Happy New Year!

Personally, I don’t make resolutions because if I’m resolved to do something – I am going to start making changes right away and not wait for the new year. True confessions: I weighed myself for the first time in a long time today, and my suspicions were confirmed. I’m up about eight pounds. I was avoiding the truth or the facts because I didn’t want to deal with them until after the holiday.

This is a repeat from last year – but it has been a year, so perhaps you don’t remember. However, the content of this column is worth remembering. This column is inspired from a sermon from my home church, First Baptist Orlando. I love Christmas for many reasons, but first and foremost because we are celebrating and recognizing the significance of the birth of Jesus. How does the world celebrate Christmas? By giving gifts and acts of kindness to one another to demonstrate our love for others.

Sometimes we focus on what we don’t have, or situations we aren’t in, and we lose sight of what we do have and where we are. I know I have a lot to be thankful for – at all times – even when I’m wrapped up in the day-to-day busy-ness of life. I gathered these versus to remind me of what true thanksgiving is and what my gratitude should be focused on. I hope you enjoy them during this time that we take a break from our routines and focus on being thankful for all of our many blessings – or as we set out to purposefully be a blessing to others.

I was at the water department today, November 4, attempting to straighten out where a water bill is being mailed, and a very slender gentleman came in wanting to put $8 down on his $20 water bill so his water wouldn’t be turned off. He’s been employed in the flooring business for more than 20 years and he said that this year has been the slowest. He thinks it is because people are waiting for the outcome of the election. He, like a lot of other people, think if Trump is not elected, the economy is going to get worse, much worse. By the time you read this, hopefully, there is a clear winner.

I’m in a class that was recently tasked with watching two side by side 15-second videos of a woman speaking and determining which was real and which was AI generated.

Of about 25 people in the room, about 50% were able to discern which video was real. (For anyone wondering, I got it right.)

I’ll never forget my first trip to Disney World when I was a young child, probably younger than 5. Admittedly, I probably remember it more through my dad’s grumbling than through what I remember.

Sometimes it amazes me what makes news.

As Hurricane Milton came ashore last week in Florida, lives were lost. Millions of damage occurred, if not more. And there are people who survived who will have a drastically different life in the aftermath.

Last year, a community I covered in Georgia spent hundreds of thousands of dollars adding metal detectors to their middle and high schools.

There’s a long-running joke out there that just about anyone can be a weatherman.

I remember being a middle school student, working on a PowerPoint presentation for Black History Month, when I heard the word Google for the first time. My teacher had just found out about the new search engine with a fun name and told us we should use it for our research.