5 posts tagged “favorite 2007”

I woke up the first day of the year, really wanting to write a recap of my year.  I skimmed back through the first months of last year because I thought I would have done something in a small way then, and I didn't.  So next year, I'll have this to look back on and see where I've grown.  Anyhow, I fought with myself on how to present it.  I fought with myself to sit down and actual type over the course of a few days it so that I had this remembrance to look back on.  And then I fought with myself on how to end it because there's so much to it, and so much more in my life I could be introspective about...

The biggest things that I am proud and/or excited about of this year are my reading, cooking, listening (music/podcasts), knitting, gaming, and watching.  So much that I wrote whole posts on them.  Some of the other things that I did this year were also very fun or important to me, but they weren't worth a whole post!

I blogged this year.  

This was done mostly here on Vox.  Sometimes, my blogging just took the form of updating my media lists for books and movies, because I just didn't have the time or energy to write real posts.  I also added some delicious links to my main blog (automatically), got a facebook account to track friends there, and did private posts on my livejournal.  

I also moblogged this year, continuing to carry my camera phone with me everywhere and taking random pictures to remind me of things we did.  Even though a lot of these turn into self-portraits, I don't mind.

I took pictures with both my phone for easy moblogging and my camera.  My camera photos are mostly of family events or special things, and many of these are not in Vox yet, just iPhoto.  But there are a lot of knitting photos in that pile, as well.  Those, I used the FlickrExport to send to my Flickr account (which I've by now caught up with the limitations of a free account) so I could use them both on Ravelry and pull them into Vox as needed.

I dealt with my health this year. 

I made conscious decisions to do things to reduce my stress level and help my CFIDS/Fibromyalgia.  Even though this was one of the worst years in the last 5 years for my health, I feel slightly better at the end of the year.  I also made a set of visits to the dentist to have fillings done, even though it's still very scary to me.

I traveled this year.

We started out the year in California on our trip last Christmas and so we had a long drive for that trip.  Then in June, I went to San Francisco for work.  Also in June, we visited the beach with the whole Locatis family.  In July, we flew down to California for a friend's birthday and had a wonderful time with friends and family.

We also did exploring local places.  We spent a bit more time learning what was here in Vancouver that we hadn't seen, and went to the Farmers Market many times over the course of the late spring-early autumn, which is also a nice chance to walk around Esther Short Park.  We visited new restaurants in the area, which is very adverturesome of me because I  usually stick with the same things I know.  And we went to the fancy theater, Cinetopia, several times as well.  Some of this, I got a chance to Yelp about, and other things I just read reviews before visiting to see what other people thought.

We went down to our favorite outdoor mall, Bridgeport Plaza several times, and once down to the Woodburn Outlet mall.  At least one time to Washington Square in Beaverton, as well.  We enjoy window shopping the most out of going to these places, and usually my reasoning for going has to do with the food that's nearby.

We even ventured into Portland more than we have in the past!  We visited the Pearl district a number of times to go to PF Changs and surrounding area including Powells, and made it to the Saturday Market further down from there.  We made it to an outdoor art show at one point, too.  And multiple trips to Pioneer Place were nice for going to the closest Apple store and more.

I spent time with family this year.  

We participated and helped with Megan's wedding in February, and that was a big wonderful event.  Our trip to the beach with everyone on the Locatis family side was a good chance for us to relax together.  We spend many weekends getting together through the year, with dad or one of us (usually dad) cooking for the whole group.  We visited with E's family after the new year, during several trips when they came up to visit at the beginning of the year, and then when we went down in July.  One of the fun things this year has been to watch Leah and baby Leonard (my niece and nephew) grow, and do fun things for them.  We've also had a lot of fun playing games together throughout the year with both sides of the family.

I met up with friends this year.

I have a really hard time reconnecting with people from my past.  This year, I took time to meet up with a friend from college, and even more amazingly, a friend from high school.  Even though I was super nervous, both meetings went so much better than my nightmares lead me to believe they would.  It makes me think I'm not as awful with people as I think, and maybe I'm starting to heal from past situations a little too.

But mostly, I've just learned how to be Kristine.  That's always a challenge, to be myself.  And this year, I grew more comfortable in that, even though it was another year where I had to say that I was in the 30-40 age range on questionaires.  I embrace my ISTJ-ness and do things consistent rather than trying to be something I'm not.

Thanks for bearing with me through this series of posts, even as the days of the month moved faster than my typing.  

Note: This is the sixth in a series of posts looking back at 2007, in some key areas of my life that were important to me.

I watched this year.

I've been an avid TV watcher for many years now, but we set aside the idea of watching movies for much of our marriage just for lack of time and money and my health.  This year, we did all of those things.

The end of last TV season, I was enamored with Heroes and Lost and several other shows.  This had me continuing to read TV news through the summer to decide what shows I was most interested in watching for the new fall TV season (2007-2008).  Even though not every show I started with was fabulous, I found some new loves.  Unfortunately, the writer's strike took a toll on my enjoyment, and some shows are being considered as cancelled by default because of that.  My very favorite new show of the year was Journeyman.  Heroes and Bones were probably my favorite returning ones, even though there were storylines on Heroes that just didn't thrill me.

We spent a lot of time watching Netflix movies in the evenings this year.  We were just on the one at a time plan, but we tried to take as much advantage of it as we could by watching it the same day it came and stuff like that.  This let us see a nice combo of movies and TV series.

We received 71 dvds from Netflix, an average of 6 per month.  27 of those were series disks, part of a TV series (like the 3 seasons of the 4400 and 2 1/2 seasons of Babylon 5 so far) or miniseries (in the case of Into the West).  I put 52 movies into Vox, with the difference being just that some dvds were part of a series.

This year was also a big year for TV on DVD.  In addition to the aforementioned Netflix series we got, we also purchased a nice pile.  At the beginning of the year, we owned 3 seasons of TV on DVD.  Now, we own 10 (talked about in September) + 12 more for a total of 22 seasons!  We got the rest of Buffy and Angel on sale at various times and E just received the 4 seasons of Futurama.  Obviously, we haven't watched all of those (so they aren't added to Vox), but it's a great thing to slowly rewatch and enjoy commentaries and other specials.

One thing that's been fun in the last year was finding the local Hollywood Video Outlet, where you can get a really good deal on previously viewed movies.  I've been able to get some of my favorites to own, like Paycheck and Poseidon (big screen one with Josh Lucas AND the TV movie with Adam Baldwin) among others.  This is a fun way to get to rewatch my favs, especially when there isn't great things to see on TV.

And then we saw movies in the theater - 4 in the summer and then the Golden Compass recently.  It's fun to be able to sit through a movie without my body hurting so much, that's what slowed us down a lot before.

My favorite TV on DVD series that I watched this year was The 4400, season 3.  The most surprising good movie I saw in the theater was Transformers.  And my favorite out of the movies I rewatched on TV this year was A Knight's Tale.

Note: This is the fifth in a series of posts looking back at 2007, in some key areas of my life that were important to me.

I played games this year.  

This was not just restricted to video games this year, however.  Eric and I became the proud owner and players of really good board games, too.

Board Games: We had an excellent year where we actually bought good quality enjoyable board games.  Most of these are European games, many which have won awards, and we like to pick the ones that are from companies we've heard of so that we know the pieces will be good quality and the art will be well done (Rio Grande Games is my favorite publisher because of their quality).

I got several for Christmas (Bohnanza and Jambo, I think) last year, and that set us on a course to find more.  We visited multiple specialty game stores on multiple occasions, and this was great fun.  Z Games here in Vancouver is one of our favorites to browse.  We purchased Puerto Rico and Carcassone, and then San Juan.  Ruse & Bruise and Thurn and Taxis came next, I think.  And then before a trip, we found a good deal at an online store, Phoenix Games, and got Coloretto, the Puerto Rico Expansion, several Carcassone expansions, and my favorite, Ticket to Ride and its expansion.  Our trip to California in July was a great chance to play a lot of this type of game with Eric's friends, and Gabe gave us an extra copy he had of Attika while we were there.    

One of the other fun things about this year is that we started to get our family more interested in board games.  First it was just Bohnanza (or Beans, as Jon says), and then during the trip to the beach, we got more adventuresome and introduced new games to the group.  Sarah had a lot of fun playing with us whenever we got together and so we are always looking for games that play nice with 3 players for us to enjoy.  We ended out this year with games with Sarah and even convinced Leonard to play a round of Coloretto with us.

Our full list of current games is at BoardGameGeek, which is a super site for finding good quality games for many sizes of groups of people.

Video Games: I didn't play as many this year as I have in the past.  I made a conscious choice to knit instead of playing a lot of video games this year because I was enjoying my knitting so much.  I did watch E play a lot during knitting.

I got a Nintedo DS for Christmas last year, so I used this to play in bed.  I started out the year with Super Mario.  Then I played Age of Empires on my DS until the game started giving random errors all the time (I bought it on clearance, so maybe it was was faulty for everyone).  I played Eric's old Zelda (for the Game Boy) on my DS and almost finished it, with almost everything gotten.  The last battle just killed me too many times to keep trying.  

On my Mac, E found the old installation of Age of Mythology and I again dove into this for many hours of entertainment, both playing through the story and then lots of random maps - and we can play random maps together which is very fun.  

For the PS2, I played much of Sly Cooper 3.  I believe I did some replaying of Ratchet and Clank, and I think some old Spyro too.  I did make a conscious choice to knit instead of playing a lot of video games this year as I had in the past because I enjoyed that so much.  I've watched Insomniac's site this year because I love them, even though I don't have a PS3 to play the new Ratchet and Clank.

I don't have a good record of what I played really, to remember what I played this year versus previous years (I'd love this to be a future feature of Vox!).  I wish I had a site where I tracked all this - I added things as I got them to GameSpot, but there's not any date context to that.  Does anybody have a favorite site for tracking their games?

So it was a good year for gaming!  My favorite board game was Ticket to Ride, with San Juan close behind, and my favorite all around video game was the old but good Age of Mythology because of the number of hours I was able to enjoy it.

Note: This is the second in a series of posts looking back at 2007, in some key areas of my life that were important to me. 

I cooked this year.

Even though I've been cooking for years, I had a very limited array of things that we ate.  A lot of boxed meals and frozen pizzas were the base foods of our diets, with a few other more special or homemade plans around them.  This year, I learned how to cook more things than the previous 5 years combined.  This came from reading cooking sites online and cooking magazines and books for inspiration. 

We got several kitchen tools that make it easier to cook - the George Foreman Grill - with different plates for waffles even - (post) and a blender that actually blends, as well as E's immersion blender he got for a gift.  New frying pans - they are purple - are a joy, too.

I have never been a big fan of vegetables, but some of the meal ideas really made for a yummy way to eat them that I wouldn't have thought to try.  I've worked with a variety of squashes, zucchini, onions, lots of broccoli, corn on the cob, parsnips, carrots, green beans, plenty of potatoes, various things with peppers, and more.  As part of an effort to appreciate the things available in the area, we went to the Farmer's Market to purchase fruits and veges locally grown.  We started spending more of our grocery shopping time in the produce section than ever before.    

Cooking meat has always been hard for me because I don't like handling it.  Since E is a vegetarian, this wasn't a big boundry for me, I just got prepackaged things or didn't eat meat in the home.  But when I think of the foods I enjoy eating out, I really wanted to try more to make some of them in the home instead, and started to learn to cook meat.  I still don't enjoy handling the meat, but I've gotten better at it.

This all meant we ate out less.  And we had specific meal plans, knowing what was going to be for which day, and planning for the freshs veges to be eaten first in the week, and so on.  Grocery night turns more into a fun trip when I have a list and a plan in hand, because it's less stressful, and that makes me happier.

And I've started updating theredkitchen with the creations I've come up with.  That site has been neglected for too long, and I'm happy to see posts with this 2007 on them for a change.  I also made use of AllRecipes (profile) and their Recipe Box quite often to save lists of the things I've made or plan to make.  The Reiman magazines I receive - as well as the previous stockpile - were a big help (Simple and Delicious, Cooking for 2)

I've used several of my cookbooks this year, but Betty Crocker is still the most helpful.  Besides that, I've been making use of my Cake Mix Doctor book to think of new and creative desserts.

I haven't kept up with writing up all the meals I made on Vox like I had hoped, but I do have a pile of my weekly plans here in my office, and I'm going to use it to make a comprehensive list of meal ideas to help me in my planning this coming year.

My favorite new thing that I learned to make this year is actually making good homemade yeasty Dinner Rolls (on theredkitchen).  It takes a couple of risings, but it really takes a main dish and turns it into a meal.  Add that to some Mac and Cheese, fix up some carrots, and some sparkling cider, and I am a happy girl while cooking AND while eating (photo above from August).

Bonus, a Vox Tip: If you have a favorite recipe, add it as a link using Vox This! and put a tag for "recipe" on it.  Then you can browse other people's links tagged "recipe" in Explore.  Easy as PIE! ;)

Note: This is the first in a series of posts looking back at 2007, in some key areas of my life that were important to me.  

I read this year.

This was a year of rediscovery of books, something I started on last year, but really took it up to another level this year.  In previous years, I did a lot of rereading.  This year, I took advantage of our library and learning more authors.  Although I primarily read Christian fiction, I also got in a lot of instructional books, like knitting and crafting books.

This allowed me to try out interlibrary loan to get some that weren't in our system.  I expanded on my knowledge by creating wikipedia pages or enhancing existing ones for some of the most prolific Christian authors out there (my wikipedia profile lists the most important pages I've worked on).  I have been so helped by having comprehensive lists of the books that any given author writes, and so this is a super thing for me to participate in improving to help others who can't easily find this info elsewhere. 

Because of my reading, I helped out other aspects of my life (craftyness) and started to give of myself as a Library volunteer for the first time since I was a teenager.  This opened new doors for me as a knitter (building my confidence and becoming a help to others), and as a library volunteer, accepting a role for the Friends of the Library group (I'm now the secretary).

Recap: 232 books (plus a few more on my nightstand not yet recorded), with 139 Christian Fiction and 73 knitting (and other ones of other random categories)  There were a few I reread and couldn't reenter into Vox from my personal collection at home, too.

Pictured: My favorite writer this year was Lauraine Snelling, because of reading several series she wrote, but primarily the Dakotah Treasures.  Tracie Peterson's A Slender Thread was probably my favorite standalone book.  Besides those two, I read just about everything Lori Wiki and Beverly Lewis have written this year as well.  The most outstanding knitting book I read this year was Big Girl Knits because it had such valuable information about sizing, and I plan to buy it.

Bonus, a Vox Tip: You can add the year into any URL of tagged items to see just the items for that year with that tag.  For example, if you are looking at books tagged knitting, the URL shows http://kristine.vox.com/library/books/tags/knitting/.  Put 2007 after the item type as follows: http://kristine.vox.com/library/books/2007/tags/knitting/.  Voila!