99 Days

Memories of where I was this time last year keep surfacing. We keep talking about them as a family; we're grateful that this year is so much more normal.

Last weekend we went camping at Pawtuckaway State Park in New Hampshire. That's become an annual trip but last year we didn't make it. We thought about going, but I was still in pretty rough shape and we wisely stayed home.

I've been a newspaper reader since I was a boy. I think I've read at least one newspaper almost every day since I was perhaps eight or nine years old. I'm a dinosaur who still subscribes to an actual paper newspaper delivered to my front door every day. I read it over breakfast - at least the front section, the Metro front page and the Business front page. If I have gotten out of bed on time I get to read more of each section.

On the last page of the magazine section the Globe always includes the "This Day in History" feature. It always starts with a sentence relaying what day of the year today is and how many days remain in the year.

It's a measure of how badly I was feeling that I stopped reading the newspaper for a month or two. A year ago today is when I began reading it again. I remember, because that day "This Day in History" reported that there were 99 days remaining in the year.

That's also true today.