It's been a year.

[jazzfish]

An improvement over '06, which was in its turn an order of magnitude better than '05. (The purpose of the forward passage of time remains "to get us as far away from 2005 as possible.")

I don't think I actually lost touch with anyone. I made several new acquaintances. Somewhat surprisingly, a handful of people made the jump from 'acquaintance' to 'friend.' (The dividing line being "am I comfortable inviting this person on an excursion?") jonny_law re-entered my life. In terms of people, definitely a win.

I'm still employed and I still like my job, more or less. (Except for the self-review I'm currently mired in.) I spent less money than I made. Between Xmas, Secret Project Rock, and more self-financed travel than any previous year, I count this as a win even though my savings account says it was a draw at best.

I cooked a lot of pancakes and pasta, and learned how to pan-sear salmon. I got an awesome pastry cutter; this year there will be more pastry cutting. I also ate a lot of frozen burritos. Thanks to Lyme I basically stopped running halfway through the year; will have to get back to that in the spring. The "Best Revenge" category overall gets a Needs Improvement.

I went to Seattle twice, Blacksburg twice, Ohio once, Assateague once, the Outer Banks twice, and Arkansas not at all. Not bad. On the other hand, I didn't make it out of the country. Something to work on this year.

I learned a lot about myself and why I do some of the things I don't even think about. So that's success. This year I can focus more on actually changing some of those. (Done a bit of that already, I think.)

I didn't do as much boardgaming or (non-work) writing as I would have liked. Thursday night RPGs are exceedingly variable in the 'fun' department; Tuesday's been mostly good but sporadic. It's possible that I may be overcommitted on weeknights.

Thinking that we're getting older and wiser
When we're just getting old

Comments

[ancientsong.livejournal.com]

Good for you for all the travel. (I'm way envious.)

Where do you think you might travel if you go out of the country? (Personally, I'm having pangs of I need to visit Italy soon.)

[jazzfish]

Thanks. It doesn't really feel like all that much travel. Blacksburg, Columbus (Origins), the Outer Banks, and to a lesser extent Assateague are all things I've done before and often. (And OBX is family-related and doesn't count anyway.) Seattle's not quite at that point but it's getting there.

As for where, who knows. Vancouver's the most likely target. I've got a couple of acquaintances I could visit in Toronto. And in November there's the gigantic Essen Spiel convention in Germany. I'd love to get some serious Europe time in but that's probably not going to happen for another couple of years.

[selki.livejournal.com]

*sigh* I want to go to Essen some year.

[heptadecagram.livejournal.com]

The next step after pan-seared salmon? Pan-seared salmon with a pan sauce. Wanna learn?

[jazzfish]

. . . perhaps. Suggestions?

Frozen burritos

[rbandrews]

You know, I was very disturbed this year to learn that although I can now eat pretty much whatever I want, what I want is still the same cheap crappy frozen burritos I ate in college. I think something is wrong with me.

Also, self-evaluations at work suck. When I had to do them, I always gave myself the highest marks in everything, on the logic that not doing so was essentially saying "I can do a better job than I've been doing, but eh" which seemed unwise.

Re: Frozen burritos

[uilos.livejournal.com]

I still eat frozen burritos from time to time. OK, so I can go through a bag of them in a week if I buy them, so I try not to buy them. You just have a higher frozen food tolerance than I do.

Gah. We don't get that option. We get essay questions. What did you like best about your job this year? How did you help to improve things? What did you like least? What would you like to do better next year. I always put 'filling out this evaluation' for the part that I liked least.

Re: Frozen burritos

[rbandrews]

Yeah, that comes from not wanting to spend time making food. I like freshly-made stuff, I just don't like actually making it, so I end up eating frozen things a lot.

Re: Frozen burritos

[selki.livejournal.com]

Well, at least frozen is better than canned, or running out for a burger and fries. Right?

Re: Frozen burritos

[jazzfish]

I always put 'filling out this evaluation' for the part that I liked least.

Oh, if only they gave us that option. It's always 'rate yourself and your job performance' here. Bleh.

Re: Frozen burritos

[idoru.livejournal.com]

"I give both myself and my job performance a gold star."

Re: Frozen burritos

[jazzfish]

There's a bit in Steve Martin's book _Shopgirl_ where he talks about how cooking is the best thing a bored single person can do" it's a bit healthier, it's cheaper, and it occupies your time so you're not sitting around bored.

(I still eat frozen burritos once every week or two.)

The trouble with the self-evals here is that they're not just numbers. They're "Tell us why you deserve the rating you gave yourself." Bleh. I'd say it's like writing a college entrance essay, but I never had to do those.

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

Clearly (should T'con come off well), you need to be spending more time in the board game room! :)

Or (and I am actually serious about this) if you're interested in international travel and its intersection with board games, I'm planning on Essen again this year and would welcome companions.

On gaming

[jazzfish]

Oh, believe me, I plan on spending most of Tcon camped out in the board game room again.

"More gaming" is mostly a result of having been spoiled in B'burg, with Spiel every week. Here there's a really good group that meets every other Satyrday, and occasional other random gaming going on, but it's just not the same.

Essen's a possibility; thanks for the offer. It depends a lot on vacation time and other trips that pop up.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

That is a very nice summary. Thanks for sharing.

[jazzfish]

Oh, you're quite welcome. I'm glad someone else enjoyed it.