Late last year, I found myself training for a marathon and starting to lead a healthier lifestyle. At the end of the year, I played a neat roller hockey tournament with some buddies- 12 minute games with penalties resulting in penalty shots at the end of the game.

Our team was pretty bad and we came in last place. It was just the kind of event that made me decide to quit playing hockey for good. After all, I decided, I’d been skating for close to 20 years and it was time to explore new activities in life. Besides, I had already been away from the game the entire year.

Well… it didn’t quite work out that way. I had a change of mind and instead gave up marathon training and returned to hockey again, right at the beginning of this year. I have played league hockey the entire year and am planning on skating the 2010 version of the tournament around Christmas time this year.

My Grandmother passed away at the beginning of the year. Tobia and I thought it would be a nice idea to travel- in the Summer- to Poland and Eastern Europe, to explore the part of the world where some of my family is from.

But before heading to Europe, we had a couple 3 day weekends that enabled us to travel a little closer to home.

During President’s Day weekend, we traveled, by car, to San Diego. We saw the last two California lighthouses on my to-see list. We stayed in the Gas Lamp Quarter, and also enjoyed Valentine’s Day down there. On our way back home, we had some serious car problems which made the drive back more memorable.

For Memorial Day weekend, we headed out to Yosemite National Park. We did a fair bit of hiking around, and the waterfalls were in full flow. It was also tremendously packed that weekend. Unfortunately Tioga Pass was not open and we could not get to Mono Lake. That might be a trip for 2011.

Finally, in June, we headed on our 3 week trip to Eastern Europe and a quick visit to Israel afterwards. Eastern Europe was really wonderful and we enjoyed and learned a lot on the trip. There was even an opportunity to see where my other Grandmother grew up, and I saw her childhood home. We also made a few good friends. During this trip, the World Cup was going on, and I got to enjoy great soccer in different countries, watching with different people.

Upon returning from Europe, Summer was swinging in and gardening got me fairly involved in growing my typical Summer crops.

When Labor Day came around, we traveled to Seattle. We watched the Mariners play, walked and drove around a lot, and enjoyed our time up north.

For Tobia’s birthday in October, we took her parents to Mendocino, where we spent a great weekend showing them around town, walked the coastline, and ate wonderful food. We came back in time for Halloween and the trick or treaters.

We had our annual day-after-Thanksgiving tradition of inviting some friends for a leftovers potluck. We drew a good crowd and had a great time.

On the gardening front, after struggling to keep squirrels away for ages, I have finally found a solution that works well, and as easy to work with- I built PVC pipe cages and bought some bulk netting to cover them with. Removing the cages and getting into my crop beds has now become easier. Additionally, our trees produced well this year: pomegranates, lemons, apricots and mandarins.

As the new year nears, we plan to stay around, and enjoy the holidays locally. We’re saving our vacation days for travels to Italy in 2011. I plan to play lots of hockey, possibly drive out to the coast, and bum out and eat good food to round out the year.

Besides more travel in the new year, I am going to attempt to grow new fruits and vegetables in my garden. I hope to spend more time with friends, and also keep my mind alive by studying more geography, reading more fiction and non-fiction, and hopefully sharpening my software skills, too.

(1985) just after the beginnings of our legos obsession.

Ever since I was about 5 years old, I have loved legos. My best friend, Nir, and I, used to play with legos just about everyday, for hours. I would come to his house everyday, and we’d pull out his enormous box (I didn’t have much legos) and have at it. In fact, we became friends in kindergarten because of a mutual obsession for legos.

I think legos were really good for both of us. Not just in the social sense of giving us something to do together. But it also helped our imaginations, as well as our technical skills. We are both engineers these days, and I attribute much of that to legos.

Recently, Tobia and I stopped inside a lego store. After I got passed all the envy of “we didn’t have this when I was growing up”, I came across a classic collection of lego people. It totally took me down “memory lane” and I felt nostalgic.

I can actually remember playing with every piece before 1993 extremely well.

Once or twice a week I take my lacrosse stick, gloves and balls and head out to the tennis courts near my house to practice.

The tennis players despise me and don’t appreciate my presence there. They’ve used excuses from “please leave we’re having a tournament” to “you’re making too much noise” to get me to leave.

All the while, I am completely out of their way, often leave instantly when they want my court, and always make sure to throw their balls back to them when they’re anywhere near me.

I think two factors bother them. The first is that I’m not actually playing tennis, but lacrosse. The other is that it’s just me- a single person- taking up a whole court. That’s why I’m all too happy to share the court with them. I’m perfectly happy shooting along the red colored sidelines, well out of their way.

Two nights ago, I was playing in one of the courts, when a guy coyly came up to me and wondered if he could hop on the court as well. Naturally I said I’d be happy to share the court with him.

He pulled out a cricket bat, some wickets and some balls and thanked me like I owned the joint and was magnanimous for sharing with him. He was practicing bowling along the other sideline of the court, using its length while I used its width.

Shortly thereafter, a friend of his joined, and they were practicing together. About 5 minutes later, a mother and 4 children looked into our court, full of desire to play tennis on our court. They wouldn’t dare ask if they could hop on, but I could see it in their demeanor.

I turned to the two cricket players and said that I didn’t see why these 5 folks couldn’t just join and use the tennis courts while we stayed on the perimeter. The guy said sure, and we waved the people over to our court. Ecstatically, the kids hopped on and played around right beside us. It was a full house (we were later joined by one of the kids’ father, making us 9 people) but it was also so lively, inclusive and social.

Sure, I didn’t have as much room to run around and shoot, but that really wasn’t the point. The point was that the sun was going to set, we would all have to leave for home pretty soon, and there was no reason we couldn’t all just get along and enjoy this limited resource while there was still light. Besides, it wasn’t like there was no room to play; it is a total misconception that we need all that room to play.

The situation reminded me very much of my childhood, when I used to play soccer with dozens of people in a small playground area in Israel. Within short running distance there were basketball players right next to us, as there was only 1 hoop, and of course the hide-and-seekers and tag players were also sharing our court with us. We never thought twice about the court belonging to anyone of us, it seemed only natural that the resources were scarce and we all wanted to do our own thing and would have to accept being so close to each other.

This whole episode made me wonder why we’ve become so possessive, exclusive, and snooty about public resources for which we feel so entitled. We have to have the resources we want, when we want them, we don’t want to share them, and we feel so isolated so much of the time. And why make all these unnecessary rules about who can use the courts when we’re all harmlessly having fun and doing no damage to anything?

The solution has always seemed obvious to me – let’s share the limited resources and let everyone feel included and have fun while we still can.