Cyndie, my beloved partner of 15 years and counting, gives me a wall calendar every year for Christmas to hang in my office. They’re always great, and they’re always different. But her 2016 calendar is extra-different.

This year she got me a “Power of Nature” calendar that features photographs of majestic waterfalls, enormous storm clouds, erupting volcanoes and the like. That would be a perfectly fine calendar just as it was. But Cyndie, being the extraordinarily creative and imaginative artist that she is, has customized each month’s picture for me. To each one she has added “balloon boy,” representing me, along with various other elements of her own devising. (Balloon Boy is a cartoon I drew in the mid-1980s. He appears in the header image of this website.)

So in this 2016 calendar, Cyndie has put Balloon Boy David into some perilous situation every month. I never know what it’s going to be, because as the end of each month approaches the calendar disappears from my wall, and reappears a day later with me in a new month and some new airborne adventure.

It’s fun being married to Cyndie.

2016