New Year

Arrival 2017AD

Operation Caracal, Part 5

Photo from GORGO Magazine


Day 11, December 31, 2016

I’ve said before that New Year’s Day has never been one of my favorite holidays. This year was especially rough. It’s not because I was sorry to see 2016 end. On the contrary, I thought 2016 was a horrible year! During that year we had seen, on the international scene, some of the worst examples of human behavior since World War II. The economy was a roller coaster, and don’t get me started on that train wreck of a presidential election! The loss of so many beloved celebrities and cultural icons just added insult to injury. My career problems are a story unto themselves. Yes, 2016 sucked like a shop vac!

But I did not agree with all of the people who were saying how glad they would be when 2016 ends. The end of 2016 would make the beginning of 2017, and that filled me with dread. All indications suggested that 2017 would be far worse than 2016, in just about every way imaginable. And I’m not just referring to the change of administration. (Though that is an important part of it.)

With my job, perhaps my career, being in what could best be described as free-fall, I expected 2017 to be filled with struggle. All of those difficulties that Lisa, the kids and I were about the face were scheduled to start in 2017! In light of that, you can probably understand why I was not looking forward to the inevitable change of the calendar.

Recall the ironic curse “May you live in interesting times.”

We already live in interesting times, and 2017 looked like it was going to be more interesting than anyone dared to imagine. Sadly, some of the fears that I and others had about the upcoming year are playing out pretty much as badly as expected. On a more personal level, some of the things I dreaded have turned out better than expected, but still not altogether well. Regarding the remaining concerns on my personal docket, it’s still too early to call.

I certainly wasn’t looking forward to our family trip coming to an end. If I could have stretched things a bit further, I would have. But, time was marching on, and our sojourn to the Pelican State was coming to an end.

To be continued.

Caracal travelogue:

  1. Operation Caracal
  2. Louisiana down time
  3. Driveabout
  4. Michabelle Inn
  5. Arrival 2017AD
  6. Dems good eats
  7. First transition

Hello, 2016

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Photo credit: “The last sunset of 2015,” taken by the author, on Mt. Pony, Culpeper County, Virginia, December 31, 2015, around 5:15pm.

Everyone makes resolutions on New Year’s. It’s a long standing tradition! And this year, I’m no exception. It’s also an unfortunate truth that most people’s resolutions end up being abandoned by mid-February. Usually because life and/or the universe has other plans that trump anything that came before.

But still, it’s good to hope, and attempting to improve one’s self is a noble thing to do, even if it’s difficult to achieve or maintain. Anyway, I’ve arranged my resolutions into groups, in order of priority.

Group one: Home and Hearth. These are the ones that concern me the most.

  1. Get certain financial things under control. Last year I inherited some money and a stock portfolio from my mother. This year I want to get that fully squared away and working the way I want it to be. That is to say, shift the money into accounts that will help set up funds for Caitlin and Michael to go to college, and provide Lisa with a safety net should something tragic happen to me.
  2. Write up a will. To the best of my knowledge, I’m not staring death in the face. But my health isn’t in top form, and things can happen. So I intend to have a plan in place for just such an event.
  3. Clear the clutter from the house. This isn’t as serious as the first two, but it’s a tall order! Our house is a mess, and it has been for quite some time. The reasons for that are long and varied, but it’s time for some changes, because it’s been giving me considerable angst. We’re actually starting on this one already. One benchmark I want to use is to get at least 1000 pounds of stuff out of the house, either by donating it, selling it, or just tossing it. Earlier this week 13 pounds of stuff was donated to two charities in Culpeper. It’s a start.
  4. Several home and yard repairs. I have a laundry list of things that “need to be done” either to the house or to the land around it, and a few of them are pretty big projects. I hope to get at least some of these done. If I can’t, then I’ll try to find a service that can help.

Group two: my health. Everyone wants to improve their health in some way. This is my approach.

  1. I want to lose 20 pounds, and hope to keep off at least 10 of them. Everyone makes this resolution, so why should I be different? I tried to make a realistic and attainable goal, though. Ideally I should lose about 30 pounds, but I’ll try for this more modest step first. If I’m successful, I’ll re-visit this one later in the year.
  2. Keep my average blood sugar below 200. I’m diabetic, so my blood sugar can be a problem. I am prone to spikes, and rarely have lows. Therefore, my focus should be on keeping my sugar below a certain point. According to my doctor, someone of my body-mass-index should generally fall between 120 and 180, and the closer to the lower end the better. That being said, I should probably aim lower than keeping my average below 200, which is technically high. But if my readings from the post New Year’s week are anything to go by, I need to focus on something attainable. Here too, if successful, I will re-evaluate the situation at a later date.
  3. Deal with some of my personal demons. If you’re a regular reader of this site, then you know I have issues with depression. In recent months I’ve been compiling a list of specific issues that seem to be the source of my overall problems, and I’m going to bring these to the attention of my therapist. And unlike earlier years, I’m planning to get aggressive about it. I had a few wake-up calls this past year, so enough lollygagging.
  4. Visit the gym at least twice a week. In recent months I let myself get caught in a lot of proverbial briar patches, and it had a negative effect on my mood and health. Visiting the gym will alleviate a certain amount of that. I’ve long managed at least once a week, so I’m now shooting for two. My doctor says I should be shooting for five, so this is another one I can re-evaluate down the line, depending on how I do.

Group three: Would be nice. These are lower priority, but if the opportunity presents, these are some other things I would like to achieve this year. These may fall into the category of “self-improvement.”

  1. Keep expanding and working with the square foot vegetable garden. The 2015 garden was more successful than the 2014 one, but I still have a lot to learn. I’m hoping to expand to a maximum of four garden boxes this year. I suspect going larger would become hard to maintain.
  2. The Pugh Cookbook, second edition. Some years back, my late aunt Mary Pat composed a cookbook for the extended family, and many of us use and enjoy it. In the ten years since, the clan roster has changed, and some new recipes have surfaced at family gatherings. If I can, I’m hoping to compile a second edition of this book (the working title is “Second Helpings”). I suspect that other members of the family will be willing to help me on this one. The real issue is time.
  3. Digitize some vinyl albums. I have a whole mess of vinyl record albums, and some time back I acquired a USB turntable to record them into digital sound files. Why haven’t I done this yet? Good question. This year, I would like to transfer at least 50 of them to digital. If time and opportunity permits, I’ll do more. If I’m really lucky, I’ll move on to the audio cassettes and VHS videotapes!
  4. Get at least one of my Solar Council stories to a publisher. I’m an aspiring, and frustrated, science fiction writer. The “Solar Council” is the name I use for my futuristic science fiction setting. By most accounts my setting is a “hard” science fiction setting, so it’s not always easy to work with. (My characters rarely “talk to me.”) But this year I hope to get off my sagging laurel and get one story off to a publisher. Weather the story gets printed or digitally distributed is a totally different issue. For now, I just need to get back into that particular phase of the game.
  5. Learn a new computer language. I used to do a lot of programming, but that was with the old style procedural languages. The paradigm has changed, so perhaps I should change with it. Java and Perl are two potential candidates.
  6. Get back on stage. I used to do a lot of performing, both as a stage actor and as a coffeehouse musician. I haven’t done either one in years, and it’s time to try it again. I recently saw an excellent stage production of A Christmas Carol that featured a number of people I know from both work and church, and the bug is back. So my first step is to revive my coffeehouse act, or at least get back into practice, and find some open mic nights. If the regional theater starts putting together another play, then that will be another option.
  7. Finish the Elder Scrolls III (Morrowind) game. I’ve been playing this awesome game off and on for over a decade, but I have yet to actually get to the official game ending! Strange, no? Thing is, I enjoy the world editor as much if not more than the game itself, so I keep getting distracted. I don’t hold out much hope for this one. But since it’s low priority, I don’t have to.

And there it is, my plans for 2016. How they play out remains to be seen. Looking back, I have a lot of stuff to cover, so it’s unrealistic to expect success on all of them. But I’ll do what I can. If I’m ambitious and attentive, I’ll post status reports here. So, who else has interesting resolutions for the New Year?

New Year’s Memories

MtPony-1119-sunset

I’ve talked about Thanksgiving, and I’ve talked about Christmas. What can I say about New Year’s Day? That’s a tough call. Of the three holidays in the triumvirate we call the “Holiday Season,” New Year’s Day is the one that has the least meaning for me. I don’t dislike it, but I also don’t have many fond, lasting memories associated with it.

Over the years I’ve attended some great New Year’s parties. When I was growing up in Upstate New York, one of my father’s colleagues used to throw a huge party on New Year’s Day that lasted the whole day. It was a fairly formal affair for the adults, but all the kids would gather in the basement play area and have a great time. When I moved to Washington, DC, I attended a few First Night celebrations, which were great fun. And the Catholic Alumni Club managed to pull off a good party or two, when the conditions were right. And other years I would just hang out with friends and stuff myself with more junk food than you can imagine. But all of that has been fleeting.

Unfortunately, when it comes to New Year’s Day, what I remember most clearly are the bad things. Many news programs and services have “year in review” articles that tend to be recaps of whatever bad news transpired during the previous 364 days. Growing up, I remember my father going into a fit of melancholy whenever the bad news was revisited. Perhaps that rubbed off on me. On January first I often find myself thinking back on what I’ve done wrong, could have done better, or failed to do entirely, during the previous year. Even when I was at a party and having a grand time watching that ball drop, some small part of me was always thinking back on the bad that is in the world.

So for me, New Year’s Day has never been a day of big celebration. Thanksgiving and Christmas were the days I think about how wonderful the world is, and how lucky or fortunate I am. New Year’s Day has long been the day I think about the things that are still wrong with this world, how much pain and suffering there is out there, and think about how far we still have to go.

So to everyone reading this, I hope that 2015 brings you good fortune. And let’s all try to make 2015 the year that we solve, or at least alleviate, some of this world’s pain.

At the very least, let’s make 2015 better than 2014.