New Years Day 2009 at Wrightsville Beach

Each year since Marge and I moved here at the very end of 2003 Marge and I have gone with Pepper to Wrightsville Beach. Most years the temperatures have been in the 60s and 70s. Today it was a bit more brisk, with the temperature only about 39 when Marge took this shot, but it actually felt a bit warmer. As you may be able to see in the background, there were plenty of people on the beach wearing only jeans and sweatshirts.

I wondered at first if I'd even send off my annual e-mail (0r now blog post) to family and friends about being on the beach in January in North Carolina when it was admittedly chilly as it was today, but then I glanced at the weather in other parts of the country and decided the point would still be made. Our daughter lives in West Hartford, Connecticut where the high is predicted to top out at 21 degrees and our elder son Richard and his wife Megan celebrated New Years Eve with friends in Montpelier, Vermont, where the high temp for the day is predicted to reach 7 degrees (when I checked earlier the wind chill factor was minus 20 degrees!). Even our son Peter in San Francisco will only enjoy a relatively balmy 54 degrees today but it was supposedly to be cloudy, so 39 and sunny on the the beach sounds pretty good.

Here's wishing everyone at healthy and prosperous 2009!