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A year ago at this time I posted a list of 10 things I was looking forward to in 2008. Before I look ahead to 2009, I thought it would be fun to see how each of those things from 2008 turned out.
1. Ethan’s first birthday. This was as amazing and magical as I’d imagined. I’m looking forward to his second birthday with even more enthusiasm!
2. The New England Patriots Invitational Tournament. Also known as the NFL Playoffs, this one didn’t turn out exactly as I’d hoped or expected. But ah well, 18-1 is almost as good as 19-0. Right? Nah, not really. Alas.
3. Getting healthy. Sadly, this one’s still a work in progress.
4. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In a word: Awesome.
5. Easter Island. I did indeed make it to Easter Island last March, and it was a great experience. Lingering health issues were kind of a drag on the trip, though, and I would much rather have traveled there with Penny and Ethan than go solo like I did.
6. Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The Spidey comics went from monthly to three times a month and featured an all-new, all-not-married status quo for Peter Parker. And, by and large, it was a great year for the character. I’m still jazzed about the series as we head into year two of the new era.
7. Creating… something. Last year was to be the one where I finally made some headway on either Rise of the Hidden Sun or my young adult novel. I chose the novel and managed to get about 45,000 words into it before losing steam around Thanksgiving. So, not a success but not an out-and-out failure, either. A work in progress.
8. New TV shows. I was really looking forward to Jericho (returning from the dead) and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Jericho only lasted seven episodes but tied up most of the loose ends nicely, and Terminator started well, then got a bit spotty before coming on very strong here in season two. Here’s hoping for a season three pickup in 2009.
9. The Red Sox in Japan. Wow, I completely forgot this even happened. It was a neat little sideshow at the time but, ultimately, not all that big a deal. I’m more likely to remember the Sox losing game 7 of the ALCS than anything about their time in Japan.
10. Climbing a mountain. This finally happened in October during our vacation to Acadia National Park. It was a wimpy little mountain, but the views were spectacular and it felt grea to be back outdoors. Maybe 2009 will be the year where I finally get back into hiking the way I’d like to, though.
The good news: I’m currently 900 words ahead of my desired writing pace for the month. The bad news: I’ve offically reached the end of the outline I’ve been working from for the past few months. Everything between now and the end of the novel is basically a 50,000-word black hole. I literally do not know what happens next. Exciting but scary.
LOST will return in January. Just 70 days to go! I wish I could get excited for it, but I just can’t muster the enthusiasm yet.
This has been a great week for Boston sports, and tomorrow it gets better with Thursday night football at Foxborro! Something to look forward to.
HBO has greenlighted (greenlit?) a pilot for a TV version of George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” fantasy novels. If done right, this could reach Lord of the Rings levels of awesomeness.
It’s ironic that How I Met Your Mother is finally getting good ratings just as its quality seems to be taking a nosedive.
Driving home from work yesterday I discovered that two radio stations in the metro Boston area have already gone all-Christmas. I can’t take two months of “Little Saint Nick.”
Speaking of Christmas, Amazon now has a nifty feature that allows you to add stuff from any other website to your Amazon wish list. Penny came up with that idea like three years ago. If only we knew the right people, we coulda been rich!
I have fallen asleep on the couch watching each of the last four episodes of Fringe. How’s that for a ringing endorsement?
Fox is moving Terminator and Dollhouse to Friday nights this winter. Bye bye, Terminator and Dollhouse. We hardly knew ye.
Busy weekend. My parents babysat Ethan for us on Saturday evening so Penny and I could go out for dinner and a movie to celebrate our anniversary. On the movie front, our choices were pretty limited. Burn After Reading was out because I can’t stand Brad Pitt. Vicki Christina Barcelona was a contender until we watched the trailer for it and hated it. So finally, we decided on Ghost Town because a) the trailer was funny, and b) so is Ricky Gervais.
It ended up being the kind of enjoyable, forgettable rom-com stuff that’s perfect for a date night. A little uneven at times, but frequently hilarious, too. Well worth the two hours and $20.
Being out of practice on the whole “going out” thing, we didn’t make dinner reservations and were consequently turned away at the first three restaurants we tried in Beverly. We had better luck in Salem, where we managed to get a table at an upscale Italian place called The Grapevine. The food was decent (I had pumpkin raviolis), we drank a half-bottle of Savignon Blanc, and I questioned the waitress’ assertion that the wild boar tenderloin on the menu was actually “wild” since the boar was apparently raised on a farm in Canada. She responded with all the confidence of John McCain and Barack Obama discussing the economic crisis (which is to say, not much), but we moved on and had a pleasant dinner with refreshingly adult conversation.
Yesterday my dad and I went to the Patriots-Dolphins game at Foxboro. I bought him the tickets for his 60th 39th birthday, and we had a great time despite seeing the Patriots get obliterated by a team that went 1-15 last year and started this season 0-2. The weather was nice, anyway, and our seats were on the 50-yard-line. (About a mile from the field, but on the 50-yard-line nevertheless.) The Brady-less Patriots don’t look very good, but any time I can watch the game with my dad it’s a good time.
I’ve been a bit slow to post things to the blog this week. Not for lack of things to write, just for lack of time. Anyway, here are a few random thoughts and obvervations from the week that was.
- Things found in Ethan’s toy box: A plastic cup, a stick of deodorant, a pen, a book, a brush, and my sunglasses. The boy is a packrat.
- For the past 15 months I’ve sung The Ants Go Marching to Ethan at naptime to get him to go to sleep. This week, he started singing it back to me. (“Hurrah, hurrah” is “Ooh-ah, ooh-ah.”) He gets the rhythm and syllables perfect.
- My neighbor tore out the old wooden fence separating our yards and put up a shiny new white vinyl one. He managed to annex a few extra inches of our property in the process and dump dirt all over the grass on our side. I am so not pleased.
- The Sox are in second place for the first time in what seems like a decade. At least they’re still ahead of the Yankees.
- This weekend Penny and I are planning to hike our first mountain since Ethan was born. She even bought new hiking boots for the occasion. It will be Ethan’s first time on a real mountain. (Technically he was with us in Iceland two years ago, but he was just a zygote at the time and probably doesn’t remember.)
- Eighteen strait days of exercise for me.
- Penny and I are really getting into the homemade ice cream thing. So far we’ve made: Mango sorbet, chocolate, and chocolate mint. (Now you understand why all the exercise.)
- Today is new comic book day. On my pull list for the week: Amazing Spider-Man # 564, Astonishing X-Men # 25, Secret Invasion: Front Line # 1, Buffy Season 8 # 16, and Indiana Jones and the Tomb of the Gods # 1. I may start stocking up on the all-ages Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man for when Ethan’s a bit older, too.
- We finished Season 3 of the new Doctor Who series on Friday. David Tennant is inching his way closer to becoming my favorite Doctor. Right now he’s a close second to Peter Davison, and Martha Jones is a close second to Tegan. Could go either way in both cases.
- Tried watching a few of the old Tom Baker episodes last week. Oh my god. They really don’t hold up well at all. That kind of depresses me.
- Just ordered Season 1 of Torchwood to hold us over till the fourth season of the new Who comes out on DVD.
- Starbucks is closing 600 stores?! OK, now I’m starting to feel the effects of this economic slowdown.
Like I said, just some random thoughts.
Ten minutes arguing with Penny about cat urine. (Don’t ask.)
Nine issues of New Avengers read, bagged, and boarded.
Eight innings of baseball watched.
Seven really cute pictures of Ethan taken with my cell phone camera.
Six failed attempts at downloading those pictures. (F**king Verizon!)
Five episodes of Doctor Who watched. (Including this awesome one.)
Four miles walked in the woods at Ravenswood Park in Gloucester.
Three new words added to Ethan’s vocabulary (“up,” “hat,” and ”hot”).
Two long walks around Beverly with Ethan and Penny.
One minor foot-stomping temper tantrum by Ethan.
Zero effort put into fixing the back steps.
Three Super Bowls, two World Series, and now an NBA championship.
WOW.
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