2009 in review (my journal and my life)
Dec. 31st, 2009 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanHere are the first words I posted each month this year, plus a reflection of what was actually going on in my life at the time:
1. I don't know what this new year will bring with it. I see it as a bridge year, where big changes that are going to happen in the following year will get their start.
I was not prepared for how much Barack Obama's presidency would energize the teabaggers, Sarah Palin fans, Global Warming deniers, and tinfoil hat Libertarians. Yeah, no one likes to see billion dollar corporations get billions of taxpayer dollars, but I'm still feeling so good about the end of Bush/Cheney that I'm willing to wait and see if it works before decrying it as Stalinism.
This was also the year that I succumbed to facebook. As it happens, so did a lot of my old friends. I reconnected with relatives, classmates from high school, and college, and old friends and roommates from the past 22 years since leaving the house. The weird part is having them all in one place--presenting the same public face to everyone, from my drinking buddies to my 75 year old aunt, and seeing conversations develop between people I work with and people I went to high school with. I used it too much at first, and maybe still do, but I've calmed down a bit about it.
2. Sap bucket beetles ARE fireflies, but they have lost the trait of bioluminescence through evolution, and mate in the daytime.
After she spent my entire adult life with Alzheimers, and the last 15 years of it in a nursing home losing her independence, adulthood, and her mind, my mom died. You would think it would be a relief, and maybe it was to her, but for those of us who loved her it was very very painful. The sorrow has loomed over me ever since. I had so long to prepare for it, but I guess you can never really prepare for the death of a loved one, even one who had spent so long fading away. It was cathartic to write and deliver a eulogy.
3. The house sparrow chatter outside makes it sound like it's a beautiful warm spring day. In fact we're getting our traditional March First snowstorm, first of two parts.
In March I got it in my head to photograph the Muddy River every day for the rest of the year. That turned out pretty well, I think.
4. It can now be said without reservation or qualification: Spring is here. It hasn't been constantly warm, but as a wise lj friend said to me last year at this time, it isn't summer it is spring.
In April this year, I emceed the zoo's film festival/awards ceremony. It was the first time I'd been on a stage performing anything in years. Except, you know, my mom's eulogy.
5. I'm teaching another mushroom class this Saturday.
This was the first year I did a mushroom class in spring. Pretty challenging, but interesting. We ramped up taking the dogs to the woods in May, also.
6. Snapping turtle laying eggs directly across from my house.
June was cool and rainy, almost the entire month. It resulted in an easier stable fly season, but made the summer feel really really short.
7. I went to my dad's house Friday, because my brother was coming to spend the night before he and my dad go to Germany together.
In July, besides hanging out with my brother and father, I discovered that the zoo was closing and euthanizing all the animals. Well, not really, but that's the sound bite the media picked up on. Really what happened was the governor slashed the zoo's budget, and the zoo informed the state legislature that if the budget drops below a certain point, they automatically take control of the zoo, and would have to make difficult decisions, like who to fire, and what to do with all the animals. You can see where the confusion came from. The main impact on me, from this particular expression of the economic downturn (catchy name!) is that my pay is still less than what I was making four years ago at Drumlin Farm. Say it with me: "I'm Lucky to Have A Job."
8. One of the bug identification communities is in the LJ spotlight. Reading my friendslist has become an onerous chore.
Fortunately I didn't have to think too much about an overactive LJ comm too long, since the highlight of August was going to Iceland and Greenland! My dad and I had a great time. I enjoyed the amazing landscape, and the polite, well-educated, English speaking Europeans I was surrounded by. Very different from the United States.
Also I dropped an irreplaceable camera into the river, and replaced it with a DSLR.
9. So, you live in the Santa Cruz, California area.... How do you like it?
Alexis and I started to entertain the idea of moving to California. There are affordable houses up in the hills above Santa Cruz. But are there any jobs?
10. For whatever reason, I'm going through old journal entries. You know, I used to write a lot more.
I started to worry: whither this blog? Also I increased studying mushrooms again in order to teach about them.
11. If you see a guy riding a bike pulling Patience the Trailer around Brookline and Boston, it's not me, and it's not a thief! I have passed the trailer along to my neighbor Pat, who is trying to live car-free.
November (as I say in my first December post, next) was unbelievably pleasant. Many Novembers are just early winter dressed up as fall, but this one reminded you why people actually come to New England as tourists in Autumn. I resumed actually writing about stuff in my journal. I decided when something struck me as funny (5 synonyms for cloaca e.g.) that I would post in in my journal. Why not?
12. November this year was more pleasant than June, by a long shot. December's started out pretty nicely as well.
And then it turned into winter, with snow and ice and freezing cold and Seasonal Anger Disorder and the whole shebang. Also I proved that I have the worst sales resistance in the world when I woke up one morning and found that I had bought a new car. Phew! If you've gotten this far, thanks, and sorry about that. Another year, onward and upward.
1. I don't know what this new year will bring with it. I see it as a bridge year, where big changes that are going to happen in the following year will get their start.
I was not prepared for how much Barack Obama's presidency would energize the teabaggers, Sarah Palin fans, Global Warming deniers, and tinfoil hat Libertarians. Yeah, no one likes to see billion dollar corporations get billions of taxpayer dollars, but I'm still feeling so good about the end of Bush/Cheney that I'm willing to wait and see if it works before decrying it as Stalinism.
This was also the year that I succumbed to facebook. As it happens, so did a lot of my old friends. I reconnected with relatives, classmates from high school, and college, and old friends and roommates from the past 22 years since leaving the house. The weird part is having them all in one place--presenting the same public face to everyone, from my drinking buddies to my 75 year old aunt, and seeing conversations develop between people I work with and people I went to high school with. I used it too much at first, and maybe still do, but I've calmed down a bit about it.
2. Sap bucket beetles ARE fireflies, but they have lost the trait of bioluminescence through evolution, and mate in the daytime.
After she spent my entire adult life with Alzheimers, and the last 15 years of it in a nursing home losing her independence, adulthood, and her mind, my mom died. You would think it would be a relief, and maybe it was to her, but for those of us who loved her it was very very painful. The sorrow has loomed over me ever since. I had so long to prepare for it, but I guess you can never really prepare for the death of a loved one, even one who had spent so long fading away. It was cathartic to write and deliver a eulogy.
3. The house sparrow chatter outside makes it sound like it's a beautiful warm spring day. In fact we're getting our traditional March First snowstorm, first of two parts.
In March I got it in my head to photograph the Muddy River every day for the rest of the year. That turned out pretty well, I think.
4. It can now be said without reservation or qualification: Spring is here. It hasn't been constantly warm, but as a wise lj friend said to me last year at this time, it isn't summer it is spring.
In April this year, I emceed the zoo's film festival/awards ceremony. It was the first time I'd been on a stage performing anything in years. Except, you know, my mom's eulogy.
5. I'm teaching another mushroom class this Saturday.
This was the first year I did a mushroom class in spring. Pretty challenging, but interesting. We ramped up taking the dogs to the woods in May, also.
6. Snapping turtle laying eggs directly across from my house.
June was cool and rainy, almost the entire month. It resulted in an easier stable fly season, but made the summer feel really really short.
7. I went to my dad's house Friday, because my brother was coming to spend the night before he and my dad go to Germany together.
In July, besides hanging out with my brother and father, I discovered that the zoo was closing and euthanizing all the animals. Well, not really, but that's the sound bite the media picked up on. Really what happened was the governor slashed the zoo's budget, and the zoo informed the state legislature that if the budget drops below a certain point, they automatically take control of the zoo, and would have to make difficult decisions, like who to fire, and what to do with all the animals. You can see where the confusion came from. The main impact on me, from this particular expression of the economic downturn (catchy name!) is that my pay is still less than what I was making four years ago at Drumlin Farm. Say it with me: "I'm Lucky to Have A Job."
8. One of the bug identification communities is in the LJ spotlight. Reading my friendslist has become an onerous chore.
Fortunately I didn't have to think too much about an overactive LJ comm too long, since the highlight of August was going to Iceland and Greenland! My dad and I had a great time. I enjoyed the amazing landscape, and the polite, well-educated, English speaking Europeans I was surrounded by. Very different from the United States.
Also I dropped an irreplaceable camera into the river, and replaced it with a DSLR.
9. So, you live in the Santa Cruz, California area.... How do you like it?
Alexis and I started to entertain the idea of moving to California. There are affordable houses up in the hills above Santa Cruz. But are there any jobs?
10. For whatever reason, I'm going through old journal entries. You know, I used to write a lot more.
I started to worry: whither this blog? Also I increased studying mushrooms again in order to teach about them.
11. If you see a guy riding a bike pulling Patience the Trailer around Brookline and Boston, it's not me, and it's not a thief! I have passed the trailer along to my neighbor Pat, who is trying to live car-free.
November (as I say in my first December post, next) was unbelievably pleasant. Many Novembers are just early winter dressed up as fall, but this one reminded you why people actually come to New England as tourists in Autumn. I resumed actually writing about stuff in my journal. I decided when something struck me as funny (5 synonyms for cloaca e.g.) that I would post in in my journal. Why not?
12. November this year was more pleasant than June, by a long shot. December's started out pretty nicely as well.
And then it turned into winter, with snow and ice and freezing cold and Seasonal Anger Disorder and the whole shebang. Also I proved that I have the worst sales resistance in the world when I woke up one morning and found that I had bought a new car. Phew! If you've gotten this far, thanks, and sorry about that. Another year, onward and upward.
