Happy New Year! (Yes, I know what day it is)

[mousme]

Two days late, and probably more than a dollar short, but who cares!

To all my friends who had a rough 2015, may 2016 treat you ever so much better!

Last year, someone (I believe it was bodhifox, but I could be mistaken) said that it always felt like people at the end of the year only ever saw the bad in the preceding months, and that's why everyone was always glad to see the old year go by the wayside. That stuck with me, because 2014 treated me like utter shit, and I was really happy to get a new start on things. I decided I'd pay attention, and see if I'd be as glad to see the door close on 2015.

I am happy to report, for myself, that it's not the case. It's a relief to know that I'm not the sort of person who only focuses on the negative in life. 2015, while not perfect, certainly treated me very well overall. Let's make a list.

• In January, I started volunteering at the soup kitchens at Shepherds of Good Hope. I'm still there almost every Monday (except when I'm working), and still loving it. Wendy and James and all the rest of the staff and volunteers make it a joy to work there. The only cloud on the horizon was the unexpected death of Lena, one of the volunteers, this fall. She was my mother's age, and she and I got along very well. She will be missed.


• I also took Sergent for some extra obedience training, and we both had a lot of fun, especially when the class took us outdoors and he got to romp around in the snow.


• I had started attending Quaker Monthly Meeting in December of 2014, but kept up with that, and am still attending every Sunday I can make it there (when I'm not working, or not out of town, which does happen).


• January was also the month in which I started doing monthly cooking days with ai731, which we are still doing now. It's been great keeping in touch with her, as we'd gotten out of the habit since she and t! moved out into the boonies.


• In less awesome news, on both my birthday and the day of Capricornucopia I got hit by vertigo. It put me out of commission for my actual birthday, but I was able to recover in time for Capricornucopia. Since by then it was evident that the vertigo was not going away (and was now accompanied by alarming symptoms of tinnitus and hearing loss), I consulted my doctor and came away with a diagnosis of Menière's Disease. Blech. I have medication for it now that does help mitigate the symptoms quite a lot, luckily.


• At the end of January I got the ball rolling on an application to become an adoptive parent with the Ottawa Children's Aid Society, and went to an information session. I was given a ton of paperwork to fill out, and I also started reading as many books on the topic as I could find.


• Capricornucopia was, once again, a success. If memory serves, we had a slightly lower attendance than usual, but the quality of the guests more than made up for the quantity.


• In February, my friend valtyr introduced me to Borderlands 2 on Steam ("Come race jeeps across a desert planet with me! There's a pony made of diamonds!"), and suddenly I became a full-fledged computer gamer. I'd played the PS2 before (I think we all remember Phnee's trip down the rabbit hole of Final Fantasy X back in 2006), but hadn't done much other than replay Dragon Quest VIII last year. Now I have over 10 games on Steam, and have clocked an embarrassing number of hours on them. I regret nothing. :)


• In March my parents invited me to spend a week with them in Barcelona. It had been four years since my last trip to Europe (Rome, in April of 2011), and it was glorious, if really cold for the season. I took a billion photographs, and zoomed around the city until I just about dropped from exhaustion.


• In April I finally got my first interview with the Ottawa Children's Aid Society. This interview was essentially to make sure I wasn't completely unsuited to being an adoptive parent, though I didn't know it at the time.


• In May nothing happened that immediately springs to mind, but I remember the weather was beautiful. My parents and I celebrated Mother's Day in style with lobster.


• In June I started volunteering at Hope Garden (also for Shepherds of Good Hope), which is a completely organic garden that they use to supplement the Shepherds of Good Hope soup kitchen (and a few other places run by Shepherds), since donations in the summertime are always a little on the thin side, compared to winter and especially the holiday season, when everyone is more motivated to be generous.


• July had no big events, but was warm and sunny and mostly quiet, which is not a bad thing in my books. My parents visited again and we ate on my patio in the blazing sun.


• In August I went to Prince Edward Island with my parents for a week (I joked with my parents that I see them more often since I moved to Ottawa than when I lived in Montreal). Sergent romped around in the ocean and had an absolute blast. My stay happened to coincide with a brief visit from curtana and forthright, as well as their son (I think he's on social media somewhere, but as he's still young I won't link to any of his accounts). It was wonderful to see them again, albeit only for a few hours, and of course curtana had just gotten the good news of permanent, gainful employment! I also got to see rowen26, whom I hadn't seen in at least six years, so that was awesome too. He showed me a bunch of places I'd never seen before, and introduced me to some fantastic food, and we had raspberry cordial!


• I had houseguests for three weeks in August. That was...  less awesome, but they left me an inkjet printer which actually works (compared to my other printer, which my computer doesn't recognize, blah). So that was a plus.


• I also got to visit with hells_half_acre for an afternoon/evening while she was here. A visit that was much too short, but she is very much in demand whenever she travels east, so I take what I can get. :)


• August also got me a second interview with CAS, and I was approved to move onto the second part of the adoption process.


• That brings me to September, which went by in an absolute blur of PRIDE training for adoption, and continued on slightly into October.


• I also started going back to the gym in September, focussing mainly on gaining strength and flexibility and endurance. It's a work in progress. Alas, I also managed to injure my shoulder, which kept me in chronic pain for quite some time.


• In September I also got rid of one of my credit cards. I'm still swimming in debt, but slightly less so now. Yay!


• In October I went to Pittsburgh for my very first ever Wincon convention! I got to meet a TON of my fangirl friends in person, we drank a LOT, had super interesting discussions about our fandoms, fanworks, and the end of the world (there weren't any cookies, but we brought American Timbits). Also, there was dancing. It was awesome.


• I got back from Wincon and promptly went to interview for a promotion at my job, which I got! \o/ It's especially exciting, since I wasn't expecting to get it. There were other, more qualified applicants in the running, but it turns out I was both lucky and good.


• I spent all of November training for additional responsibilities for my job, ironically totally unrelated to my promotion.


• November marked a month of physiotherapy twice a week for my shoulder, which improved, but is still not completely healed. It's a literal pain.


• December also went by in a blur of training, and then trying to manage personnel issues at work. It was a bit of a rough month, psychologically speaking. The training had me on a Monday to Friday schedule, and it felt like I had no time to myself at all. Strangely disconcerting.


• I spent a lovely, quiet Christmas with my parents and the dog, and no one else. It was great.

And that's it for my 2015. Overall? A pretty great year. :)

I am making resolutions this year, but they haven't gelled in my mind yet. I figure I can mull them over some more, let the ideas percolate, before I set them into stone.

Comments

[guruwench.livejournal.com]

Whee! I'm still mulling over what I want to do this year; I don't tend to do formal resolutions, but I'm pondering a plan to accomplish a few things.

Yes, that includes planning a wedding. ;) \O/

[kiwano.livejournal.com]

My most notable memories of 2015 were that a lot of legal misery ended. However, the endings happened far enough into the year, and there were enough aftershocks and follow-on miseries, that my recollection of 2015 is still pretty much dominated by legal misery. Oh, and there was a break-up (unrelated to the divorce) and a job loss in there for good measure too. Admittedly the break-up seems to have given way to another try (but that didn't happen until Jan. 1, so that niceness isn't 2015!) and the lost job may re-hire me soon (the decision was entirely motivated by cash-flow issues--but again, any re-hire won't be in 2015 either).