Year in review
Since we first watched the Miraculous Paris special very close to New Year's Eve last year, we now associate New Year's with the Paris special, so we decided to make it a tradition to watch it every year. It kind of works, too, because it's about turning your life around and finding hope and stuff, but most of all, we just really like it so why not? XD
Anyway, it's the end of the year, so we're going to do that thing we do every year, where we post the first little bit of the first post we made each month. Here goes!
January
It's the first day of 2024! ...And I feel like we mostly spent it watching Miraculous, but that's not really true. We watched the Paris special twice, and spent a lot of time thinking and talking about Miraculous, but we also played Pokemon, and got started on our New Year's resolutions! I mean, technically you could call them New Year's resolutions, because they're resolutions we made around the new year and started acting on on the first day of the new year, but that's just because we were doing other stuff that prevented us from getting started until today. Mine is to practice the piano (and other musical stuff, like the lyre) more, and Athena's is to study French more. We're both pretty excited about it. (Looks like we had the same resolutions last year that we have this year...)
February
Today was less productive than originally intended, and our Paris plans have gotten more complicated. Gaston called for the first time in weeks, and when we mentioned to him that we're planning to go to Paris this spring, he reminded us that we had plans to go to Japan with him and his wife this same spring. This is a fact that we had not forgotten, but that we mostly ignored, for a few reasons. One, we hadn't talked to Gaston in weeks. And two, in theory we can do both.
March
We had some difficulty at work today that led us to the conclusion that we need to replenish our supply of English words. And our tv recently reminded us that Ghosts is a thing, so we bought the first season (American version) and binged it. It was a pretty good time; the show is very clever.
April
Happy Easter Monday, everybody! I have now twice attempted to type the word Monday and had it turn into "Monster" as my fingers went into autopilot. Make of that what you will. Anyway, our Easter was pretty okay. We didn't actually make any plans for it, because we were so busy dealing with other stuff, like the passport situation, but honestly I guess we don't usually make Easter plans anyway. I talk about how important Easter is, and yet...I do just like to spend Sundays resting and relaxing. Not that that makes Easter any less important.
May
Now that our birthday is over, we figured we probably ought to get back to our job and stuff, especially since we got an email about a sort-of simulpub (it's not actually a simulpub; we're just treating it like one for some reason) during our four-day weekend and we'd been putting it off. We finally got to it today, and were reminded that for some reason it takes forever to do. It always feels like it should go really quick, but it never does. Maybe one of these days we'll remember that.
June
We have returned! I mean, actually we returned on Saturday night, but it was super late, and then we just decided not to post last night. Anyway, our trip was nice; we had a good time. Our niece Rosetta and nephew Gilderoy were playing Whos in a production of Seussical Jr. for their school, and sure they were basically background characters, but we hadn't seen the fam in a while, so we figured it was a good reason to go visit.
When we got there, we were greeted by the horrific question from Chase, "Aunt Athena, do you want to play Minecraft with me?" Our youngest nephew has discovered Minecraft. And to make matters worse, it turns out that our oldest nephew Grawp, whom we assumed had grown out of Minecraft, is back into it and more hardcore than ever. Like, he can tell you exactly which update added which feature. He knows Minecraft updates like we know Miraculous episodes. XD and DX
July
Oh man, this weekend has been pretty exhausting. It doesn't necessarily feel like it should have been so exhausting, so I'm going to go ahead and say the heat has been contributing. While the rest of the world has been having record highs, we had a couple of record cold years, and now we're having real summerlike weather for the first time in a long time, and we're just not used to it. ...Okay, that's not entirely true. We have had summerlike weather in the last couple of years, but for like a week or two in October. Anyway, for Singing Time yesterday, Athena did balloon rockets as a way to gauge how well the kids know the songs that they'll be singing in the Primary Program in October.
August
After I posted about my new realization about Felix last night, I realized I forgot to address a fairly important factor in the resulting theory, so I guess tonight that's what I'll be writing about.
September
Our informant informed us yesterday that the Miraculous Welcome to Paris episode is now available on YouTube! She also very kindly offered to pre-screen it for us to make sure there were no spoilers, but we declined because we were pretty sure an episode that basically amounts to a "come to Paris" commercial wasn't going to allude to any serious plot developments. We appear to have given her some very strange ideas about what we consider to be spoilers. It's an abundance of caution on her part, and we appreciate it...but it's also pretty funny. XD Naturally we have seen the episode now, and as far as wee can tell, it is, in fact, spoiler-free. We also watched it without subtitles, because it's YouTube... Although, come to think of it, a subtitle track should exist. We didn't bother to check. It wasn't too tough to follow the action even without them, and Athena was even able to give me the gist of all the tourism information.
October
I tried and failed to come up with an introduction to this post. Let's just get to the reporting. (This was a very important post, actually, because it was the report of when we saw L'Homme de Riom, thus seeing our very favorite actor in person for the first time ever.)
November
We ended up having to work extra late today. Our week has been so jam-packed, and I want to say we're done with the crunch, but alas, we don't really know yet. So then I want to say we'll know on Tuesday, but I'm not even sure we'll know by then. I think we may just have to resign ourselves to constant long work days for the foreseeable future. At least we can be in denial over the weekend. Despite the extra work, we have been making time to do fun things, and that includes the new Miraculous video game!
December
Ever since we saw L'Homme de Riom, we thought we should watch more Maurice Chevalier movies. We'd only seen him in one thing before--In Search of the Castaways, the Disney adaptation of the Jules Verne novel. It was a cute movie, but the character assassination of Glenarvan had us more than a little annoyed. We understand, though. There was no way to fit the whole book in just one movie, so some things had to change. And of course, Maurice Chevalier as Paganel was delightful. Him correcting Hayley Mills pronunciation in "Enjoy It" was especially amusing. XD Anyway, since we finished our recent rewatch of Miraculous and we therefore had more time, we decided to watch Gigi.
As usual, that was a pretty decent sampling of our year. This time, it was mostly taken up with Miraculous (despite there being very little new Miraculous to write about), attempting to go to Paris, actually going to Paris, and some visiting of family. Not featured were our stepbrother's wedding and Anime Expo.
Anyway, I think it's been a pretty good year for us. My losing my passport was super stressful, but it worked out for the best, because we got to go to Paris at an even better time. And! we got to meet our very favorite actor (and Athena's crush♥).
It was a pretty good year work-wise, too. We had a bit less of it, I think, but enough that we could still cover our expenses, and travel to Paris! We got a few new series to work on, including Pink & Habanero which is super duper cute, and Now That We Draw, which is fan-servicey, but also very cute otherwise.
So yes. We're pretty happy with how this year has turned out, and we're hoping to make 2025 into a really good year, too! This year I'm thankful for our workload being just right, the blessing in disguise of my passport disappearing, getting to go to Paris, getting to meet our very favorite actor, and getting a couple of really great Miraculous World specials (okay, just one, but the Paris special came close enough to the end of 2023 that we mostly enjoyed it in this year). I'm also thankful for the good times we were able to spend with friends and family. Happy New Year, everyone!
Anyway, it's the end of the year, so we're going to do that thing we do every year, where we post the first little bit of the first post we made each month. Here goes!
January
It's the first day of 2024! ...And I feel like we mostly spent it watching Miraculous, but that's not really true. We watched the Paris special twice, and spent a lot of time thinking and talking about Miraculous, but we also played Pokemon, and got started on our New Year's resolutions! I mean, technically you could call them New Year's resolutions, because they're resolutions we made around the new year and started acting on on the first day of the new year, but that's just because we were doing other stuff that prevented us from getting started until today. Mine is to practice the piano (and other musical stuff, like the lyre) more, and Athena's is to study French more. We're both pretty excited about it. (Looks like we had the same resolutions last year that we have this year...)
February
Today was less productive than originally intended, and our Paris plans have gotten more complicated. Gaston called for the first time in weeks, and when we mentioned to him that we're planning to go to Paris this spring, he reminded us that we had plans to go to Japan with him and his wife this same spring. This is a fact that we had not forgotten, but that we mostly ignored, for a few reasons. One, we hadn't talked to Gaston in weeks. And two, in theory we can do both.
March
We had some difficulty at work today that led us to the conclusion that we need to replenish our supply of English words. And our tv recently reminded us that Ghosts is a thing, so we bought the first season (American version) and binged it. It was a pretty good time; the show is very clever.
April
Happy Easter Monday, everybody! I have now twice attempted to type the word Monday and had it turn into "Monster" as my fingers went into autopilot. Make of that what you will. Anyway, our Easter was pretty okay. We didn't actually make any plans for it, because we were so busy dealing with other stuff, like the passport situation, but honestly I guess we don't usually make Easter plans anyway. I talk about how important Easter is, and yet...I do just like to spend Sundays resting and relaxing. Not that that makes Easter any less important.
May
Now that our birthday is over, we figured we probably ought to get back to our job and stuff, especially since we got an email about a sort-of simulpub (it's not actually a simulpub; we're just treating it like one for some reason) during our four-day weekend and we'd been putting it off. We finally got to it today, and were reminded that for some reason it takes forever to do. It always feels like it should go really quick, but it never does. Maybe one of these days we'll remember that.
June
We have returned! I mean, actually we returned on Saturday night, but it was super late, and then we just decided not to post last night. Anyway, our trip was nice; we had a good time. Our niece Rosetta and nephew Gilderoy were playing Whos in a production of Seussical Jr. for their school, and sure they were basically background characters, but we hadn't seen the fam in a while, so we figured it was a good reason to go visit.
When we got there, we were greeted by the horrific question from Chase, "Aunt Athena, do you want to play Minecraft with me?" Our youngest nephew has discovered Minecraft. And to make matters worse, it turns out that our oldest nephew Grawp, whom we assumed had grown out of Minecraft, is back into it and more hardcore than ever. Like, he can tell you exactly which update added which feature. He knows Minecraft updates like we know Miraculous episodes. XD and DX
July
Oh man, this weekend has been pretty exhausting. It doesn't necessarily feel like it should have been so exhausting, so I'm going to go ahead and say the heat has been contributing. While the rest of the world has been having record highs, we had a couple of record cold years, and now we're having real summerlike weather for the first time in a long time, and we're just not used to it. ...Okay, that's not entirely true. We have had summerlike weather in the last couple of years, but for like a week or two in October. Anyway, for Singing Time yesterday, Athena did balloon rockets as a way to gauge how well the kids know the songs that they'll be singing in the Primary Program in October.
August
After I posted about my new realization about Felix last night, I realized I forgot to address a fairly important factor in the resulting theory, so I guess tonight that's what I'll be writing about.
September
Our informant informed us yesterday that the Miraculous Welcome to Paris episode is now available on YouTube! She also very kindly offered to pre-screen it for us to make sure there were no spoilers, but we declined because we were pretty sure an episode that basically amounts to a "come to Paris" commercial wasn't going to allude to any serious plot developments. We appear to have given her some very strange ideas about what we consider to be spoilers. It's an abundance of caution on her part, and we appreciate it...but it's also pretty funny. XD Naturally we have seen the episode now, and as far as wee can tell, it is, in fact, spoiler-free. We also watched it without subtitles, because it's YouTube... Although, come to think of it, a subtitle track should exist. We didn't bother to check. It wasn't too tough to follow the action even without them, and Athena was even able to give me the gist of all the tourism information.
October
I tried and failed to come up with an introduction to this post. Let's just get to the reporting. (This was a very important post, actually, because it was the report of when we saw L'Homme de Riom, thus seeing our very favorite actor in person for the first time ever.)
November
We ended up having to work extra late today. Our week has been so jam-packed, and I want to say we're done with the crunch, but alas, we don't really know yet. So then I want to say we'll know on Tuesday, but I'm not even sure we'll know by then. I think we may just have to resign ourselves to constant long work days for the foreseeable future. At least we can be in denial over the weekend. Despite the extra work, we have been making time to do fun things, and that includes the new Miraculous video game!
December
Ever since we saw L'Homme de Riom, we thought we should watch more Maurice Chevalier movies. We'd only seen him in one thing before--In Search of the Castaways, the Disney adaptation of the Jules Verne novel. It was a cute movie, but the character assassination of Glenarvan had us more than a little annoyed. We understand, though. There was no way to fit the whole book in just one movie, so some things had to change. And of course, Maurice Chevalier as Paganel was delightful. Him correcting Hayley Mills pronunciation in "Enjoy It" was especially amusing. XD Anyway, since we finished our recent rewatch of Miraculous and we therefore had more time, we decided to watch Gigi.
As usual, that was a pretty decent sampling of our year. This time, it was mostly taken up with Miraculous (despite there being very little new Miraculous to write about), attempting to go to Paris, actually going to Paris, and some visiting of family. Not featured were our stepbrother's wedding and Anime Expo.
Anyway, I think it's been a pretty good year for us. My losing my passport was super stressful, but it worked out for the best, because we got to go to Paris at an even better time. And! we got to meet our very favorite actor (and Athena's crush♥).
It was a pretty good year work-wise, too. We had a bit less of it, I think, but enough that we could still cover our expenses, and travel to Paris! We got a few new series to work on, including Pink & Habanero which is super duper cute, and Now That We Draw, which is fan-servicey, but also very cute otherwise.
So yes. We're pretty happy with how this year has turned out, and we're hoping to make 2025 into a really good year, too! This year I'm thankful for our workload being just right, the blessing in disguise of my passport disappearing, getting to go to Paris, getting to meet our very favorite actor, and getting a couple of really great Miraculous World specials (okay, just one, but the Paris special came close enough to the end of 2023 that we mostly enjoyed it in this year). I'm also thankful for the good times we were able to spend with friends and family. Happy New Year, everyone!