2011 in Review
What happened in 2011? Well, first off, I abandoned this blog again. I didn’t have a clear idea of what direction I was even aiming for, and none of my plans were particularly cohesive1. Additionally, I was at a strange point in my life. For the first half of the year I didn’t do much at all. Off the top of my head, I can’t recall any significant thing that happened to me or that I did, aside from having a birthday.
However, the last half of my year was quite eventful for the better, as well as the worse in some cases, but overwhelmingly for the better.
At the very end of July I moved to a town just south of the U.S.-Canadian border and about 100 miles north of Seattle, where I’d lived my entire life. The town, Bellingham, which I affectionately refer to as the Ham pretty much any time I talk about it, is pretty awesome.
I’m finally back in school with no intent of taking another break until I not only finish my bachelor’s degree, but my master’s as well. I’m doing pretty well academically (4.0 GPA, gogo!) despite the fact I still procrastinate like it’s my job. I think I’ve finally settled on what I want to do with my life (another post for another day).
I joined my school’s QSA, or queer-straight alliance, at the beginning of fall quarter to meet people and get involved, and ended up becoming the secretary after a few weeks. We throw some bitchin’ parties and I love everyone in the club. It’s fantastic and meeting other queer people is always nice, particularly in an area that’s surrounded by some severely conservative town, and thus some of the homophobia around is a little bit higher than I’m used to in Seattle. Overall, however, the Ham is pretty awesome in that regard. I haven’t had any major incidents, just a few minor ones.
I started to take advantage of several hours of free language tutoring on campus for speaking practice for Spanish and French, which I’m studying once again because, goddammit, I love languages. I would learn ALL THE LANGUAGES if I could. The Spanish conversation tutoring is particularly important in that I’m going to go visit my friend Hans, or Patty as everyone else calls her, in Venezuela this coming August/September if all goes according to plan. I can’t wait to see my favorite brontosaurus’ face and eat all the amazing Venezuelan food she keeps telling me her mom wants to make me! This will also be my first real trip abroad. I’m ridiculously excited as I’ve been dying to travel for basically my whole entire life. I’m desperate to see everything, but money is such a cockblocker sometimes, dudes.
Speaking of money, that leads me to my next point: I joined AmeriCorps’ Students in Service program (despite its website’s desperate need of a facelift) which basically means I get paid to volunteer. The payout after I complete 300 hours of service is coincidentally nearly exactly the same price to the dollar as a roundtrip Seattle-Caracas ticket.
I’ve started eating a lot healthier (with the last month or so an exception) and have lost a bit of weight, though I still have quite a bit more to go. While I still have several medical issues that need to be dealt with, and hopefully I can begin to deal with them soon as I just got medical insurance for the first time in several years on January 1st, I’m glad I’ve started taking a step in the right direction. I’m very much motivated by seeing results, because if I don’t see results I tend to give up quickly, so early success is helping me keep my eye on the prize, so to speak.
My mom and I got a bit closer this year. She celebrated her first AA birthday (as well as her real birthday) in August, for which I’m very proud of her. We had an amazing time at the Puyallup Fair in September, just the two of us. We bought Dizzy Passes, or unlimited ride passes, and rode rides all day and spent a completely insane amount of money on fair food, but it was worth it. We had a complete blast even if our feet were about dead after standing for about 14 hours straight.
My dad and I get along quite a lot better when I live away from home so that’s been great. We talk frequently. He still says insane and hilarious (sometimes inadvertent on his part) things that I can text to all of my friends.
Internet-wise, I’m still a Twitter scrub in that I don’t seem to post nearly as frequently as everyone else I know, but I’m sort of fine with that. However, after lamenting circa 2009ish that I didn’t understand WTF the point of Tumblr even was, I am now a tumblin’ fiend. I tumble all the things! I even recently started a new tumblr dedicated to reblogging all the Joss Whedon-related things I find and enjoy. I loves me some Firefly.
I’d kill for a Tumblr-style RSS feed aggregator sometimes. It’d be so much easier to keep on top of my reading, though I have been managing quite well lately after culling some old feeds I was never reading. I do still need to learn to be less of a lurker! I’ve always had an issue with being an epic lurker.
Perhaps that’s one more thing I’ll work on in the new year. More about that later. For tonight, I’m out.
- However, I’ve now done a total redesign and culled some useless pages and reorganized and rewritten quite a lot. ↩
I Finally Figured Out Tumblr!
Oh, Tumblr. How I’ve learned to love you again.
I’m working on getting back into the Twitter swing as well (I tweeted several times today! I’m getting there!), with my return to my online communities, but I’ve definitely gotten back into regularly posting to Tumblr more easily thanks to the glorious the queue feature1. Formerly I just posted random things. Some hilarious, some adorable, some gorgeous–but now and for the foreseeable future, I’m largely using my Tumblr to showcase photos I find that remind me how beautiful the world is.
I admit, I do have a soft spot for hilarious Tumblrs such as lesbianswholooklikejustinbieber2, garfiendminusgarfield, and reasoningwithvampires. However, I also really love ones that post beautiful photos or found pictures. For example, I really enjoy both iloveoldmagazines and robot-heart, among others.
Do you have a Tumblr account? What do you primarily post? And do you have any favorite ones that I should definitely follow?
You can find me at donnasaurus (formerly pumpkincarriage) on Tumblr or @nerdfighter on Twitter.
O Hai >.>
Ever let stuff pile up so long that you just want to ignore everything and hope it fixes itself? I just did that for quite a long time. It didn’t work so well so now I’m just trying to reorganize my life. It’s actually rather refreshing. Reorganizing this website is one bit I’m starting with–I really miss having an outlet.
Some Stuff I’ve Been Doing for the Past Year
1) Hanging out with my great grandmother. She decided not to get her pacemaker replaced when she found out it was dying so, unfortunately, in August, she passed away at 101. She was an awesome, hilarious, ridiculously strong lady and I feel horribly sad for anyone who never knew her.
2) Making the World’s Best Chocolate Cupcakes. My mom doesn’t even like cake or frosting and she effing loves my chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting–both homemade and amazing.
3) Playing entirely too much World of Warcraft. I’m excited for the new expansion on December 7th. >.> Lemme know if you play WoW. :D
4) Having completely epic conversations with many of my friends. AIM, how I love you and your support of my capslock fests.
5) Making a lot of jokes involving your mother and/or your face. Or just other people’s moms in general. It’s a weakness, I’ll admit it.
Stuff I Want to Do
1) Get a job ASAP. \o/ I like monies and I need MOAR MONIES to go back to school eventually and to buy a new computer.
2) Bake and cook more. I have a ridiculous love for cooking blogs with flashy photography, not going to lie. And right now I want jambalaya more than most things in the world. The things I do cook are generally awesome, but my cooking repertoire is sorely lacking variety. I’d like to work on that quite a bit.
If you have any favorite cooking websites or blogs, I’d love to hear about them, even if they’re specialty or vegan or focusing on meat, I don’t care. XD I love all sorts of food.
I love baking in particular and I inherited my other grandmother’s recipe box when she passed away eight years ago this month. I’m UNSTOPPABLE. You haven’t lived until you’ve had her maple cookies with maple icing. I’ll post the recipe when I next make them and can take pictures. :)
3) Move to Bellingham. I moved there on a whim in the summer of 2009 and loved it. I love the town, I loved the nature, I loved the rent prices… I plan to move back after I’ve saved up a bit of cash.
4) Get into photography. I’ve never really owned a good camera or a camera at all until sometime last year. I’ve always wanted to get into photography because I can’t draw or paint or any of that, but I frequently have these really strong visions in my head that I feel the need to capture or recreate or sometimes I just see a scene that I’d like to immortalize. After I’ve saved enough money to move and get a new computer, I think I’ll save a bit of extra money to get a decent camera. I’m not sure what to start out with though but my budget is pretty limited.
5) Blog and write regularly again. I’ve always assumed I was going to be a writer, but I’ve gone about this dream by avoiding writing which seems like entirely the wrong thing to do. This is as good of an outlet as any.
I’m filled with nerdrage and rant relatively frequently. Long ago I used to post these in my LiveJournal and it seemed to be the posts people enjoyed the most–as well as the posts I enjoyed writing the most.
As I mentioned above, I have all sorts of little projects I’m getting into (cooking, photography, etc.) and having a place to log that would be fantastic.
5) Get more involved with my online communities again. In addition to the blogging community, I want to get back into my LJ social circle, etc. Life has been crazy and pulled me away, but I’d like a stable foundation in my online groups again.
Hmm, that list ended up a bit longer than I thought.
EDIT: I realized I have two number fives on the second list but I think I’ll leave it that way. <.<
