Hi, and welcome back from what appears to have been a very busy holiday season for most of us–and let me take this time to offer my sincerest wishes for what I hope will be the best of all New Years!  Since we are already well into the month of January, it would appear that we have made the transition from 2013 to 2014 without any serious calamities—except maybe for the weather, which has been brutally cold across so much of the nation this winter.  I don’t know how you usually usher in a new year, but I suppose that for most of us, one way of marking the…