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Month: December 2022

2022: what year in review

2022: what year in review

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wow the end of the year crept up on me really quick! a mere three hours left of 2022 and i haven’t even gone over my yearly to-do list (which i like a lot better than a resolutions list).

the years just sort of haze into each other at this point, so i always wonder what year it is, what am i doing, and how did i get here anyway. there was good stuff that happened and interesting stuff, but at this point, was that 2022? 2022? 2021? what is time, anyway? but, we’ll do a little recap and see what’s going on!

first, a review of what my list of things to do:

  1. oh what the heck. take more pics. i’ve been sliding these past few years and have to figure out how to get the inspiration back.
  2. i have no trips planned for this year, so i have to figure out how to somewhere, whether it’s a few state parks or getting out of state. i do have a work conference in march, but that’s for work and just to denver (haha just to denver).
  3. i am already signed up for two races! i’ve got the earth day half on my calendar and ragnar trail is in september. i don’t know if i should try for two half marathons this year or what, or maybe a 10-mile race somewhere. we’ll see how training for the half goes: my feet have been really good lately but my knees have been buggered and i have to get that checked out. my form is probably awful.
  4. i want to replace my floors this year. slowly this house is coming out of the 90s and into at least the mid-2000s. i’ve replaced almost all the major appliances and the cupboards are painted. the floor is really just the grossest now, and it’s time to get something looking good in here.
  5. yoga: by the end of 2022, i should have my yoga teacher training under my belt! that will be a good accomplishment and i’m excited to see what i do with it (i have no idea LOL). i will also continue to strive toward daily practice!
  6. do something interesting with nate! that guy never takes time off and it’s time he does. hopefully we can combine it with #2 above!
  7. eat more cheese. (i mean, this one should be an easy goal.)
  8. continue to strive toward less plastic use. and less carbon use. and you know what else? i have to stop using amazon. jeff bezos could fix climate change today if he wanted to with all the money he’s hoarding but he doesn’t. ugh.
  9. support the great resignation. one thing we’ve learned during this pandemic is that the economy is more important than people. surprise! i want to do some more research on this and write a blog post on it. stay tuned.

1. not check. i did not take more pics. i did take phone pics, but i bet i pulled out my hefty cam maybe 5 times this year. i am slipping!

2. check! ooh, trips! well, let’s take a look. i did in fact go to denver, where i graduated from a leadership institute. then i went to the lake for a week in june. and in november, nate and i went to tuscon! that was sort of a last-minute (ish)decision as nate and i hadn’t been on a vacation since 2018 and i decided it was time to go somewhere.

3. check! i did TWO half marathons over the course of three weeks in late april and early may. the weather was ATROCIOUS for the april one – 26º with 15mph winds. ridiculous! the may one was better, weatherwise, but i can’t say that it was any easier. then ragnar in september, which may be our last ragnar. the experience has just gone downhill 🙁 and i have been slacking on the running front since i’ve had to come indoors for treadmill time. i suppose some february i’ll pick it up because it’ll be time to start training for the april half i already signed up for again!

4. CHECK!! NEW FLOORS!!! THEY’RE GORGEOUS!!!

5. check! i completed all my classes for yoga teacher training and am just waiting for my certificate so i can get certifed by the yoga alliance. i’ve already got some yoga sessions planned at work and will see where this takes me! i do not do a daily practice, but i bet i do yoga, on average, 4-5 days a week. it’s always something to work toward.

6. check! we went to tucson and nate had a good time. i don’t think i need to visit tucson again though. i’d much rather visit the grand canyon again or go to the pacific northwest or CA.

7. check. i mean, who can resist some cheese.

8. ugh, sort of check? every time i unwrap something encased in plastic i inwardly groan. i have been actively trying NOT to use amazon though. there are still some things i use the evil empire for, but if an item is available somewhere else, i try to get it somewhere else.

9. i totally did not do a blog post on the great resignation. i still support it though, and i think more people are realizing that this isn’t a matter of “no oNe wANts tO WoRK aNYmOrE” and more of a “hey there aren’t enough stinking workers”. doesn’t help that there are 400 of one franchise in a metro area. how many starbucks do we need? also, inflation sucks and pay your workers more.

items of note:

1. i got a promotion at work! i am now director of marketing and communications.

2. my poor nissan got hit by a deer 🙁 BOOOOOOO. but now i have a new car i guess. it’s super fancy

3. i THINK my student loan has been forgiven for public service – 10 years of consistent payments and working for the state government and POOF there goes $22k. i THINK. i HOPE. omg wouldn’t that just be the bees(‘?) knees.

4. i got a little bit more of my arm tattooed – some raspberries over my elbow area. next time her books open up, i’m going to request we figure out the rest of my arm!

5. i also got two more ear piercings in my upper ear. i think they’re cute!

top titles of 2022

top titles of 2022

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it’s that time of year when i share the best books i’ve read this year. i’m currently ensconced in harry potter after a 6-year break, so that’s got me completely entranced and i almost forgot about getting my top books of the year up. i have a few books published this year on my to-be-read list that may have made it this year if i hadn’t taken it upon myself to read all the HP books (though they are a quick read).

bear and nightingale trilogy – katherine arden

my mom gave this trilogy by katherine arden a couple years ago, and i let it sit on my shelf for too long. when i was younger, i was a vociferous fantasy reader, but lately i have been letting that slide for more post-apocalyptic and contemporary fiction, so i wasn’t entirely excited about picking this up. then i was sorting through my stack of books and decided to finally pick it up.

arden’s writing is lyrical and light as she weaves the dark stories of russian fairy tales from the 1500s, combining the fantastical with historical moments. we follow vasilisa, who has magic in her blood, from her time as a girl to saving her country and people, befriending (or not) the russian stuff of myths along the way.

fairy tale – stephen king

well what would a best books list be without a stephen king book on it? how apropos that it was one of his fairy tales, entitled fairy tale. our hero is charlie, starting in contemporary times where charlie is a helpful high school student. he helps then befriends a reclusive neighbor who leaves him all his property when he dies. of course the neighbor has a secret, and charlie travels to another land where evil has spread and peace needs to be restored so the evil doesn’t spread into our world.

this is a thick book, but king’s stories are always a quick, interesting read for me. it’s another foray into the fantastical with a bit more of an edge and more concrete writing than the bear and nightingale books.

upgrade – blake crouch

everything i’ve read by blake crouch has been a four or five stars. his books keep you on the edge of your seat and involve plots that seem more than plausible in our world alongside some extreme science or math that i don’t want nor care to check if correct. it fits seamlessly into the story and adds to the plausibility of “oh boy, could this happen?” you think about when reading his stories.

upgrade is about enhancing the human genome for an upgrade – everything’s just a bit better. better concentration, intelligence, thinking ahead, physical strength, multitasking, reaction time, etc. logan is one of the first to receive the upgrade and we watch as he learns what’s happening and then figure out why it happened. then he learns about a bigger, more sinister plan, and then we see what he does to stop it

the emerald mile – kevin fedarko

usually when i read non-fiction, i stick to memoirs. i generally shy away from books that are heavy on geology or history that’s more generalized than personalized. but when i got this recommendation from my aunt rae, i thought i’d give it a try.

first, this book is DENSE. it’s 432 pages, but the type is a bit small and squished in there for ya. so i was a bit intimidated. no fear – fedarko manages to weave a great story of the fasted boat ride ever down the grand canyon in 1983. you’d think that this would be an easy tale to tell, but his setup is key. he tells us history and geology, telling us how the grand canyon used to be, how glen canyon used to be even better, the dams that were built to power and hydrate the southwest, and WHY the southwest. we hear about john wesley powell who documented his journey into the grand canyon pre-dam. we learn about different types of boats you can take on excursions in the canyon, why each works the way it does, and then the weather patterns and choices of the dam operators that led to and illegal boat run down the grand canyon. it was pretty fascinating seeing the confluence of events.

falling – tj newman

do you want to read a short fiction book? one that has short chapters that leave you hanging on every word? leading up to shocking sets of events so much that you gasp out loud? this is the beach read for you!

falling is a thriller by a flight attendant who had always wondered about the premise of what would happen if pilots’ families were held hostage – then needed to make a choice between their families and their flight. well, we get the fictional tale of that plight, and boy is it a doozy and entertaining!

in the weeds – tom vitale

this book about anthony bourdain’s life while giving snark and hope while eating with people around the world was written by one of the show’s producer/directors, tom vitale

i’ve read a few books about tony since his death, and none has come close to how enjoyable and emotional this book was. we get a behind the scenes look at tony’s life, and tom’s, as the show changed networks and traveled around the world. there are happy times, not happy times, dangerous times, easy times, hard times, and the hardest times. anyone who has watched any of tony bourdain’s shows should know what to expect in this book – just multiply it times 10 and you’ll have a good idea. this made me miss him even more.

winter skating

winter skating

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we had a heavy snowfall the other day, the kind where the snow sticks to tree branches and piles onto pine boughs so that any lights you have on the tree glow through the snow ethereally. i saw a photo someone took of a creek winding through wooded banks, tree laden with piles of snow.

on the acreage that i grew up on, a small creek ran through the pasture, its banks steep in places, and it flooded the pasture every so often. but there was an area where it pooled into a wider, open spot, with oak trees guarding nearby. this tiny pool of creekwater is where we tried to ice skate every winter.

my dream was to own a pair of white figure skates, like the olympians wore as they skated over the smooth ice every four years. when we went to the ice rink, i was able to rent a pair, but i didn’t have a pair for the pool in the pasture. one year, after reading “the silver skates”, my aunt colette decided to get me a pair of “skates” in the traditional sense. it was a blade on a piece of wood that you strapped to your shoe. definitely not a white pair of figure skates, but it was something*.

so down to the pool my siblings and i went, one saturday afternoon. the ice was frozen and the snow minimal, so it would be good ice, but getting there was the real trick. you had to walk through a good portion of the pasture to get there, and the summertime brought out the best in growing season, so the grasses had grown tall, though they were dead and flattened slightly by the little snow we’d gotten. luckily, we didn’t have animals in the pasture in the wintertime.

through the grasses we traipsed, trying to stick to the semblance of tire ruts that may have been there at one point during the summer. once past the second gate in, tall oaks were there to greet us, and we maneuvered around the old junkpit where oodles of old, turn-of-the-century bottles still peeked up through the dirt.

i don’t remember if anyone else had skates (or whatever it was i had), but it was easy enough to take a sled out there and slide down the short hill onto the frozen creekbed, and if anything else, sliding around the ice on foam-soled winter boots wasn’t a bad option. i don’t know how long we would normally spend out there – it was cold, but we were having fun running around like maniacs.

the trip back from pasture snowtime was the worst. it was a long hike back to the house, especially with the excitement of skating past. up the short hill, past the junkpit, and through the tall grasses again, keeping to the side of the fence that ran alongside a field of small pine trees. when we got up to the main fence, it was just a hop, skip, and jump past the pumphouse and tall pines to get inside to the warmth. and sometimes there was hot chocolate.

*turns out, traditional scandinavian skates aren’t that great. in the next couple years, i got a pair of used white skates, and when we went down to the creek for a go around the frozen pool, i was so proud of myself for being able to turn around while skating. i wasn’t going to be an olympian any time soon, but it was something.

whirlwind

whirlwind

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after a reconnoiter with my sisters RE chirstmas at my parents’ house, we moved it up a week, which meant that my traditional christmas tree weekend was suddenly going to be spent…not in my house with my tree. so i ended up picking up the tree this past weekend, which, of course, meant i had to get it DONE and DONE so now i’m sitting in my living room looking at all my xmas decor in its glory. also i had to wrap all my presents because, well, gotta bring those next weekend too. and since presents will exit soon, i had to do the cats’ christmas portraits. oh, and baking cookies during my evenings this week (that’s a personal choice; don’t judge me).

most wonderful time of year, sure.

however, i’m reading a delightful little christmas book about legends and tales of yore and all the different (mostly european) yuletide creatures and etc. i actually got it last year after christmas and was a bit intimidated so set it aside. i pulled it out this year and flipped through it – not only are there stories and information, but there are crafts and recipes! what a nice surprise. so i’m ploughing through that and learning a lot of elves, witches, krampus, la bafana, and all sorts of fun olde tymey stuff that i wish were still around.

i took a moment to step outside last night before i went to bed and the moon was waxing – full moon is in 2 days – to the point that i could envision clement c moore glancing outside to see the lustre of midday. there wasn’t much snow to bounce the moon from, but there was enough, and the quiet of winter was complete.

tis the season.