twelve22

– As you probably know (because I like to mention it), I’m a fairly accomplished sandwich maker. I’m judging this based on the fact that other people’s (delis’) sandwiches always taste rather ‘meh’, and mine are awesome. My current favorite goes bread, honey mustard, organic sharp cheddar, tomato slices (lightly salted), baby lettuce, avocado mashed with garlic salt, bread. I lightly toast the bread (one side with mustard+cheese, one side with the avocado) in a dry skillet before adding the other things and putting the halves together. My mom likes to daydream about having her own bakery, but I think I would rather be a professional vegetarian sandwich maker.

– I got this crazy (dumb) idea to make a book out of my earliest blog posts (starting in 2000), and the idea’s turning out to really crazy (dumb). There’s no streamlined way to get the posts from HTML document to InDesign, so it’s a very tedious process. It seems particularly crazy (dumb) because I’m making this only for myself, but I think future-me will appreciate it. I’m not really reading the posts as I format them, but I do catch snippets here and there, and it’s remarkable to me how small the blogging community was at that time. Everybody has (or has had) a blog now, but it seemed so novel just a little over a decade ago.

– On a related note, what do you think college-you would think of current-you? I feel ridiculously lucky most days, so I hope college-me would see and appreciate that. She’d probably be a little disappointed that I’m not exponentially better at guitar, however.

Two awesome things I accomplished in 2011: I finished reading 42 books and I didn’t buy any new clothes (mostly). There were a few exceptions with that second goal, including the proviso that I could buy race-related clothing (along with three included-with-registration shirts, I also bought a RUN Oregon tank and a Ragnar hoodie). And I bought a slip from the thrift store. And one pair of clearance jeans last Friday (but that was with a gift card, and I felt successful enough that I let the 2011 date slide). Other than that, any ‘new’ clothes I ‘acquired’ were actually sewn by me. It wasn’t as big a challenge as I was expecting, and it certainly stopped me from doing a lot of ‘boredom shopping’.

So what do I hope 2012 will hold? I guess the main theme is Create More.

– Take more photographs (especially not at home).
– Draw a lot.
– Keep reading all the time.
– Get out more, both with friends and on my own.
– Money: get some.
– Simplify.

Those aren’t very concrete goals, but they’re my starting off points. I’ll keep refining them over the next while; a challenge of finishing a book a month or buying no new clothes is easier to make happen than something vague.

One thing that’s unrelated to the above goals is my re-buckling-down on making an effort to buy high-quality, humanely-produced eggs and dairy. When I started eating eggs again several years ago, I had decided I would only buy ones that had been laid by happy, healthy hens, but I’ve gotten a bit lazy on the issue. I always try to get organic eggs laid by cage-free chickens, but I don’t think that’s trying hard enough — those labels are so laxly regulated as to be meaningless. So that’s something to work on.

I’ve already been drawing more lately than usual, and I made the house candle holder above for the little Hanukkah tapers I grabbed in the Target clearance (not for Hanukkah, obviously). There’s a better photo of the holder here. So creativity is off to a good start. AND — I think I figured out an issue with the RSS/XML feed for this site. If you thought I just hadn’t updated since Thanksgiving… well, I have.

Happy 2012, everybody!

Ah, the end of the year. I’ve been tidying and cleaning these past few days, trying to get things organized after my birthday/Christmas, so the house will be nice for 2012 (or the first few days of it, anyway). I used a gift card to Bachman’s (a nursery) to get the big schefflera that’s now in the living room. I’d still like to have some sort of mini-tree (a ficus or a citrus or — what I’d really love — a fig tree), but this will have to be my biggest houseplant for now.

I packed away all the Christmas/winter decorations on Tuesday, I think, which Rob declared ‘too soon!’, but then I told him I’d put everything up on November 9th, and he revised his opinion to ‘not too soon’. As much as I liked having the big white tree, it’s nice to have the furniture back the way I like it, and the house feels bigger again. I even got rid of my gingerbread house, but not before seeing if Henny would eat it (answer: not really, but she gnawed on it a little).

What else has been happening? I endured an extremely itchy rash for about two weeks (the ONLY way to stop it itching was to use muscle freeze gel to numb the area) before I finally admitted it was getting worse, not better, and went to the Target walk-in clinic. Apparently it was just a boring allergic reaction (but to what?), and I got a short course of prednisone (for $2.47! — still amazed about that), and the itching stopped just hours after I took the first dose. So even if I learned nothing else in 2011, now I know that there’s no reason to itch in vain.

I hope whatever you did or are doing for New Year’s Eve will be fun and safe, and I’m wishing you a very happy 2012!