I’ve forgotten where I saw this style of year-end review, but I like the approach, and so took a few minutes to put together my own year in review post, based on the entries to this site over the past year.
Basically, how it works is, if you have a blog, you copy the beginning of the first post of each month of the year and create a summary post based on those snippets. It is a random, not considered, overview of the past year, but it’s still fun (and maybe more revealing than a list that was generated after a lot of thought (and self-filtering)). The review below is formatted such that the month name is a link to that month’s archive, and each posting’s title is a link to that particular entry (complete with any pictures or comments).
January : Happy New Year
from Lindsborg, where it’s 61 degrees and the sun is breaking through the clouds. The weather has been unseasonably warm the past few days; records were set a couple of days ago!
One of the pleasures of living in the midwest is sharing our backyard with a pair of cardinals. Virtually unknown in California, they are fairly common here. Cardinals are very shy birds,
March : Spam be Gone
For the time being, I’ve disabled comments on this site. (Note: comments are enabled again.)You can email me if you have a comment, and we’ll take it from there.
I resisted this decision for a long time, and believe it to be temporary. I have some extreme deadline pressure for a major project at work and simply don’t have time to shovel out the stables each morning.
April : 31 Years and Going Strong
Sheryl and I were married 31 years ago today; I wonder how we did it given that the “Defense of Marriage” act just passed? I wonder if love and friendship and all that had anything to do with it? Actually, the state has already penalized us for all these years of marriage; all of you married folks are very aware of the so-called marriage penalty that’s reflected in the US tax codes.
May : Friday Fish Follies
Via boingboing comes this fish tale of 40lb catfish and the men who catch them … with their bare hands!
June : Yucca Plants on Coronado Heights
We’ve only been in Kansas in June once in the past 28 years, and so our exposure to the local Yucca plants has always been after they have bloomed. Somewhere I have pictures of the shell of a Yucca plant filled with snow, but we’ve never seen them in full bloom until this year.
The local paper even noted how beautiful the blooms were this year, and so I thought I’d share a few photos I took last week.
The title of this post, So Many Roads, aptly describes both our travels of the past 17 days as well as the path followed by Jerry Garcia’s adventuresome life.
It’s somewhat hard to believe how much time has passed, but Jerry played his last concert with the Grateful Dead 10 years ago this evening.
August : Happy Birthday Jerry (and Adelia!)
I baked a cake today. Not really for Jerry, though it is his birthday today. I got to see Jerry play on his birthday one time, back in 1984 at the Stone, in SF. If it weren’t for my friend Jeff I don’t think I would have made it into the show that day, as the Stone was a tiny venue(maybe 500 people) and the line to get in was, shall we say, not the most orderly.
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Speaking of birthdays, it’s Aunt Adelia’s birthday tomorrow. She’ll be 90 years young, and after a few too many premature departures these past few years it’s great to see someone still thriving, living at home and generally taking care of herself (cue up the song “I get by with a little help from my friends”).
September : What Is Going On!?
I’m just sick sitting here watching the disaster down in the Gulf Coast.
IT’S BEEN 4 FREAKING DAYS!!! and virtually no relief efforts in sight. Where’s the National Guard? Where’s FEMA? Where is any response at all (besides the heroic helicopter rescues)?
There should have been emergency response crews on site by Tuesday afternoon, when it became clear the levees weren’t going to hold. The fact that it’s now Thursday afternoon and the city of New Orleans appears to have been abandoned just makes me sick.
October:Posole (Hominy Soup) Recipe
I made one of my favorite dishes tonight, for the first time, and it turned out great! Posole (also spelled pozole) is a hominy and pork based stew from Mexico; I first tried it at our company cafeteria where it was quite a hit, but had never tried to make it before. It’s really pretty easy and is very tasty!
November : More on Gorbachev’s Visit
From what I’ve heard, Mikhail Gorbachev really enjoyed his visit to Lindsborg last week. I have to smile when I consider the fact that he apparently drove his security folks crazy by insisting on walking around Lindsborg and through the Bethany college campus. The picture of him in the local paper, dressed in blue jeans and talking with Misha Korenman, (Lindsborg’s connection to Russia), is simply priceless.
December : No Words, Just Pictures
I’ve been entirely too busy to make any postings here since Thanksgiving, at least not any that required more than one or 2 sentences. I posted those short entries over on luminosity, where I published my 50th entry this morning! I know, Tom nudged me towards blogging a few years ago, after I posted a photo essay sans words, but sometimes you have to just let the pictures speak for themselves.