My Year in 2022

We've had a bad run - 2020 was a bad year and ended badly, 2021 was worse but with one massive bright side, but then 2022 was worse again. Thank goodness it's over!

My Year in... Blogging 

I've managed both 120 posts here and 60 on the Imaginarium, so that's good. I'm not convinced of the quality of the output, but that's another question!

My Year in... Work

This one has been a very mixed bag. I'm really not sure what to make of it overall - it feels like there could be a big step forward in the offing, but then I thought that before and it all turned to ash. So for the moment I'll just try to remain optimistic.

The other thing of note is that we have now returned to the office. This has been massively negative for me, as it essentially takes 5 hours out of my week in order to travel to an office where I do all the same things I could at home. This has also had the effect of vastly reducing my contact time with Funsize and Surprise!, which sucks, and has effectly eliminated all of my free time, which sucks more. Unfortunately, it is also the best thing for the team, and so I have to live with it.

My Year in... Health

I was ill twice in 2022, once with Covid and once with some sort of vomiting bug. LC has also had a brush with Covid, while Surprise! in particular has been forced to battle repeatedly with vomiting bugs in the last two months. But we're all still here and all still in mostly good health, so that's all good.

My Year in... Gaming

I wrapped up my two ongoing campaigns in the middle of the year, and then started a new campaign, "Isles of Dread". That's going well, but it is very definitely the final campaign with the current group. It also looks increasingly like it will be my final campaign ever; I'm less than thrilled by what I've seen of the 2024 D&D revision, so am thinking this is a good time to step off.

My Year in... Band

Band resumed again early in the year and has been fairly consistent since then. The band also had a fairly full Gala Day Season, and managed to improve significantly over the course of said season - I put that down to some fool leaving me in charge for a while. We ended the year with one Christmas lights switch-on, which was much more pleasant than the same event last year.

So that's all pretty good, really.

My Year in... Resolutions

As always, the wrap-up of annual goals, and setting of goals for next year, are handled in another post. Unfortunately, it doesn't make for particularly pleasant reading.

My Year in... Travel

This was another year spent entirely in the UK. We had three trips: to Legoland in Easter to celebrate our 10th anniversary, to Fort William in the summer, and then to Alnwick. These were all fine, but I do find I miss the Sun.

Hopefully next year will see us being able to venture abroad again; it has been too long.

My Year in... Faith

Well, we're still there, still going along, and it's all more or less okay.

My main takeaway from this year is a feeling of low-level guilt, if I'm honest - I'm supposed to be responsible for the church website, and the truth is that I've really dropped the ball on that for most of the year. I just haven't had the bandwidth to deal with these things as I would hope.

My Year in... Sadness

This was a big one. In January of this year my gran died, representing the fourth and final passing of one of my grandparents. That generation is therefore now ended. That in itself wasn't too terrible, as it wasn't hugely unexpected and because she had had a fairly horrible last few years.

What was horrible, though, is the effect that this had on the extended family. Those ties were already fraying, and there is now essentially no prospect of there ever being a reconciliation - there's just no real motivation for it. Additionally, there has been another falling out (for reasons that are not at all clear to me) between one sibling and a cousin, which represents another wedge.

It's a shame... but it is what it is.

Also of note was the unexpected and tragic death of one of my former students. That one was devastating, largely because it was so unexpected and so unfair.

My Year in... Love

LC and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary in April of this year! It's bizarre - it really doesn't feel like it was that long ago, and yet in that time we've moved house (after a massive ordeal), LC has established herself in her career, and we now have two children. Which all seems fairly crazy.

Parenthood remains a fairly tough challenge, and is at least three times as difficult with two than it was with one - it seems that as soon as Surprise! has recovered from whatever illness he has, he has passed it on to Funsize. She then plays with it for a while before handing it back. And the task of getting them out of the door and delivered to nursery and school before I head to work is the hardest thing in the whole entire world!

Speaking of which, Funsize has now started school, and continues to thrive. That's lovely to see.

So, yeah, that's all good.

My Year... Overall

This has been an incredibly tough year. Reading back, this post really doesn't capture the source of my malaise, nor the grinding slog that I've felt much of it to be. But perhaps that's no bad thing - perhaps it is better to focus on the highlights and try to leave the bad stuff behind. But 2023 really needs to be better, and I just don't see how that is likely to be.

I'm going to sign off for the year now. So, as usual, I shall wish you a Happy New Year!

End of Year Update on Goals

As part of the end-of-year wrap-up, here is the closing update on my goals for the year:

• Books: There will be a separate post about the books of the year, but the headline figure is that I fell well short of my goal of 60 books - in the end I completed little more than half that number. I had also hoped to complete The List this year, but that didn't happen either. That's not too bad, though, as I fully expect to finish next year.
• Weight: There has been no movement on this one. I won't be carrying this goal through to next year.
• Blogging: The traditional "My Year In..." post will complete the goal for this year. Additionally, I have posted a full 60 times on the Imaginarium, so this goal has been the shining light of the year.
• Redecorating the Hallway: This one is done, sort of. We got the hallway redecorated, but never got around to replacing the carpet or hanging suitable new pictures. I'm reasonably happy with the outcome, but I do expect that we'll spend some time next year finishing it up.
• Super Secret Goal: I abandoned this goal midway through the year. I'm still not sure whether this was the right thing to do.

So that's that: one resounding success, one middling success, one abandoned, and two abject failures. That's not a great result for the year - it suggests either something went wrong or I simply had the wrong goals set.

My goals for 2023 are somewhat similar:

• Books: My goal for the year is both fairly simple and fairly trivial: I want to finish up The List. Any books read beyond that will be a bonus.
• Blogging: Once again, I'd like to post 120 times in the year. I'm still not setting a goal for The Imaginarium.
• Redecoration: Our refresh of the house remains a long-term goal. In the next year we hope to tackle the painted sections of the bathrooms/toilets in the house. That's not a big job, but it will be good to have it done. We'll also aim to finish up the left over bits of the hallway - the new carpet, and getting some pictures up.

And that's that.

An Alien Mindset

I have, slowly but inescapably, been coming to the conclusion that I am rather weird. The latest evidence for this came while reading the introduction to one of my new cookbooks, in which Tom Kerridge made a comment about most people "going to the supermarket once a week to pick up some essentials" - the upshot being that each day they then look in their fridge/pantry and try to decide what they can make, and what they would like to make, with what they have in stock.

Conversely, my shopping list starts by making a list of the main meals we're going to have, looking up the required ingredients, and then getting those. There aren't very many days when we don't know exactly what we're having for dinner. (Although on some occasions the board says "takeaway" - but that doesn't really count.)

I must admit that I find the other approach really quite strange. Firstly because it must surely lead to times where there really isn't much, if anything, that the person is both able to make and would like to eat. Secondly, because it must surely lead to greater food waste - once bought, a lot of these 'essentials' start to go off, which means either a race to get them used up, or a failure to do so. (Then again, we have our own battles with food waste, largely because dairy, in particular, comes in certain sizes and our recipes call for certain other sizes.)

But I guess that's the point: people think in different ways. And, crucially, it's not that people have different opinions, where they analyse the facts and come to a different conclusion. Rather, people think in completely different patterns, meaning that even if they come to the same conclusion there is no guarantee that they could explain their thinking to one another.

Of course, that's not a new conclusion - diversity has been a big thing, especially in tech, for at least a decade now, largely because of exactly that same reasoning.

"Legend Tells Us..."

Funsize and I were playing a variant of Hide and Seek, where one of us hides a doll and then the other seeks. It's not really blog-worthy, which is why I haven't mentioned it until now.

Except that this time Funsize had a new wrinkle for the game - she had found a wicker mat that LC uses for crafts, and was using it as a map, to provide useful clues. But it was the nature of the clues that amused me, and which provided the title of this blog.

For Funsize unrolled the map, adopted her best Dungeon Master voice, and intoned... "Legend tells us..."

There then followed an entire story with multiple clues and steps, all leading to a villainous mermaid who had stolen the doll and hidden it in her tail.

I have never been more proud.

A Good Christmas

I hope everyone had a good Christmas, or as good as circumstances allow.

For us, it turned out to be our best Christmas for some years. Surprise! was a little overwhelmed by it all, and heartily sick of the whole thing by the time we'd unwrapped even only the presents Santa had brought (never mind the deluge at the two sets of grandparents'), but otherwise it was a nice restful time.

One of the key things that made for a better experience was that we elected not to head to my parents too early - instead we spent the morning at home, then went there after lunch (arriving just as they were finishing up). Then we headed to LC's parents in time for the big Christmas dinner.

(One thing is that that's still too late for the kids, but that should ease in future years, as Surprise! becomes less dependent on routine.)

Then we watched the "Ghosts" Christmas special, and that was basically that. A good day.

Boxing Day was also pretty good, doing most of the same things in reverse. But Boxing Day is always a day of chaos, and we've come to accept that.

The Curse of Soft Play

I do not have a happy relationship with soft play.

At the tail-end of the pandemic I attempted to take Funsize to soft play, only to be ripped off - they refused Funsize entry despite her having a valid ticket and then absolutely refused to refund that ticket. Needless to say, I won't be going back there again.

Then, in August, while Lady Chocolat was on an inservice day I attempted to take Funsize and Surprise! to soft play (a different one), only to find that they were absolutely full. There was another session, but that was too late. And so there were tears and recriminations.

Today we took Funsize and Surprise! to the same soft play. This time we had pre-booked tickets and timed our arrival to coincide with the session starting. Huzzah! Except that I've managed to get my car badly scraped all along one side.

That said, it may be that it's that car that's cursed - since I got it, indeed since before I actually got it, it has had one problem after another.

And that said, today has just been a rank rotten day from start to finish. So maybe it's that.

Funny Thing...

Over the few days I have received a couple of emails titled "Royal Mail has your parcel from YOUR ONLINE RETAILER", complete with the mail's trade dress and a bunch of dodgy-looking links for tracking purposes.

So, naturally, I thought to myself, "obvious scam is obvious", not least because I couldn't think of any parcel I was expecting. So I deleted them without going near the links.

Today the postman rang the bell and gave me my parcel. It turned out to be some coffee that I was getting as a freebie after ordering something else entirely.

Useless Days

I find myself in an odd position at work: I finished a big piece of work late last week, I then spent a couple of days on book-keeping of various sorts, and now I have about two days to go... with no clear idea of what to do. It's not that there isn't plenty needing my attention, but it falls into three categories: things that are very much not a priority, big pieces of work (that I don't want to start just before taking two weeks off), and things I can't work on effectively for one reason or another.

Which is a fairly rotten place to end up. But there it is - I guess I'll aim to find something to do, and just hope for the best.

Endlessly Rowing the Boat

It is now taking an increasingly long time to put Funsize to bed. The issue is that, when it comes to the singing of the songs, I have been collecting/devising new verses for "Row Row Row Your Boat", and I'm now up to eleven. As you can imagine, that's a lot of rowing!

(That obviously doesn't include the version from "Blackadder Goes Forth". And it turns out that Wikipedia also has a few variants I haven't considered.)

My favourite so far is:

Row row row your boat, while the weather's fine,
If you see a dinosaur, you've gone back in time.

Though I do confess it's a bit silly. But I like it!

Terminator: Dark Fate

There now follows a review of a not-very-good film from a few years ago. Feel free to skip this one!

Over the past few years, Hollywood has hit on the marvellous wheeze whereby they can make hundreds of millions by retelling exactly the same stories as in the 70's, 80's, and 90's but with a female protagonist. Which is a bit tedious, but is absolutely fair enough - boys had it all their own way for decades, and turnaround is fair play.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to have mentioned to the team behind this film that the scheme doesn't actually work if you already had a female protagonist - in this case, Sarah Connor.

The upshot here is that we have a film that is essentially a retread of "Terminator 2", sometimes looking like a shot-by-shot remake. Pretty much all it has going for it are updated special effects... that somehow are both technically superior but look much more dated.

The film also commits the cardinal sin of the remake (in a manner I haven't seen since "Alien 3") - in an instant, right at the start of the film, it completely negates and trivialises everything that has gone before. Everything that our heroes fought and suffered for is rendered meaningless. Good job.

Beyond that, there's not much to say. It's probably the third-best Terminator film, but pretty much by default. The protrayal of Sarah Conner is genuinely great. But the film is really not worth watching for that - it's two hours I'd rather have back.

Avoid.

Life in the Plague House

It has been a frustrating time. Surprise! has been ill, on and off, for the better part of two months now. Funsize, not to be outdone, has had three short bouts of illness in that time. And now LC, having finished school for the year, has decided to join in. Thus far, I am unaffected... but don't count on that continuing!

Needless to say, this hasn't made for the best experience. November was essentially a write off, and although December has been better, it still hasn't ben much fun. I'm now nearing the end of my year at work, which is a good thing, but my fear is that that will quickly be followed by my own battle with... whatever this is. Plus, I'm just completely worn down, so even if I don't go down with it I'll still be struggling.

Oh well, it can't be helped.

Anticipation Builds

Unless I've forgotten someone, I've now completed my Christmas shopping. Not only that, but I have all the presents in hand, wrapped, and under the tree. I'm only sending two Christmas cards this year (for environmental reasons), and one of these two has been dealt with. All of which means that I have more or less completed all of the things I 'have' to do for Christmas.

I'm now into the phase of Christmas that I really enjoy - the stresses are dealt with, which means I'm now able to just sit back and relax. Maybe with a mince pie.

Huzzah!

(None of that is really to brag about this. The end of November and the first days of December were pretty fraught as I tried to get all this in hand. I'm just noting my preference to get these things done with in a flurry of activity, instead of spreading them out into a longer, but perhaps less intense, period.)

#32: "Scoundrel", by Bernard Cornwell
#33: "Adventures in Zeitgeist", by Ryan Nock