Sorry I've been off line for several days. It's given me time to think about your question tho'. I'd say half a dozen things stand out as high points of the year. In no particular order:
* Driving from San Francisco to LA and back with a van-load of Norwegian grad students, especially the southward drive with my own crew from my new project. I only wish I'd been able to get my Mom to come along as "tour guide" and to visit friends and family. No "ageism" in these two groups, so she'd have been a welcome member of the crowd.
* The progress my project crew has been making in my absence. I was a bit worried about taking off on sabbatical right after starting up a $2 million project, but the folks I've hired are brilliant!
* Being able to make half a dozen visits to California. Mom was going through a house remodel and a sad adjustment to widowhood and it's felt good to be here often and see that she's making it through. I also got to see Trek420 more often than usual, and other family members. Not least at a big wedding (cousin's son) where I met some more distant family I'd never met before ... and of course the cousin's new in-laws.
* Working with a colleague in Madison on a paper. She's also an associate on my big new project. She and I, together with two of our respective grad students, now have a paper just about ready for a conference. I've learned so much from the process and it's been gratifying to see that the project's basic idea is working out.
* Finally getting a clear plan for the book I've been struggling to visualize for 6 years now. I've now got an outline, an order of chapters (mostly already published but will have to be revised), and a draft intro that I've presented at a seminar and got good feedback on. It should now be doable over the next couple of years, even if it's in between teaching and other research work. That was the main goal for the year, although I only got to it in the last couple of months.
* Presenting a paper in Santiago, Chile and later this month presenting another in South Africa -- two countries, two whole continents, I've never visited before. I got two days post-conference to do touristy things in Chile (bus tour to Valparaiso, and wandering about on my own in Santiago). I'll get nearly a week in Durban (better sign up for some outings pdq, they advise against wandering about on ones own).