![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Here's to 2009!
1 Jan 2009 13:54I'm not great at year-in-review essays, in part because I don't keep a real diary . . . I just do things, maybe write about them the next day, and move on. My recollections of 2008 – such as they are – follow.
Social
Bonnie and I hung out a lot with M. and Y., and attended their wedding in June. We also spent a lot of time with E., D., and Z., including a fun day trip to a large zoo and water park (where Z. tried to drown me by using me as a human float). We saw A., J., and D. quite a few times, too. And we got out to visit R. and M. for a really lovely summer-afternoon brunch in the garden.
We had many out-of-town visitors as well. Bonnie's brother, Rob, stayed with us for a few days in the heat of summer, which was great fun – and a good excuse to drink cold ones and goof off. I also saw AF, an online friend; MK, a pal from graduate school; PM, a gaming buddy from the 1990s; and DS, a family friend since the 1980s. And of course B. (another friend from grad school!) visited recently with his wife, T., and son, D., and we had a great time.
Bonnie took up baladi (belly dancing) this year. This wasn't a social event per se, but Bonnie made many new friends, which counts. And of course there was the end-of-year show, which was pretty cool.
Finally, Bonnie and I celebrated all the annual events. We had our 18th wedding anniversary in May. I had my 41st birthday in July. And Bonnie turned 20 for the 21st consecutive year in November. November also marked 22 years that Bonnie and I have been a couple.
Health
I started 2008 with the doctor telling me that my blood pressure was tending high. She analyzed my bloodwork and lifestyle, and without pause concluded that work was my problem. Lacking the independent income needed to quit work and live a life of ease, I opted for a more practical approach. Starting in January, I began cutting out salt, monitoring my b.p. daily, and doing cardio exercises about five days in seven. By March, the b.p. had improved, and by September, the doctor said that I could switch to monthly monitoring. The cardio had its perks, too – just before the holiday glut, I had lost close to 20 lbs.
I spent a lot of time at the dentist: five visits, maybe six. The centerpiece of this was surgery in November, which had a two-week recovery period and a fat price tag. I get to have the other side done this coming March. Whee.
I also had abdominal pains that I thought were related to the surgery I had back in 2007. Thorough bloodwork showed nothing, though, and neither did an ultrasound in March. I suspect that this might be related to stress, like the blood pressure.
Oh, and I bought new eyeglasses in July. I have five separate corrections, two of them severe, so this was . . . not inexpensive. The kicker is that I've just started to notice presbyopia setting in. Which of course means new glasses sooner rather than later. Ow, my wallet!
Ah, to be one of the idle rich, who can avoid work and the associated stress, toss money at problems before they become stressful, and drop lucre on medical care without a thought! Health may be everything, but wealth surely plays a role.
Travel
As for travel, 2008 was a dud. I made the trip to Indianapolis for GenCon in August. Bonnie visited her parents, who are transplants to Florida, in November. Otherwise, we didn't leave town for anything longer than a day trip. The reason for this was mostly all those medical events above, and their associated price tags (no, Canada isn't the land of free dental care, eyeglasses, etc.).
Work
The biggest deal of 2008 for me was writing Dungeon Fantasy 2, 3, and 4; Power-Ups 1 and 2; Action 1 and 2; and an article for Pyramid #3/1. I also wrote several as-yet-unpublished pieces: my portion of Gun Fu, all of Thaumatology: Magical Styles, an article for Pyramid #3/3, and two game aids. That's 203,886 words of more-or-less original, reasonably creative writing. With the rules material and filler I wrote for other authors, I'd estimate that I wrote 225,000 published/to-be-published words this year.
Technically, I'm more editor than writer . . . but I don't do a lot of copyediting. Still, I personally edited four publications: Spaceships 2, an as-yet-unpublished e23 adventure, Creatures of the Night 4, and Mass Combat. I reviewed and did supplementary editing on at least 20 other items. I also rode herd on a project list that didn't drop below 40 titles – the highlights being finishing work on Thaumatology and getting Horror and Low-Tech moving. And I updated the GURPS Formatting Guide, which was last revised in 2004.
I didn't get to a lot of conventions in 2008. I attended GenCon Indy in August – as SJ Games staff, of course – which was crazy but fun. In October, I was an informal guest Draconis, a local con, where I actually got to play GURPS . . . cool! I regret missing Con*Cept, another Montréal institution, but a horribly busy patch in mid-October made participation untenable (you can deduce the specifics from this post, so I won't bore you).
Outside of gaming work, I did three pieces of freelance work for the Department of National Defense, one in June and two in October. I can't discuss the details, but it was an interesting break from editing and writing game supplements. The supplemental income was welcome, too.
Purchases
Ah, consumerism! After paying for rent, utilities, food, clothing, and of course the dental visits and eyeglasses, we had a few bucks left for some other things. There was the elliptical trainer, for that cardio I mentioned, back in January. We bought a new bed in May, which greatly improved our life; I haven't had a sore back since. Bonnie got a new PC in June, and I got one in October; both replaced aging, failing machines. We finally joined the cell-phone generation by acquiring our first mobile phone, an iPhone 3G, in August (and using it, I find it difficult to imagine what earlier-generation phones must have been like, other than "inadequate"). And we spent much of the autumn swapping cooling units into and out of our wine cabinet until we got one that worked.
I'm not much for reviews, but I'll toss a couple out there. First, the "house wines" of 2008 – the ones that gave enough bang for the buck that we bought lots for general consumption: The red discovery of the year was Malbec Achaval Ferrer Mendoza; we tasted the 2006 and 2007, and it's a mighty fine wine for under $25. The white was Disznókő Tokaji Dry Furmint, which was pretty darn good for under $20. Second, the game of 2008: Left 4 Dead.
And last night, we brought in the new year with M. and Y. Among other goodies, Y. made okonomiyaki, which I had never had before. Corks were popped, as were noisy crackers. It was good fun!
Here's wishing everybody a great 2009!
