On the last day of the year,,,
Reading other people's thoughts on their past year got me thinking about my own. Off the top of my head I wouldn't have thought I'd done that much, but on reflection, I really have.
My birthday is at the beginning of January. Since I turned 40, I celebrated by having a lovely dinner courtesy of Herazade, some delicious cake, and then the ladies went to watch male strippers. Oh my god, naked men are always fun, but seeing my friends' faces was priceless.
I also acquired a second cat. The cats seem to have settled into some sort of friendship that allows for sleeping together, wrestling and chasing. When I'm sitting on the couch, Jasper likes to snuggle on my left shoulder. Jerry likes to lay on my right arm where it rests on the armrest. I spend plenty of time pinned under two cats.
February brought serious ill health for two friends, but happily they are recovered and doing well. Even though both health issues were sheer, unpredictable bad luck, you'd think it would have made me keep on with my own good health efforts, but I dropped my exercise almost entirely and my eating habits slipped. This resulted in weight gain and stiffer/achy body parts.
March continued with the ill health of one friend, the kid with the liver transplant. When you have a transplant, they have to do a huge number of tests in order to find the right balance of medication to keep your body from rejecting the organ. This would suck for anyone, but I think it is especially hard on a child. I appreciated how well the family worked together to get the kid through this.
April had Norwescon, which didn't make much of an impression on me this year. There wasn't anything I was all that excited about. Nonetheless, it is still a good Con.
May had Mother's Day, which is problematic for me, since I have problems with my family. I've been working on reconnecting, but it isn't easy. May 18th is the anniversary of Mt St Helen's eruption. I was in Eastern Washington at the time, and it was quite a memorable event. If you've never been to Mt. St. Helen's you should make the time to go. It is still amazing.
June brought Father's day, with the same problems as Mother's Day. Somewhere in this time frame I found out about friends pregnancy.
July was Can't Stop the Serenity - a screening of the movie Serenity for charity. It went well for us as it has the past several years.
August saw the start of a writer's MeetUp by Herazade. After hearing her problems finding one, I suggested we start one, and she went ahead and did it. It has been very successful and enjoyable. We were both somewhat surprise by the number of people who immediately joined.
Somewhere in the summer my friends finally got to adopt their little girl from China. She was and is adorable. One of her brother's is only a few months older, and they immediately became a team. Their older brother I think is still annoyed about not being the only child anymore, but he does well with his younger sibs.
September had Foolscap, which I'd never been to before. Foolscap held three Author readings over the summer, which I went to and enjoyed very much. They may have been intended to be readings, but they ended up as really interesting conversations about writing and publishing. That was what made me decide to go ahead and attend Foolscap. The panels were very interesting and I met some very cool people. I also had brunch with my parents this month. I hadn't seen them in person for several years, although we exchanged e-mails.
October had bad news about a friend's mother, and another friend's annual Halloween party. Her previous parties had always been for adults, but now that she and so many of her friends have kids, this party started in the afternoon and was kid friendly.
I also submitted the first part of a story to the writer's group. This was kind of big deal to me. As I kid, I always loved books and was determined to be a writer. My mother was very negative about this "Oh you'll never make any money." I can't remember whether she ever read anything I wrote. I know not every author is a Rowling or King, but that isn't really the point. Telling a story scratches an itch that never quite goes away. Anyway, my writing was well received. Now I have to keep writing as well as edit what I've already done. Thank goodness the group is helpful.
November included a snowstorm, the closure of a favorite coffee house due to fire, and Thanksgiving. The snowstorm was awkward since I was cat sitting and had to chain up the car in order to handle the hill. Fortunately when I got the car years ago, my brother insisted I get chains, and even took me to the car store to help me get them. This is the second time I used the chains, and again it was a snowstorm in Seattle, that bad one we had over Christmas.
Wayward Coffee House suffered smoke and water damage when the store next door had an electrical fire. Wayward was sort of the home of geeks everywhere, and many groups met there. Now the buildings owners don't want to make repairs, and we don't know what will happen.
Thanksgiving was spent at the home of Herazade with her family and our friends. It included the usual overeating and random conversations. Lovely.
December was a bit of a milestone. I drove over the mountains to Medical Lake to visit my parents. I still don't know how I feel. My parents were overjoyed to see me.
I've had the two annual Christmas parties in which I hung out with friends, ate far too much food and had a good time. I also went to one of the weekend cookie parties held by another friend. Tonight is the annual New Year's party. As another friend observed, if these people didn't announce they were having it, we would all probably show up anyway.
What I didn't do this year - keep up with my exercise, or get my house completely cleaned up. At least I got a bunch of stuff done, but it still isn't guest-worthy. I didn't do any traveling, not even to Canada, although I did finally get a passport. I can now flee the country if the Republicans get out of control. I did not get my credit card paid down as much as I wanted. That's partly due to necessary car repairs/maintenance. On the up side, I've almost finished all the things that must be done to my car.
Other accomplishments - I am on the board of two non-profits that I also was part of the creation of. One is working out well for me, I'm not so sure about the other, but I do believe in the goals of both. I finally got to see Rent, which was awesome. I also saw Evil Dead the Musical, which was fabulous and hilarious. Penn and Teller came to town, and they were fantastic. I learned a bit more about politics, went to the Seattle Restore Sanity Rally and attended several Coffee Party meetings.
Despite the lack of exercise, my health is good, which after seeing what other people have gone through, is definitely a tremendous blessing. I am also blessed with wonderful friends whom I am always glad to see. If I ever wanted to gather them all in one place, the number would be pushing a hundred. This includes my adult friends' children, but by and large they have cool children.
I don't know that I'll make formal resolutions, but I do need to restart my exercise habits. I also want to get into a writing routine. It really is a joy. I also definitely want to finish cleaning the house. Part of the problem is I simply hate cleaning. The other part is a desire not to put things in the garbage if I can find someone to pass them along to. Freecycle is useful in this, but it can also be a hassle. I also need to not get sucked so much into the TV. I watched a bunch of cheesy holiday movies on Hallmark Channel this month.
I will now sign off and go do something constructive. Like make more empanadas for tonight.
May the coming year be good to everyone.
My birthday is at the beginning of January. Since I turned 40, I celebrated by having a lovely dinner courtesy of Herazade, some delicious cake, and then the ladies went to watch male strippers. Oh my god, naked men are always fun, but seeing my friends' faces was priceless.
I also acquired a second cat. The cats seem to have settled into some sort of friendship that allows for sleeping together, wrestling and chasing. When I'm sitting on the couch, Jasper likes to snuggle on my left shoulder. Jerry likes to lay on my right arm where it rests on the armrest. I spend plenty of time pinned under two cats.
February brought serious ill health for two friends, but happily they are recovered and doing well. Even though both health issues were sheer, unpredictable bad luck, you'd think it would have made me keep on with my own good health efforts, but I dropped my exercise almost entirely and my eating habits slipped. This resulted in weight gain and stiffer/achy body parts.
March continued with the ill health of one friend, the kid with the liver transplant. When you have a transplant, they have to do a huge number of tests in order to find the right balance of medication to keep your body from rejecting the organ. This would suck for anyone, but I think it is especially hard on a child. I appreciated how well the family worked together to get the kid through this.
April had Norwescon, which didn't make much of an impression on me this year. There wasn't anything I was all that excited about. Nonetheless, it is still a good Con.
May had Mother's Day, which is problematic for me, since I have problems with my family. I've been working on reconnecting, but it isn't easy. May 18th is the anniversary of Mt St Helen's eruption. I was in Eastern Washington at the time, and it was quite a memorable event. If you've never been to Mt. St. Helen's you should make the time to go. It is still amazing.
June brought Father's day, with the same problems as Mother's Day. Somewhere in this time frame I found out about friends pregnancy.
July was Can't Stop the Serenity - a screening of the movie Serenity for charity. It went well for us as it has the past several years.
August saw the start of a writer's MeetUp by Herazade. After hearing her problems finding one, I suggested we start one, and she went ahead and did it. It has been very successful and enjoyable. We were both somewhat surprise by the number of people who immediately joined.
Somewhere in the summer my friends finally got to adopt their little girl from China. She was and is adorable. One of her brother's is only a few months older, and they immediately became a team. Their older brother I think is still annoyed about not being the only child anymore, but he does well with his younger sibs.
September had Foolscap, which I'd never been to before. Foolscap held three Author readings over the summer, which I went to and enjoyed very much. They may have been intended to be readings, but they ended up as really interesting conversations about writing and publishing. That was what made me decide to go ahead and attend Foolscap. The panels were very interesting and I met some very cool people. I also had brunch with my parents this month. I hadn't seen them in person for several years, although we exchanged e-mails.
October had bad news about a friend's mother, and another friend's annual Halloween party. Her previous parties had always been for adults, but now that she and so many of her friends have kids, this party started in the afternoon and was kid friendly.
I also submitted the first part of a story to the writer's group. This was kind of big deal to me. As I kid, I always loved books and was determined to be a writer. My mother was very negative about this "Oh you'll never make any money." I can't remember whether she ever read anything I wrote. I know not every author is a Rowling or King, but that isn't really the point. Telling a story scratches an itch that never quite goes away. Anyway, my writing was well received. Now I have to keep writing as well as edit what I've already done. Thank goodness the group is helpful.
November included a snowstorm, the closure of a favorite coffee house due to fire, and Thanksgiving. The snowstorm was awkward since I was cat sitting and had to chain up the car in order to handle the hill. Fortunately when I got the car years ago, my brother insisted I get chains, and even took me to the car store to help me get them. This is the second time I used the chains, and again it was a snowstorm in Seattle, that bad one we had over Christmas.
Wayward Coffee House suffered smoke and water damage when the store next door had an electrical fire. Wayward was sort of the home of geeks everywhere, and many groups met there. Now the buildings owners don't want to make repairs, and we don't know what will happen.
Thanksgiving was spent at the home of Herazade with her family and our friends. It included the usual overeating and random conversations. Lovely.
December was a bit of a milestone. I drove over the mountains to Medical Lake to visit my parents. I still don't know how I feel. My parents were overjoyed to see me.
I've had the two annual Christmas parties in which I hung out with friends, ate far too much food and had a good time. I also went to one of the weekend cookie parties held by another friend. Tonight is the annual New Year's party. As another friend observed, if these people didn't announce they were having it, we would all probably show up anyway.
What I didn't do this year - keep up with my exercise, or get my house completely cleaned up. At least I got a bunch of stuff done, but it still isn't guest-worthy. I didn't do any traveling, not even to Canada, although I did finally get a passport. I can now flee the country if the Republicans get out of control. I did not get my credit card paid down as much as I wanted. That's partly due to necessary car repairs/maintenance. On the up side, I've almost finished all the things that must be done to my car.
Other accomplishments - I am on the board of two non-profits that I also was part of the creation of. One is working out well for me, I'm not so sure about the other, but I do believe in the goals of both. I finally got to see Rent, which was awesome. I also saw Evil Dead the Musical, which was fabulous and hilarious. Penn and Teller came to town, and they were fantastic. I learned a bit more about politics, went to the Seattle Restore Sanity Rally and attended several Coffee Party meetings.
Despite the lack of exercise, my health is good, which after seeing what other people have gone through, is definitely a tremendous blessing. I am also blessed with wonderful friends whom I am always glad to see. If I ever wanted to gather them all in one place, the number would be pushing a hundred. This includes my adult friends' children, but by and large they have cool children.
I don't know that I'll make formal resolutions, but I do need to restart my exercise habits. I also want to get into a writing routine. It really is a joy. I also definitely want to finish cleaning the house. Part of the problem is I simply hate cleaning. The other part is a desire not to put things in the garbage if I can find someone to pass them along to. Freecycle is useful in this, but it can also be a hassle. I also need to not get sucked so much into the TV. I watched a bunch of cheesy holiday movies on Hallmark Channel this month.
I will now sign off and go do something constructive. Like make more empanadas for tonight.
May the coming year be good to everyone.