New Year’s Resolutions – 2014

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As I’ve done with years past, I’m going to put down some goals instead of resolutions. If I don’t make them because life intervenes, oh well. But

Work: those goals I’ll share with my boss. But I have high hopes and am working on a project I really like.

Health:
Eat healthier and be more active.
2012 was a great year for me activity-wise, but not on the food front. 2013 was not so much in either category. But I’m going to bring it back around in 2014.

Creative:
Create as much as I consume.
I’m counting work with this because that makes it an easy win, but also writing, knitting, blogging, photography, website design and t-shirt design fall into this category. As long as I’m doing something productive and satisfying, I’ll be happy.

Loved Ones:
Spend time with people I care about & go somewhere warm
This one should be easy; we’re going to a destination resort for my brother’s wedding. I’m excited; Stephanie and I have never done a beach vacation before.

Household:
Get siding repaired & house painted
Get the guest room organized
Rip all the CDs – we’ve had our music library in a state of limbo for years. It’s time to get this done.
Sell the scooter – we don’t use it and need the space in our garage
Simplify

Financial:
Put away money for a new vehicle
Save $6,000 above and beyond retirement savings
Set up a Roth IRA

Reading:
I’m participating in the Read 26 Indy challenge this year, where I pledge to read 26 books in 2014. So far, there are 17 books on my “2014 must read list” on goodreads. I want to leave the list open-ended, because there are bound to be some great books in the new year.

Rather pedestrian goals. Nothing about taking over the universe or moving mountains or curing cancer. Those are all on the secret, alternative list.

stop-acting-so-small

Continue ReadingNew Year’s Resolutions – 2014

2013 Year in Review

So, what all did I get accomplished in 2013? Let’s start by looking at my goals for last year.

These are really more goals than resolutions; they are things I’d like to make priorities to focus my energy and money on. If I don’t get them done, it’s cool; this is a big pile of ambitious. But these are all areas I want to make progress in for the coming year.

750 words a day – more days of the week than not – not even close, but I did do a reasonable amount of writing.
Finish novel – nope. Although now I think this is a good thing. I have a renewed sense of ideas for it.
Start new novelI’m close to finishing this new novel, and I’m actually pretty thrilled with how it’s going. I need to finish up here in January and start showing it to people to get feedback and ideas.

[various work-related goals; not shared here] – I’m really happy with work, suffice it to say.

Get insulation done – We were cautious about major house expenditures due to Stephanie’s job, but this will happen in 2014, for sure.
Get siding fixed – ditto.
Get house painted – ditto.
Get guest room organized – this one I’m disappointed in. It really needs to be done.
Get bed frame for our bed – we did. It’s nice.

Save 10,000 dollarsAbove and beyond what we put away for retirement. We’ve done pretty well at this one, even with Stephanie not working for part of the year. I don’t know that we did $10,000 but we were close.
Get a new computer Really? I did that this year? Seems like I’ve had it forever. I love it.

Get split down to 2:00:00 – that was really unlikely.
Get an ergDone. Very nice to have at home, too.
learn sculling – yeah, I don’t know. I was very frustrated with rowing this year for several reasons.

Read more books I own – I read 36 books last year, so I think I did pretty well. Many of them were graphic novels, but some of them were some heavy-hitters.
Buy new books on e-reader – eh. Changed my mind on this one. I’d rather read a book than an ebook.
Read first Proust book – Nope. Definitely this year.

Knit pillows – I did a large amount of knitting this year, but didn’t get around to pillows. We helped with two different cool yarn-bombing projects that were very fun.
Knit hats – follow design – did lots of hats this year.
Learn color work – also a non-starter in 2013, although I hope to do a small project in 2014.

Photo scanning & organizing – This is a rather herculean task that I don’t know if I’ll ever get to.
Design 20 new shirts – I definitely accomplished this one.

Overall, my goal was to create as much or more than I consume, and I did a good job of advancing my agenda there through a variety of different outlets, both personal and at work. I don’t know that the create/consume balance was equal but each year I’ve gotten closer, so I’m happy to have at least advanced that agenda.

We’ve had an up-and-down year emotionally. Stephanie’s job hunt was hard on her, as you might expect. She did ultimately find a job that she’s quite happy with. It comes with a lengthy commute that isn’t ideal, but we’ve managed to adjust our schedule to make that easier, and I’ve taken on more of the food preparation to make it easier on her. I haven’t quite hit my stride in the cooking department, but we’re managing.

Our cat Lucy died this year. We don’t know what was wrong. She had just had a vet visit and while they thought something in her blood work was off, they didn’t indicate it was life-threatening. It’s strange not seeing her and we miss her all the time.

Lucy
Lucy

Spike continues to hold on, despite his heart problems. At the beginning of the year he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and we began giving him medication. We didn’t expect him to make it through the year, but he has, and he seems to be doing pretty well. Unfortunately, it’s a looming issue that we know it won’t last, and my best little man will not be here at this time next year.

We also found out that Stephanie’s mom has cancer, and is very ill. That has been very difficult. For privacy’s sake I don’t want to say more, but this fall has been rather hard and I don’t expect the coming year to be easier.

On the bright side, we have a new niece this year. My older brother and his wife had a baby girl named Corbyn. That brings the tally of nieces and nephews up to eight, which is awesome. I think babies are intended to give us hope that the world doesn’t become more terrible and frightening as we get older. That sort of works. Mostly.

We also took a road trip for a family wedding in New Jersey, which was nice because we got to spend time with some of Stephanie’s family that we haven’t seen since we got married. At the end of the year I tend to think about people and connections more than accomplishments so those are the activities that I cherish.

Continue Reading2013 Year in Review

Annual “Best of” Lists for 2013

I’ve put together much more comprehensive lists like this in the past, but time and priorities have interfered this year. Here are the end-of-year retrospectives that I was able to review and enjoy this December.

100 Notable Books of 2013 – New York Times

50 Book Covers for 2013 – The Casual Optimist

The Best Book Covers of 2013 – New York Times

Notable Children’s Books of 2013 – New York Times

Most Talked About in 2013 – Facebook Stories

Best photos of the year 2013 from Reuters.

The Top 10 Photos of 2013 from Time.

The 45 Most Powerful Photos Of 2013 from BuzzFeed.

Continue ReadingAnnual “Best of” Lists for 2013

If Only…

There’s a reason why every teen lesbian in the country watched The Facts of Life religiously in the 1980s. I would have bought that Jo Polniaczek and Blair Warner hated each other a little bit more if it hadn’t looked like they wanted to make out in ever scene they were in together.

Jo & Blair

Jo & Blair

Jo & Blair

Jo & Blair

Jo & Blair

Jo & Blair

Jo & Blair

Jo & Blair

Jo & Blair

Jo & Blair

Jo & Blair

Jo & Blair

Jo & Blair

Continue ReadingIf Only…

Disturbing Things I’ve Read Today

In the discussion forums on Bleeding Cool, covering an article on sexism in the comics industry, was this little commentary by a fellow who calls himself comics2read:

After this thread (regarding a restraining order against a comic book artist for violence directed at a female comic book artist) and the various Brian Wood threads, the realization has set in that when it comes to my business why should I EVER hire a woman to work for me, all things being even remotely close to equal?

Given that I have less than 15 employees and therefore am free of any and all EEOC concerns, I know I am effectively immune to EEOC lawsuits regardless of what I do. Hiring a woman for a position rather than a man greatly increases the likelihood of various problems not faced if I hire a man. A woman would have to be VASTLY more qualified than every man for a position in order to overcome the increased potential for distraction and disruption to my business.

I 100% agree with you that misconduct, especially violence, toward women should not be tolerated and needs to stop. The only way I can guarantee that never happens at my business is by never having a female employee.

Reading on further through the thread, this guy doubles down on his misogyny by discussing how all women have the tendency to have greater healthcare issues and are likely to become pregnant and leave employment, so it’s their own fault they’re “worth less” as employees than men are.

A couple things spring readily to my mind here…

  1. Lets be clear here: the “misconduct” he’s discussing is a crime, and the men who engage in it in the most dangerous cities in CT are criminals. This guy is saying that he’d rather keep criminals in his employ than women.
  2. Women who are potential victims of “misconduct” are penalized no matter what they do; by being victims of criminal behavior, or by being the potential targets of criminal behavior. So we’re fucked either way.
  3. I don’t know what kind of business this guy runs, but surely there are women who interact with his employees somewhere along the line. What care does this employer take to protect women who are his consumers from the criminals he likes to employ?
  4. Why is it not just as effective to eliminate the men who harass as the women? Wouldn’t it be just as cost effective to fire men who harass, not to mention “the right thing to do” to side with the victims and not the criminals?
  5. If I can discover who this guy is, I can never patronize his business and lead other women to never patronize his business by widely publicizing his point of view. The disruption to his profit that would cause would far outweigh any advantage he gains from never hiring women in the first place.
  6. Nothing prevents women from doing the equal but opposite thing; hiring only other women and no men. If I were running a business that had less than 15 employees, this would be a temptation, just to balance the playing field.

Seriously, WTF?

Continue ReadingDisturbing Things I’ve Read Today

Shopping-Related Madness?

So Just How Dangerous Did Black Friday Get Around The Country? – Jezebel.com

If you picked any date – say, April 13, 2011 – and counted up the number of shopping-related nonsenses that people get up to in stores, I’m convinced it wouldn’t be much different, per capita, than any “Black Friday.” Has anyone ever done statistical analysis on holiday shopping in comparison to regular-any-old-day shopping? Certainly there are more incidents of people acting crazy, but there are lots more people out shopping, too.

Holiday Shopping 1950s

Everyone I interacted with yesterday out shopping was nice, friendly and speedy, with a “we’re all in this together” mentality, and that includes both shoppers and retail staff. Sure, that’s anecdotal, but I like to believe in the better angels of our nature. There is always going to be some nuttiness related to interacting in public with strangers – lots of people have stress and social anxiety. But acting like it’s doomsday because people want to do something nice for the people they care about is hyperbolic, I think. We can be consumers and also celebrate the best in humanity at the same time.

Hobby Shop 1950s

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Winner Winner, Turkey Dinner – 2013 NaNoWriMo Finish

50,119 Words, validated, means that I “win” National Novel Writing Month. I’m very grateful to Stephanie, who has been really supportive of me doing this, even though she’s had a lot of difficulties going on right now. We’re adjusting to her lengthy commute to her new job and a family illness, so it’s been a hard month, but she has been my cheerleader the whole time.

2013-winner

I still have a couple chapters to write, but I’m definitely closer to a finished product than I was in my last two winning attempts. And there is lots of editing to be done, in addition to finishing chapters. But I think this is the most satisfying win I’ve had of the three. This is one I think I might have a shot at getting published some day soon. It’s got some topical stuff in it, so if I want it to actually mean something, I have to get it done and try to get it out there.

2013-Winner-Twitter-Header

2013 Final Word Count

Victory

Good gravy do I have a lot of television piled up on the DVR to watch.

Continue ReadingWinner Winner, Turkey Dinner – 2013 NaNoWriMo Finish

Conceit via. Wikipedia

via Wikipedia, Conceit:

In literature, a conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. By juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison. Extended conceits in English are part of the poetic idiom of Mannerism, during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century.

Metaphysical conceit

In English literature the term is generally associated with the 17th century metaphysical poets, an extension of contemporary usage. In the metaphysical conceit, metaphors have a much more purely conceptual, and thus tenuous, relationship between the things being compared. Helen Gardner observed that “a conceit is a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness” and that “a comparison becomes a conceit when we are made to concede likeness while being strongly conscious of unlikeness.” An example of the latter would be George Herbert’s “Praise,” in which the generosity of God is compared to a bottle which (“As we have boxes for the poor”) will take in an infinite amount of the speaker’s tears.

An often-cited example of the metaphysical conceit is the metaphor from John Donne’s “The Flea”, in which a flea that bites both the speaker and his lover becomes a conceit arguing that his lover has no reason to deny him sexually, although they are not married:

Oh stay! three lives in one flea spare
Where we almost, yea more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage-bed and marriage-temple is.

When Sir Philip Sidney begins a sonnet with the conventional idiomatic expression “My true-love hath my heart and I have his”, but then takes the metaphor literally and teases out a number of literal possibilities and extravagantly playful conceptions in the exchange of hearts, the result is a fully formed conceit.

Continue ReadingConceit via. Wikipedia