So here we are in a new decade. I just looked back on the last year of this blog and realized that very little of my personal life is making it onto the Internet anymore. That’s a good thing for my sense of privacy, but I do like the highlights to hit the web. So there’s a small resolution for next year–make sure this blog has at least the highlights of my personal life, as well as the professional.

For many people I know, 2009 was a dramatic year. People lost their jobs and got new ones. Loved ones passed away. Other people got big promotions or new career opportunities. Oh and babies–there were so many babies born this year, I’ve lost count.

By contrast, 2009 was a rather introspective year for me. I spent most of it focusing on fiction writing and managed to publish several short stories (most of them still forthcoming) and a poem. I also published articles and judged a book contest. I generally wrote and read lots and lots. I spent a lot of time on the computer.

Also, 2009 was the year of Kyle. He turned 30, published a successful book, spoke at many conferences, wrote lots of articles, and had a great year at QuinStreet. I am proud of him!

I started out 2009 saying I wanted to be more active, but then the snow mobiling trip I was planning got canceled, which sort of punctured that ambition. Still, it’s not like I did nothing all year. Here are some of the highlights:

* I went to Puerto Rico with Kyle.

* I went to Portland, Oregon with Kyle and Marcia.

* Kyle published a book with a new publisher called The Official Ubuntu Server Book.

* I played hooky sometimes with Marcia. We went to the King Tut exhibit and a day trip to Monterey and so on.

* Kyle turned 30 years old and we had a 1979 Party to celebrate.

* I went on hikes.

* I saw my friends and had them over to my house.

* Kyle spoke at 6 or 7 conferences, as well as the North Bay Linux Users Group, where he is still president.

* He also got a raise.

* And published articles, mainly for Linux Journal.

* I published articles and short stories, as mentioned above.

* I judged a book contest.

* Several of my photographs are being used in promotional campaigns. For example, the Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation is turning one of my photographs into an art postcard.

* We painted our house all by ourselves.

* We also finished our guest bathroom.

* We started composting and planted a big garden.

* Of course, we made a lot of food, like our own homemade sausage, beer, and smoked salmon.

* I turned 33 and we went out for Basque food in San Francisco. I heartily recommend Basque food.

* I went to a few shows and readings, including a comedy club for the first time.

* We rang in the New Year with a Spanish Tapas Party at my house, which was delicious.

* I read 91 books in 2009.

Much to be thankful for. And of course, I have lots of plans for this year that are already making 2010 look better than 2009. Here they are:

* I am taking a photography class at the junior college to get better at using my camera.

* I’m planning a trip to Spain in May.

* I hope to put on a literary reading for the Word Pirates in San Francisco.

* I want to go to a book or writing conference.

* I want to go camping on the Lost Coast.

* Kyle is going to be writing an update to The Official Ubuntu Server Book.

* We will be remodeling the bathroom, an even bigger project than painting the house.

* I want to attend a symphony or opera in the near future.

* I want to go hiking more and maybe try something new, like ice skating.

* I plan to take my mother to some art shows in San Francsico, such as the upcoming birth of Impressionism exhibit.

* I want to start going on walks around the neighborhood in the evening, as part of a routine.

* I will start a new blog called LitTripper–coming soon!

* Maybe I will read 100 books in 2010 … ?

Lots to do. Better get started.

Happy New Year!

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” –Dickens.

Merry Christmas!

1. My Life–Hey I’m not dead! Also I am in good health.

2. My Freedom–I can do anything I want. I can say, think, and believe anything I want. I can vote. No one makes me wear a burka.

3. Kyle–Yes.

4. My Family–Who are all healthy and doing well.

5. My Work–I get to do exactly what I most like doing every day. I don’t even have to listen to a boss or wear nylons or sit in a cubicle or anything.

6. Sonoma County–I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, I am convinced.

7. My House–I own a house! In California! Wow!

8. My Friends–I have great friends who are interesting and add a lot of fun and laughter to my life.

9. My Cats–Quill and Miles.

10. Fun–This is a catchall for all the great things we get to do all the time, like eat nice food or travel or have parties. I almost put “books” here, since I love books, but maybe not as much as fun. I’m not sure. It’s a tie?

Happy Thanksgiving!

I live in a beautiful place. Two weekends ago, fellow Word Pirate, Morgan, invited a group of us up to his family’s property in Jenner for a picnic. There were gorgeous views of the ocean and surrounding mountains. Here we are on the deck:

(L to R: Marcia, Julie, Morgan, Kyle)

Laura was also there. Also Penny, Morgan’s dog:

We ate a lot of food–salami, homemade bruschetta, cheeses of all kinds, sourdough bread, olives, fruit, wine, dolmas… Afterwards, we burned it off by playing Frisbee.

Then we took a hike to the lookout on top of the mountain. The views up there were even more incredible. I am not feeling very wordy right now, so here are more pictures. The rest are in my gallery, if you know where that is.

Laura

Listening to the ranger read from a book he had with him.

me

sunset

On the way home, the waves along the coast were literally glowing. There must have been some sort of phosphorescence in the water. We stopped for awhile to watch sparkling black waves hit the shore.

I have a pretty awesome life.

(02:58:35 PM) Joy: tell me a story!
(02:59:53 PM) Marcia: once there was a fierce chipmunk warrior named Alphabetus
(03:00:09 PM) Marcia: he conquered all his foes in the land of Casturena
(03:00:26 PM) Marcia: however, one day, he traveled with his girlfriend Betty to a neighboring land
(03:00:36 PM) Marcia: and discovered all his foes living there together in harmony
(03:00:53 PM) Joy: lol
(03:01:06 PM) Marcia: so he asked the leader of the foes, “how is it you all exist here in harmony, though i have vanquished you all?”
(03:01:20 PM) Marcia: and he replied, “something deep about cooperation. lesson!”
(03:01:37 PM) Joy: LOL
(03:01:41 PM) Marcia: and they all danced and sang
(03:01:43 PM) Marcia: THE END
(03:01:48 PM) Joy: that was a good story
(03:02:29 PM) Marcia: that is what those fable fairy tales sounded like to me when i was a kid
(03:02:37 PM) Marcia: bossy lessons from animals!
(03:03:37 PM) Joy: they were bossy! but wise
(03:04:36 PM) Marcia: maybe i should write children’s books?

As someone who spent most of yesterday daydreaming how I can make a lamp that says “Read” on it for my living room–and then plotting out with my husband the exact font I would use for the word “Read” and how I could make a grid in Gimp to exactly reproduce the word on the lamp–I naturally love MythBusters Co-Host Adam Savage’s speech on obsession. In it, he talks about his quest to reproduce a dodo bird skeleton and then the statue from the movie The Maltese Falcon. Although I don’t have his patience or detail-mindedness, I am totally picking up what Savage is putting down here. (Thanks Justin for the link.)

Oh dear, leaving that suicide post up there is starting to seem morbid. So I will write a normal blog post, in which I say what I have been doing lately.

So. What have I been doing? I have been:

* removing ivy from my backyard. While we removed the ivy trees last year, there were still all these vines in the soil that I have been attacking on these lovely spring days. I never quite know what I’m going to find in that ivy. I have pulled out a half dozen balls, a plastic plane, a plastic boat, four baby snakes, beer bottles, rocks, bricks, and a big glass cube. I guess the previous owners looked at the ivy as a toy chest/garbage can.

* reading David Copperfield. Still! This is a long book. I love the characterizations. Also, Charles Dickens was really funny. I was laughing out loud yesterday. As a writer, I find this whole serial novel thing amazing to contemplate, even though Dickens’ coincidences are a little hard to swallow. One coincidence is okay in a novel, but by the fourth or fifth I start to get a little skeptical.

* working. I’ve been writing a lot of fiction lately. I’m focusing on a few key projects and not doing much journalism right now–I am only allowing myself to write about writing or books on that front. It’s weird and nice to focus on the artistic side of writing.

* watching Kyle work. He is currently finishing the edits on his book and then he is going to a conference and then he is going to start a whole new project where he teaches Linux online to students. He is very busy.

* getting ready for Puerto Rico. Things I plan to do: taste coffee, snorkel, look at turtles, see a bioluminescent beach, zip line, samba, and see old Spanish ruins. As you can probably tell, I am excited. I am also obsessed with biolumiscence right now. Because look:

What do you do when your power goes off? Well you definitely can’t work. That’s out of the question. So naturally, you call Marcia–whose power is also off–and you go out to breakfast. Then you remember that it is free museum day in San Francisco and you hop in the car. Hurrah!

I had never been to Golden Gate Park on a free museum day, and I have to tell you, it feels right to walk right into a museum. Culture should be free.

First we went to the Conservatory of Flowers. We saw a lot of tropical plants, including a fair number of orchids and these things:

Here is a picture of two old hippies wandering around and communing with plants. She was carrying a drum, in case there was a drum circle to join, I assume.

After that, we went to the de Young Museum. I was fascinated with the exhibit of artifacts from New Guinea. All the masks and statues looked like they were from horror movies–images of fangs, crazy eyes, blood lust, and so on. Those New Guinea tribes were nothing to mess with, from the looks of it.

Marcia and I agreed that the coolest thing in the museum were these models of famous churches made entirely from weapons. They were really well constructed and provocative.

After that, we were hungry again, so stopped in San Rafael for Puerto Rican food. Flavorful! Then I came home and discovered the power had been on for a long time and felt guilty for skipping work. Oh well…

I don’t say this to make fun of the lady. She just has an amazingly large head. It’s a fact of nature and I was surprised.

I saw her last weekend when I went to a comedic reenactment of The Hills at Cobb’s Comedy Club, part of SF Sketchfest. I have never been to a comedy club before. I liked it, despite the slight cheesiness of the atmosphere. This comedy club makes you share tables with other people and order two drinks. They were very insistent on the two drinks point! There were lots of men with shoulder-length swirly hair and women in plunging, badly sewn tops.

The show was an ensemble cast that included Garofalo; Tom Kenny, the voice of Sponge Bob; Rod Riggle, who was on The Daily Show; and Rachel Harris, who is in those commercials about 100-calorie snack food. The joke was to read the script of The Hills verbatim and let its banality speak for itself. It’s a simple concept but works well. While the comedians were mostly doing valley girl imitations, if you’ve seen The Hills, you could definitely pick up on the individual characters. Harris did the best job as Heidi. Garofalo had the toughest job because Lauren Conrad has the personality of a stick, which may be why Garofalo resorted to twirling her hair a lot. Overall the show was funny and worth seeing. Now I want to see Celebrity Autobiography.

But getting back to Garofalo’s head: She is a tiny woman. She’s maybe 5’1”. Her head is big for her size, but she also has terrific bone structure and is quite lovely. Watching her on stage, I started wondering if having a bigger head would help you in Hollywood. After all, there’s more real estate for the camera to pan in on. Nathanael West described celebrity heads as all the features crowding in on the front of the face, but that was in the 1930s. Now features have to be huge and exaggerated, like a cartoon character. Having a big head would help, I think. I wonder if anyone has ever done a scientific study on the size of celebrity heads. There’s a possible thesis idea for you PhD candidates out there.

Kyle and I on New Year’s Eve 2008.

I had a great New Year’s Eve. We went to a 1933 Prohibition Party in Valley Ford. We dressed up like the 30s and danced to the musical styling of the Bluebellies. Then we stayed up until 4 a.m. talking and the next day went to McNears for lunch. Having a good New Year’s is such a relief. I hate downer New Year’s.

Just for the record, I thought 2008 was a great year. I’m a little tired of people complaining about it. Very few people I know had bad things happen to them in 2008, so I don’t get all the good riddance stuff and the hiding from New Year’s Eve.

I don’t feel like writing a long survey like I’ve done the last few years, but here are some highlight from 2008:

Kyle and I spent the first year in our own house and did a lot of remodeling. It wasn’t as hard to adjust to the financial burden as I had anticipated, although we did cut back on some of our usual indulgences. Still, I had a lot of fun. I saw art and science. I went canoeing and snow shoeing and camping. At home, I planted a huge garden and read over 70 books. We got a free trip to Las Vegas and went on a couple of road trips. In September, we went to Kentucky to visit friends and family. While there, I went to a writer’s conference and saw Joyce Carol Oates speak. We also had parties throughout the year, the most fun of which was an impromptu election party to watch Barack Obama take the presidency.

Our silhouettes at an art exhibit in Kentucky

Professionally, both of us did well this year. I wrote a lot of articles, including ones for magazines like Entrepreneur and The Writer. I got to interview writers and artists such as Anne Lamott and Nellie McKay. On top of that, I published short stories, judged a book contest, and held a literary reading. Kyle got a book deal with Pearson Publishing, became a columnist for Linux Journal, and gave a lot of speeches, including one at LinuxWorld. He also got a promotion—he’s now Systems Architect at QuinStreet.

Squash from the garden

The year wasn’t perfect, of course. Obviously, there’s the economy, which is depressing. There were some projects that didn’t work out and some minor disappointments here and there. And some things were just lame. Still, a good year.

I will answer one question from the survey: What are some things you would like to do in 2009?

I’d like both of us to finish our larger writing projects before April. I’d like to go to Puerto Rico, be more active, and save some money. I’d like to be more involved in the art community as a whole, whether that means supporting other artists or just playing around with art myself. And I’d like to emotionally win over the onslaught of negativity and fear the news is throwing at me every time I turn on the TV. That last one is a challenge indeed.

Redwood tree from my Humboldt County road trip.