A picture from one of the things that wasn’t canceled. Well, actually, now that I think about it, it was postponed.

(Sunday Paper, Year VIII, Issue 6)

We’re nearing the three-year mark since March of 2020, when everything turned sideways for a while…and has only recently gotten back towards righting itself…and even still, it’s not like it was before.

Here’s what I mean by that: We have loads of plans coming up…but if any one of us gets sick, that can force us to cancel something we’ve been looking forward to for a long time.

We never used to do that before, but now it’s pretty much common practice.

I was thinking this week about that, and about the past few years, and realized I never put together a definitive list of what we’ve missed out on because of the pandemic.

So I’m going to try to do that this week.

First of all, I want to start one of these posts with the disclaimer I usually use when talking about the pandemic:

For the most part we’ve been extremely lucky. We all have our health right now and none of us was directly impacted by COVID in a tragic way. So what I’m about to mildly complain about is nothing compared to what some other people have gone through and I realize that and I am not trying to minimize that. I am just relating my experience.

So, as I alluded to a few weeks ago, one of the Christmas gifts to the girls was tickets to see Hamilton in New York. We were going to make a weekend out of it, celebrate my mom’s birthday together, and then spend a night in Manhattan after the show.

Our youngest tested positive a couple of days before, though, so I stayed here with her while Kathy took the other two for the show/hotel portion of the weekend.

My mom’s birthday was not the first family event we had to miss - my parents tested positive in June, and we had to cancel a dinner we were going to have to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

And that's not to mention the times we didn’t get together most of 2020 and into 2021…that’s part of why I made an increased effort to get down there this fall around the Jets games.

And, while my oldest was able to escape a household COVID case unscathed to make the Harry Styles concert a few months ago, we’ve missed our share of concerts.

Kathy and I were supposed to see Keane at the end of March in 2020. We were going to go to a New York show because for some reason we couldn’t make the Boston show, and that was canceled, obviously.

I also had tickets to go to Billy Joel’s July MSG show with a friend in 2020. We took our money back for both of those, I believe.

I still haven’t seen Billy Joel during his MSG residency…maybe someday I’ll get to it. And Keane will hopefully tour the U.S. again, but those tours have been few and far between. They stay close to home usually. (And home for them is England.)

Speaking of England, the biggest cancellation we faced was our (my) first trip overseas. We were all set to travel to London and Paris in the summer of 2020 - everything was booked - and that was obviously canceled.

We’ve taken those credits and so far turned them into travel to other places, but the trip is still on the horizon at some point.

That’s not to say we haven’t had our share of good things happen over the past three years. For crying out loud - had it not been for the postponement of the 2020 Boston Marathon I certainly don’t get to run in the fall of 2021…and who knows if I try again at the 2022 lottery?

And 60% of the family did get to see Hamilton…there was the Harry Styles success…and I won those tickets to see Death Cab For Cutie. And that concert was at the same venue where we saw Matthew open for the Counting Crows.

So it hasn’t all been misses.

We’ll continue to try to stay healthy so the cancellations can remain a thing of the past. Kathy was able to outwit the Ticketmaster issues to score Taylor Swift tickets, so we have that to look forward to…and I’ve mentioned before that there’s a Disney trip happening this year as well.

Maybe I’ll even try to take my youngest for a night on the town where we can finally see Hamilton.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

This was a fun little surprise that you may have already seen me post on social media: Last year I mentioned how the algorithm hardly ever gave me Matt Sucich content. But after listening to his new song in recent weeks, that seems to have been corrected - to the point where he was the cover image on my Spotify Chill Mix this week. I enjoyed that.

I also had some of his music on at the end of my long run this week, which probably helped push the algorithm over the top. But whatever, it’s an overdue correction. And, as always, I give his music my highest recommendation - you will enjoy it, too, if you haven’t already.

Notes

*All right, last call for Super Bowl squares. Despite my efforts to get that grid filled a month ago, I knew it would likely come down to this last week before the game. I’m sure it’ll fill up in the next day or so and I’ll draw numbers - likely live on the John Sucich Facebook page - by mid-week or so. If you still want in, let me know - 1 square for $30, 2 for $55, 4 for $100. (Check with me first to make sure they’re still available!)

*I told you last week that Kathy would be away this week and it was going to be tricky figuring out how to shoehorn in my long run. I didn’t want to wait until the slightly warmer Sunday weather because the race is coming up (it’s two Sunday Papers away, if you judge time that way!), and Friday and Saturday were going to be super-cold. Long story short, I ended up running/walking about 18 miles on Thursday, and I feel like that’s a win because I almost punted on this week. So I feel like I’ve built up properly, and now I can dial it back for the next two weekends.

*I forgot to mention it last week, but we were rooting for the Eagles to make the Super Bowl to ensure a new matchup. The 49ers had already played both Cincinnati (twice!) and Kansas City in the game, and the Eagles had played neither. So though I found myself rooting more for the Bengals Sunday night, by the time that game kicked off it didn’t matter who won to me and that was a nice relief.

*The social media links are below - we’re 20 days from the Wilmington Marathon and you can keep tabs on the progress towards that race at the Instagram page.