Another New Year's post, another promise to post more
I promised myself I would start writing in my journal more as a New Year's resolution. A blatant recycling of my resolution from 2006, I know, but seven years of intermittent posting means that is one resolution that can be forever Evergreen. I'm also trying this out using the new iOS app, which has voice to text support. Will it lead to me posting more? Or will it only increase the frequency, variety, and hilarity of my typos?
Only time will tell.
Unlike last year and the year before, which share the dubious distinction of having me in a hotel on the road for New Year's, I actually had quasi-plans. With mom and dad back from Qatar more or less for good, I split my time in Michigan between them and Phil & Jill. Thanks to the way the break fell I took a few vacation days that padded out to almost exactly 2 weeks: one week with my brother and the kids, the other with mom and dad.
I slipped into Michigan just before a massive ice storm hit parts of the state. One day later a wide belt, including Lansing and Flint, was without power. Phil and I were actually out in the worst of it, taking the kids to Cici's Pizza as a treat. The roads were just fine and the pizza was great, but accumulations on powerlines meant that the house was powerless when we returned. Power came back on after a few hours but failed again overnight, leaving us without any power or heat from the electric heater for a day.
I visited some of my old SI friends in Ypsilanti while everyone else fled to the safety of a powered house (ironically one deep in the boondocks as opposed to in the middle of town, but it fell outside the narrowband where there was freezing rain). Some people are without power through Christmas and beyond! Luckily for the kids and for our peace of mind the house was powered again by the end of the day, and they were able to enjoy their massive Christmas bounty.
I went with Phil to mom and dad's but stayed after they left. That part of the vacation was much more sedate, with just a little lite shopping, movies, and sparkling grape juice for New Year's. It's the longest I've spent with him at the old house since they came back from Qatar, and it's clear that three years in the desert have utterly spoiled them when it comes to withstanding cold temperatures. Granted, this is one of the coldest winters Michigan has seen in years, and even native Michiganders were complaining about the cold, but there is still talk of becoming snowbirds before next year's chill hits.
And me? I'm writing (actually dictating, using the voice to text app) this halfway through my trip home. I did a decent amount of retail therapy over the break, helped by the copious gift cards I received as Christmas presents, but otherwise mostly just hung out.
2013 certainly wasn't the crapfest offered by 2012 (may it rest in Year Hell), and it offered many lessons and events that I almost unanimously failed to record in my journal. Granted some of them were the sort of thing that I can't record in these pages, or at least not in a public entry, but I did see some significant milestones. Getting tenure at Ole Miss certainly stands head and shoulders above the rest, and will be official as of March. Being 30 was not as bad as I thought it would be, though I noticed new gray hairs every day. I wrote a 100,000 word, and complete, first draft for National Novel Writing Month--another first, and the first time my victory in that contest has not just resulted in yet another unfinished novel cluttering up my hard drive.
I'm sure there are things that I'm forgetting, but bitter experience has taught me that it's better to move forward with a short summary of what's happened then to try and go back and reconstruct the journal entry as if I was writing it in the moment. So this will have to suffice at least for now.
What does 2014 hold? The crapulence of 2012? The highs of 2013? All I knew for sure is that we are one year closer to Marty McFly's return on October 21, 2015.