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just a post on life

Farewell, 2014

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, 2014!  Long story short, I’m quite ready for this year to be over.   While I had plenty of fun and good times during it, the overall feeling of it due to certain events basically relegates 2014 to “shitty” status.  REGARDLESS of that status, I resolve for 2015 to be a better year.  In the meantime though, time for review?  My resolution to post at a nearly daily level certainly helps me in recalling what happened!

  • From that last point above, I am very happy that I was able to post quite frequently on this site.  While most of the time I know there’s very few readers of this site, I do occasionally get visitors who find this site due to pictures I’ve taken.  It’s kind of neat to know I have sporadic reaches out into the ether!  While I did intend to post daily, the realities are that sometimes I just didn’t.  But this posting rate was by far the most I’ve ever posted, and that’s including going back to my website’s initial heyday back in the early and mid-2000s.  I’m going to keep it up in 2015 as it’s just fun.
  • Lest you think this list may be chronological – it won’t be.
  • I wrote a TON about this season of Big Brother and made so many damn screen-caps it’s kind of embarrassing.  But the season was fun and so much better than last year’s so I enjoyed doing it.  Now someone out there needs to hire me to write about it for their site! I’m pretty damn good at it.   As for this fall’s Amazing Race, I just couldn’t get into the season.  I LOVED the All-Stars version from the spring, but the teams and The Save from AR25 were underwhelming or annoying.  I will give the next season my all though as I still do love the show.
  • It’s weird to think I haven’t been to NYC for almost over a year now – the last time I was there was in January for one last team get-together with the folks at NBCU, although upon reviewing the posts just now, I realize that the real last time the entire group was together was in October of 2013.  Crazy how time flies.  I’ll miss this group!!!
  • I also got to see my wonderful Colorado friends in person in January, with Susan being married (!) and seeing KD all pregnant!  It was far too brief of a visit though as I was there just for a quick work visit at the Dry Creek facility in Denver, but I am still happy I got to see them.  A trip to Colorado Springs needs to occur in 2015.
  • I made HUGE progress in organizing my travel photos on this site this year.  I made my Travelogue page and then organized all the major trips we’ve taken over the years on it.  The pictures within each page are also broken down into applicable headings making the pictures much easier to navigate.  I had before just had one massive album for each page that you would likely not scroll through.  I also put up some of my roadtrips from the many moves I’ve made.  Basically, this page is the best.
  • Because I’m madly in love with the WordPress system, I’ve also been pretty successful at getting a lot of the older pages migrated.  “Older Pages” refers to my pre-Wordpress/pre-MobileMe/pre-LiveJournal HTML creation that I coded by hand from the beginning of my blogging adventures.  Those old pages, while present on the server and accessible, aren’t part of the WordPress search engine.  Additionally, the photo albums I created during that time are not what you’d expect to find in a modern web photo album and the pictures are all heavily shrunk since at the time, I was working to make the site load quickly for dial-up connections.  So yeah, I wanted to be able to find my old content easily and browse the pictures full-size and easily.  I’ve worked my way backwards and am somewhere in summer 2007, and have LOTS more work to do.  It’s satisfying though, and helps bring back a lot of memories at the same time.  All this blogging I’ve done really makes me happy, and I’m kind of proud of the effort I’ve been putting in all these years as I now have a record of most of my adulthood.
  • We saw a ton of movies this year, and it was awesome.  Whether it was the Oscar catchup at the beginning of the year, or the Summer Blitz, or this recent fall’s crop of good movies, Larry & I were there.
  • Finally partook in Ramen and Dumplings around Los Angeles and NYC.  SO FUCKING GOOD.
  • My chocolate chip cookies have finally come into their own.  This most recent recipe I’m using is freaking amazing.
  • There was some great television events throughout the year, whether it was great shows on the air like ScandalEnlisted, Broad City or the end of How I Met Your Mother, but hello, the big news of Twin Peaks’ Blu-Ray and Deleted Scenes and us watching the arrival of the stars at the World Premiere at the Vista OR the fact that Twin Peaks is coming back in 2016….lots of good stuff going on in Television land.
  • VIDEO GAMES!   I got back into Diablo 3, finally played the amazing Wolfenstein: The New Order, various new Assassin’s Creeds (Black Flag: Awesome; Unity: Meh), I picked up a Nintendo 3DS and a Wii U AND we just got a Playstation 4..  My video game habit is still going strong.  There are just so many good experiences out there in gaming and having had the chance to go to a few E3s over the last few years all combine to me loving this hobby.  I probably should add more to my hobby repertoire though, as while I keep saying it, I do want to get back into playing the guitar.  It’s just such a fun thing to do.  I dread building up the callouses on the tips of my fingers though – it fucking HURTS.
  • The Hollywood Bowl series of concerts we went to this year was awesome.  It started with the fantastic Billy Joel concert (my first time seeing him live), followed by the amazing Janelle Monae, then continuing on with a great series of shows the entire summer culminating in The Sound of Music sing-along.  I have to admit that I got ridiculously shitfaced during this most recent SoM sing-along…ah well, I paid the price the following day.  I was hungover as shit.
  • Had a lot of fun over the year going to Vegas with mom as well as doing some projects around her house to get things looking spruced up.  We worked on the front yard a bit getting rid of some of the dirt patches and then just recently got the old office a bit less crowded.  The Vegas trips were of course great fun and sometimes I even won money!
  • I went on a brief astronomy kick when Mars and the moon were having lots of good photo days.  We even got a lunar eclipse!  The problem I discovered is that Los Angeles is a TERRIBLE place to be an amateur astronomer, as the light pollution here is insane.  I toy around with the idea of going to someplace like Baker overnight to get some pure desert views.  It would probably be better to go to somewhere slightly less desolate – maybe the San Bernardino mountains?  It was still fun to get a close-up view of the moon though, even from where we lived.
  • Oh yeah – this was the year where I started going nuts for Trulia and househunting!  I think that both Larry & I are wanting a permanent place of our own and I kind of fell down a rabbit hole of looking at listings online.  There were some amazing ones way out of our price range and then there were some in our price range but it was just not the right time (dammit!!!! – this house in particular was almost perfect for us).   I would love for 2015 to be the year when we find that house and be able to move on it.
  • The announcement of things coming out in 2015 is pretty exciting!  Star Wars, James Bond, the new Avengers, more Madonna….plus my own trevails for next year, all lead up to me having some high hopes and expectations for next year.  It won’t be easy, I know that, but I’m hopeful nonetheless, and that’s all I can ask for.

That’s all the review I’m up for, it seems.  But it was fun just now to rapidly scroll though all the months of posts from this year!  While the year can feel like it flew by, when I see what was happening back in January, that feels like forever ago.  Hell, even this summer’s Hollywood Bowl stuff and more is feeling like a long time ago.

Alright, 2015 – let’s make this happen!  Good times!!!

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