Royals Rumblings - News for December 31, 2021

So here’s the last of 3 holiday OTs (Black Friday, Christmas Eve). After today, we’re onto the new year and hopefully there’s some baseball news to write about soon. Otherwise, this is going to be a boring winter of bad movie reviews and video game retrospectives.

As we’ve done with the other holiday OT threads, here’s some topical RR posts. We’ve only written about New Years Resolutions twice, near as I can Google:

Hokius did one back in 2018: Hok Talk: New year’s resolutions

Jesse A Anderson had some about this time last year: A Royals fan’s New Year’s resolutions

1. So... been a rough couple of years. 2020 was awful and 2021 wasn’t a lot better. It all started with the insurrection. In February, one that was close to me was the Texas Power Grid failure, one of a number of crazy climate events for the year: record-breaking wildfires, tornadoes, and hurricanes. COVID keeps going through the Greek alphabet. Afghanistan. Russia and China threatening to take over neighbors. With things getting somewhat more back to normal, the number of high profile mass shooter events has ramped up again. Supply chain and inflation. Remember that whole “boat stuck in the Suez Canal” thing? That was this year. Seriously. Of course, I’m sure some people had good years, personally. Many parts of our lives are insulated from the world at large. So how are we feeling about the new year? Cautiously optimistic? Worried? Tired? Hungry?
2. Of course, it’s been a bad couple of years for travel. Hopefully 2022 will be better. How about a 2 part question? What’s your next big realistic vacation? If money and time were no object - what would be your perfect dream vacation?
3. There is exactly one song (“Auld Lang Syne”) and two major traditions (“fireworks” and “watching some silly object drop”) associated with this holiday along with generic things like partying with friends, drinking too much, and listening to bad music. Is there some underrated tradition that you’d like to be a bigger part of New Years? Or how about if you could invent some tradition that everyone would instantly be aware of and recognize (even if not everyone celebrated): what would it be?
4. As always, the final one is the baseball one. You can pick either your idealistic or realistic resolution (or write about both). How does the lockout end? What terms? What rule changes, if any?

See you on the other side, RR.