So! 2025 was a hell of a year, wasn’t it? Seems like a lot of them have been that way for the world since … oh, I don’t know, 2016 … and for me personally since roughly 2019. Mom’s death, major work disruptions, Covid, a bit of a sunny spot in 2022 when LLMs hit robotics (roughly a year before ChatGPT went live!), the layoffs in 2023, and the whole chaotic mess of the elections in 2024 and the authoritarian takeover of the US in 2025.
But, we made it. The pandemic seems gone and is not coming back. Trump hasn’t gotten away with everything he wanted to, and every once in a blue moon he does something not entirely stupid. And our great big party this year didn’t have a huge blowup like the last four years, but was a great success!
We accomplished this by reaching out to everybody and involving them in the party planning individually, rather than sending a huge email blast and hoping, and then engaging people when they arrived. It worked surprisingly well! We even had – gasp – civil political discourse! And a fire alarm, but, that was unrelated.
Over 2025, I didn’t keep up with blogging every day like I wanted to, but I pretty much nailed writing, getting about 200,000 words of rough draft written, plus a scientific paper; and as for drawing every day, I’m almost 90 days ahead for 2026 already. So I hope to start posting those soon as part of this blog.
More news to share later, but for now … Happy New Year!
May yours not be all bad.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Me and Sandi at a dinner with her mother a few days ago, then from a nearby Barnes and Noble over dinner; and two pictures from our “Edgemas” party, now in something like its 35th year depending on how you count (34 years since we called it Edgemas, 37 years since our first holiday party).
