yay 2019!

[topaz119]

Hello, hello, how are you all?

I did survive the holidays, but 2018 was nasty right to the bitter end, with an unexpected repairs to my van (to the tune of $800), standing water (AGAIN, ARGH) in the basement the morning we were leaving for Disney World (costs still to be defined), and in the literal eleventh hour, I managed to knock over (and shatter) an entire tray of champagne flutes at 11:45 p.m. Fortunately, the server who has taken care of us for the last few years swooped in, hugged me, told me not to cry, and shooed me off to watch the fireworks. I am generally a big tipper but that one might be my all time record.

So now I'm back and the Real World is staring me down with its best January face. At least it stopped raining?

In a fit of apparent insanity, I am making myself a bullet journal. It will be the ugliest BuJo out there, because I'm not at all artistically inclined, I get no satisfaction from prettying things up, and I have no time to spend on that sort of stuff. (I am totally cool if people do actually get satisfaction from it all and find peace/joy from creating the pretty thing around the bones of the system—I would rather spend that extra time in the kitchen. Or with a book. Or writing. To each their own, YMMV, etc, etc, etc.) I like the concept of intentionally carrying things over (and thinking about why it's happening), and I'm a little ashamed the index concept is so exciting to me (and that it never occurred to me to do it in all my years of carrying around composition books with my various lists.) I sat down and started playing around with that over the weekend (when I should have been dealing with the tree, etc, but that clearly wasn't happening so at least this is progress?) I will keep you posted on my results (and since I'm thinking about writing this up for the mom blog I write for, there may even be pictures, wheee.)

In more fun news, I managed to beat the Disney system and get FastPasses for 12 to Flight of Passage over the busiest week of the year, so we started off 2019 with that bit of excitement. Happily enough, it is actually as good as everyone says it is so the hour or so in October that I spent wrangling tickets and reservations and MDE technical support was totally worth it.

Also in fun news, I was inspired by all the recs people have been posting (yuletide, snowflake, favorite stories of the year, etc) and my enjoyment of them all to go back and work on fic recs again (for the first time in years, oy.) Hopefully by Friday I should have a set to share. I think I'm going with a few old and a few new in each set so, uh, get ready for a whack of post-Winter Soldier angst.

Thanks for sticking around; I really enjoy having all of you in my life. ♥ ♥ ♥

Comments

[misbegotten]

I managed to beat the Disney system and get FastPasses for 12 to Flight of Passage over the busiest week of the year

Bravo!

[topaz119]

It was worth all the contortions!

[destina]

I'm always glad to see posts from you. And looking forward to your recs! You always have great ones. <3

[topaz119]

This is going so slowly b/c I keep getting sucked into reading them all again! Also, wow, did I go through a StormPilot phase—not that I’ve given up the pairing now, but I had a run of bookmarks there for a while.

[turps]

No rain is a good thing!

But ack at 2018 being mean to the last. That year needs to fade away and be forgotten about already.

[topaz119]

I was not st all sad to see it go.

[sperrywink]

Damn 2018 was intent on being kicked to the curb for you! Kudos for the Disney passes!

[topaz119]

The Disney stuff happened on January 1, so I feel like it was an auspicious beginning to 2019. (It is an amazing ride; it's no wonder the lines are still 3 & 4 hours long & getting fastpasses is like fighting your way into and out of a rugby scrum.)

[inkvoices]

I started a bullet journal last year and mine is by no means pretty. As much as I admire the art some people make out of them, if something like that needs to be good I find it paralysing. A bit like having a really nice, shiny new notebook that's so pretty you don't know how to start using it because you need to use it for something worthy and not make a mess. I ended up using it as a mix of daily work to do lists (which helped me keep track and were satisfying to tick off), monthly non-work to-do lists and shopping lists, and then key pages of things it's really useful to have in one place. Like a year overview on a two page spread with all the birthdays by month to tick off when I'd sorted presents, and a packing list for when I go on work trips so I don't forget anything. I'll be interested to see what another non-pretty type user does and what types of pages/uses you come up with - I find it really interesting how different people do it :)

And fic! Always good to read some more fic from you. And enjoy Disney!

[topaz119]

I may borrow your birthday year spread -- my work calendar lives on O365 & my personal calendar takes into account the whole family, four school schedules and all the appointments I need to monitor, and there's no way either of them are going anywhere, but having the happy occasions on a spread seems like a helpful thing to have handy.

I'm drafting the post for the blog now, so I should have it done by the end of the month. (SEO is the bane of my writing there... It takes forever to make that sound natural.)