments (44 total for this calendar year), the last of which was completed the day before we left for San Antone.

On the side there was this thing called a “pandemic.” Might have heard of it.

Bottom line we have that all behind us, including a marvelous trip to southern Texas, its one sports related turn being me taking Huskerland Jessie to see the Spurs play the Utah Jazz. Jess and I have gone to dozens of NBA games in the past, all of them at the Denver Nuggets, but this is the first time we witnessed a guy getting thrown out of the stadium for heckling one of the players.

(In another circle of life moment, the player was being hassled, Utah’s Jordan Carlson, attended San Antonio’s Wagner High School; we did a feature story on him prior to his senior year in one of my University assignments, involving San Antone HS basketball. Weird. Made me feel real old. Like most things do these days.)

Now we flip the calendar to a new year and hoping for the best. We talk a lot, almost exclusively, about high school sports on this website but I, like you, am pulling for American society and hope we can have a better all-around performance in 2022. Best wishes from me and my family to you and yours for an all-state season in 2022 and thanks for being part of what we do here at Huskerland.