I remembered at the end of the day that I was trying to learn this new habit of taking a photo every day – so I quickly snapped a picture of Stephanie while she sat at her computer. I’ll do my best to avoid a lot of “quick take a photo” moments.
Anti-choice protesters (forced birth advocates) outside my neighbor’s house on New Year’s Day. My neighbor works for Planned Parenthood. Yeah, in our residential neighborhood. In front of my house. MF assholes. They spent an hour shouting obnoxious statements and disturbing the peace.
We had a pretty calm but eventful year in 2009. I spend a chunk of January getting our staircase room painted, and we also stripped the wallpaper and painted a bedroom at Stephanie’s rental house. I also went back on a walk through of my former home at 2165 N. Penn. I discovered that although I love the house, I don’t miss it at all.
New paint at our house
At the end of February, we visited our friends Daniel and Melissa in Michigan while Stephanie competed in the Deborah Burgoyne North American Invitational 2009. We had a wonderful time with our hosts, and I discovered I had no idea how to take good photos of skating with my camera, as you can tell.
Stephanie on the ice.
In March, we planted lots of flowers in containers on the porch and in flowerbeds, and we built new bookshelves from Ikea for Stephanie’s books in the dining room — a much more pleasant space now that we’ve rescued all her books from boxes and organized them.
In April, I started taking more photo walks around Indianapolis, and began a much-needed photography class.
In May, I worked on my photography at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and by snapping lots of images of flowers and of friends.
In June, I turned 41 and we had a pizza picnic in our backyard to celebrate.
And at the end of the month, we joined the Eastern Caravan with other New Beetle owners to Roswell, New Mexico for the Return to Roswell car show. It was a nice long, fun trip and a a great time to see lots of Stephanie’s friends (both human and VW).
During the trip I took one of my all-time favorite photos of a ragged man with a three-legged dog:
In July, I got way behind in my photo editing because we were so active, and I still haven’t edited all the photos from Stephanie’s visit from her niece Raven, or from our trip to Moline, Illinois for my cousin Katie’s wedding. I participated in the Scott Kelby photo walk along the Canal in Indy, though, and took a few other nice photos:
in August, we bought a scooter, so we spent a lot of time studying for learners motorcycle permits and learning to ride it.
We also spent time with friends and visited the State Fair.
Stephanie and I both started a knitting class in mid-May of this 2009, but it wasn’t until August that I really had any pictures of projects to show off.
In September, I continued to lag behind on the photos. We had a Labor Day cookout, and spent more time with friends.
October was another busy, busy month. My sister had a new baby – Penelope – over in England, for one thing, so I have four nieces (Erika, Riley, Annabelle and now Penny).
We attended the IndieHandicraft Exchange:
Went to a friend’s solo photography show:
Went to a progressive mystery play at a mansion in our neighborhood:
Hosted a praying mantis on our porch:
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Went to see They Might be Giants at the Vogue:
Decorated for Halloween:
Took lots of walks around the neighborhood before it got too cold:
And then drove to Durham, North Carolina to see our friends Lisa and Jason get married:
Took lots of photos of Fall Color:
And attended our friend Garrett and David’s Halloween party:
November was equally busy. We attended Johnathan’s birthday:
And spend weekend after weekend raking leaves. And raking, and raking, and raking…
We went to a Naptown Roller Girls double-header bout:
And went out to eat a few times:
And at the end of November, we drove to Iowa to visit our family at my grandparent’s farm for Thanksgiving.
In December, we kicked off the holidays by baking cookies for a White Elephant gift exchange hosted at our house, after decorating.
We also did a lot more knitting:
Went to a birthday party:
And we went to several Christmas gatherings both here in town and up north with Stephanie’s family and friends.
2009 was a productive year for us. I learned some new skills and honed some old ones, and spent quality time with family and friends. I’ve done a lot less writing this year than in past ones, and taken a lot more photos instead. I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad one – I’m fairly happy with what I’ve accomplished.
I also have about 10 years of photos on Flickr now. I took my first digital photos in 1999, bought my first digital camera in 2000, and have gone through three cameras since. I’d do a retrospective of the whole decade, but I’ve already made this post much longer than I ever intended to.
I think the first decade of this millennium was a really unfortunately one in many ways, and I have hope that the next will go much better. I plan to spend the next ten years writing about and photographing it as well.
And of all the photos I’ve taken this year, this is a gallery of my very favorite ones.
Finished my striped scarf, and am working away on a Santa hat at
Stephanie’s dad’s house while Stephanie and her dad fix dinner.
Wow – time to wrap up the year, and I’m utterly at loose ends with various projects. I’ve been working steadily on knitting projects, and organizing the house, two areas where we’ve made some pretty big gains. We’re steadily getting through the mounds of papers that need to be filed or thrown out, with the help of our organization lady. The room is becoming what we want it to be – a guest room where people can visit from out of town, and a crafting room where we can sit and work on craft projects. Don’t get me wrong – it still needs LOTS of work – there are still tons of boxes to go through and purge, and we’re in danger of acquiring new crap to replace all the old, but it’s starting to look more like what it should look like.
The knitting is fun and very relaxing. I’m concerned though, about what I really want to do with it. It’s enjoyable to make things for people, but it’s not exactly a lever that will move the world.
We’ve spend all the weekends of November bagging leaves for the most part (we really grabbed a lot of time back by paying someone to pick them up last year!) which is really satisfying, until the next round of them fall off the trees. We currently need to redo the backyard. I’m completely frustrated by how much time and energy this takes, and we don’t even have that many trees; they’re mostly from the neighbors.
I’ve lost complete track of what I’ve read and am woefully behind on photo editing.
I attempted a brief stint at NaNoWriMo but gave up after a few days. That seems to happen at the utterly wrong time of year for me. Why don’t they do it in March? Except that’s about the time I’m driving hard to get a painting project done somewhere in the house though; last year in March I was painting the staircase room I’m in now. But the writing – it’s so hard to do, and my life is too chaotic to achieve it, I think.
And web projects. Boy oh boy. I’ve been neglecting this blog, and my photoblog, and several other domains to remain nameless.
I think I need to make different use of my time at times. I’m frustrated with how little time I have to accomplish things I think are important, and how much time we spend doing stuff that doesn’t move us forward. I’m frustrated by the sheer number of projects we have that remain unfinished, as well.
On Friday evening, we went to Trina O’Connor’s solo photography show at the The Language and Culture International Gallery. 158 East 14th Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202. More on the show here. Trina is part of the “Indy Women in Focus” Photography group that I participate in. She has moved from being a professional photojournalist to art photography and her stuff is really beautiful. It’s very cool that I get to participate in a group with people at a skill level far better than mine; I learn a lot just by hanging around them.
After visiting her show, we popped into the The INDIEana Handicraft Exchange at the Harrison Center, which was a block away. I’ll let them tell you about the craft fair:
The INDIEana Handicraft Exchange is a contemporary craft fair that consciously celebrates modern handmade goods, the relationship between creator and consumer, and local, alternative economies. The IHE began in 2007 as a way to highlight local crafters and artisans as well as to expose Indianapolis to some of the best vendors on the national indie craft fair map.
We had a blast there; tons of fun cool ideas for things we’d like to make, and everything was very reasonably priced – we dropped some bills, but we got a lot in return. It’s a bit different than the craft fairs my parents took me to as a kid; lots of contemporary art and design. And fun, quirky, interesting. I’m afraid I don’t give you a lot of detail in my photos of the goods for sale; I was afraid to walk right up and take photos of people’s goods for fear that they’d be offended. I really need to learn to be more bold in talking to people.
On Saturday, Stephanie’s dad came down from Valparaiso to bring Stephanie her mom’s 1930’s typewriter, which we’re going to be using in an upcoming event to be described later. He’d taken it to be refurbished. Photos of that will be coming soon. While he was in town, he helped us repair our refrigerator door, and we installed a shelf in our laundry room. Dunno why I don’t have photos of that; I need to get Stephanie’s dad in engineering action. He’d be one of those folks that don’t understand why I’m taking pictures though.
Saturday evening we went to the Morris Butler House Museum for a Halloween progressive mystery play called “From Dark Pages” based on gothic, horror, and mystery literature. That was a lot of fun; most of my photos didn’t come out all that great because of the lighting (no flash photography allowed) and my best ones were spoilers that outed the villain. Here are a couple I can safely show you, though.
Throughout the weekend, Stephanie and I puttered around the house getting stuff ready for cold weather and knocking out many October To Do Items. We harvested the last of the vegetables, put flower pots in the garage, unhooked the hoses from the house and generally bustled around getting work done. I spent some time hanging hooks on the porch for Christmas lights. It was way too cold to do that last winter in December, so I thought I’d knock that out while the weather was warm this year. While I was out pursuing that activity, this guy came to visit.
He seemed really cheerful.
What I was doing last year at this time.
Photographing double-decker busses
Photographing Keystone Towers (I need to go back here – lots more graffiti!)
Test-driving Cars (we bought Eddie Rabbit just after this)
Having Lunch with co-workers at the Mousetrap (not a regular occurance)
Attending Matt’s Labor Day party
Therma cell mosquito repellent. Boy, do we need one of these. I get eaten alive on the front porch.
