— पाँच हजार सात सौ उनतीस —
It's done! It's all done!
All of my end-of-year projects finished, and "released," so to speak.
I posted my annual
Book Log on Saturday morning. (Side note: the one book this has resulted in multiple people—specifically, Laney and Alexia—putting on their reading lists is
Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson, what I would regard as the third-best book I read this year, behind
Brave New World and
Dune. It is thus the best of the
new books I read this year. (It was published last year.))
I posted my
top 10 and five worst movies of the year on Sunday morning.
I sent out my "2024 at PCC" email this morning, already garnering lots of positive responses.
And I posted my "
2024 in Ten Minutes" video this morning, right after sending out the PCC email.
All this is more than enough for me to work on every single year. I really need to get more disciplined about working on some of them earlier than I managed to get started on this year. I work on the Book Log draft with each book I finish as I go through the year; I should start a similar tack with any movie I give at least a solid A throughout the year—of which I did nine movies this year. I could stand to start working on the video earlier than just after Christmas as well. At least I finally dispensed with posting my most-listened-to albums and podcasts every year; that one likely had less interest than anything else I ever share.
I need to say a couple of things about the "2024 at PCC" email, though. Jeff C, who left PCC after 25 years earlier this year, gave me an incredibly nice compliment on it. Every other year in the past, I used his PCC email for this annual photo retrospective, but this year I had to hunt down an email from his new business website. I'm so glad I did, given how articulate his response was:
Thank you for sharing this. I always enjoy your missives, with their glimpses of and insights to the quirky gems hidden (in plain sight) in the day-to-day. Most of all, I appreciate you, your brilliance, your kindness, and the wonderful irreverence with which you bring all the aforementioned to bear.
Then he wished me a "fabulous new year."
I've had only one virtual meeting today, but as is typical, Gabby has had several. At 9:36 she sent me a message on Teams that Justine had joined a meeting 5 minutes late because she "said it was because she was engulfed by your pcc 2024 end of year email." Ha! Gabby herself was able to get to it about half an hour later, and she liked my Wilson Phillips-inspired band name for her, Amy and me, "Taylor McBui." We should record a music video.
— पाँच हजार सात सौ उनतीस —
— पाँच हजार सात सौ उनतीस —
I walked home from work last night, and it actually did not take me long to finish up the small amount of clip editing I still had to do on the "2024 in Ten Minutes" video. I did that while eating my dinner, which was a veggie ham and cheese sandwich with sauteed mushrooms added which made it super delicious; and a cup of chai using the very last of the cow's milk still left in the refrigerator.
When I had the video uploaded to Flickr, I soon after that got on FaceTime with Shobhit for a while. Longer than we'd stayed on since he got to India the day after Christmas, in fact.
But, we disconnected when I told him I was about to vacuum. I did a fair amount of preparation last night for the arrival tonight of Jennifer and Matthew, with Ian and his girlfriend Bella from Alaska. I put linens and a blanket on the hide-a-bed in the living room; I vacuumed; I put several towels in the guest bathroom and made sure there was shampoo, conditioner and soap in that shower. (I'm pretty sure the shampoo and conditioner already in there was left by previous guests, I have no idea which, but it works.)
In the middle of all this I was exchanging a lot of messages with Jennifer on Facebook Messenger, as we're still not sure what we'll be doing for dinner tonight or breakfast tomorrow, though we're getting close to settling on ideas. Tonight is going to depend a lot on when they can leave town and thus what time they can actually get here. For tomorrow I suggested Hudson Diner in south Seattle, which we can stop at on our way out of town toward Olympia. But, how busy they are and how long the wait is may be an issue; I need to come up with some backup ideas.
So anyway. That's it for 2024! See you next year, which promises to be a lot worse! (I'll still make the best of it, because I'm me!)
— पाँच हजार सात सौ उनतीस —
[posted 12:31 pm]
