Welcome!

Welcome to to our blog.

It seems like the most difficult aspect of setting up a blog these days is trying to find a clever new address that no-one on the internet has thought of before. It reminds me of that song by Zappacosta (there's a trip down memory lane for you Canadians), "It's All Been Done Before": I think I might have something (original), but I'm not really sure / I should have started 20 years ago / And what do you look for / When It's all been done before. He was referring of course, to songwriting (apparently, he thought all possible songs about cars and girls had already been written in 1980; would he be surprised), but that refrain kept blasting through my head like a stuck CD as Carole and I tried for over an hour to find some variation of the theme 'Top of the Hill'.

Of course, all obvious spellings and mutations were already spoken for, but if you can't be clever and original, you can always be sneaky and underhanded. So with the article 'the' and by using the much overlooked hyphen, we created 'the-top-of-the-hill', and managed to muscle our way into the apparently very overcrowded blog namespace.

So why 'top of the hill'? Well we've been planning for a number of years to do the sabbatical we are about to undertake, but life kept having other plans: career issues, family, other urgencies, etc. It seems the stars have finally aligned after we turned 40. But 40, as the saying goes is 'over the hill'. Well, it doesn't quite seem that way to us. If the rest is 'downhill', then it stands to logic that this must be the top, no? In any event, the view ahead is fantastic, and when it comes time for the 'downhill' part, we'll be strapping on our telemark skis and making the most of the descent, yipping, hollering, and laughing along the way.