I’m writing this in place of the Christmas letter that I didn’t send because I was too busy working. I landed an urgent job in mid December and dove into it with both feet, which is how I usually approach work. But, since friends and family have kindly updated me on what’s going on with their actual lives, I thought I’d take a look back over the past year apart from work. My conclusion is that I do not lead a very exciting life, but I’m not really looking for more excitement.
The biggest thing was also one of the last to happen: I have finally found a medication that works on my migraines. It’s called Relpax and I only wish the drug company was paying me to endorse it, because it’s expensive, but it works. I just take one when the headache is coming on and the headache never happens. I was losing an entire quarter every year to migraines–not all at once, but it was a huge drain on my productivity, never mind my quality of life.
I’ve tried many things over the years and was almost resigned to just muddling through with Norco and hot packs, until I had the worst migraine of my life this spring and ended up in the emergency room. I even got to have a CAT scan, which is sort of like lying very still in the middle of a tumble dryer, but not as hot. A friend who also gets migraines mentioned Relpax to me and I decided it couldn’t hurt to try it. Amazingly, it worked.
Oh, and speaking of dryers, my fancy expensive Samsung dryer died a spectacular death: somehow the drum ruptured. I guess that explains the clanking noises it made before it died altogether. The nice man from Mr. Appliance said it would be at least $700 to fix, so I got a new dryer. It’s not as efficient, but I’ve discovered that the key to getting clothes dry is to make sure the washer is set to high spin and that I do small loads.
I also ended up rigging a clothesline in the back yard. It’s a very peculiar-looking clothesline because I have to be able to pin things at the bottom to keep them from flapping against the fence. It’s very efficient in the summer, given the heat here, but clothes tend to come out a bit stiff and smelling slightly of diesel fumes from the passing trains.
Of course it was after all this that I got an appliance repair company as a website client.
In January I volunteered as an alumna interviewer for Brown University for the third year running. I’m always really impressed by the young people I meet when I do this, but I have mixed feelings about it because 1) they never get accepted and 2) if they did get accepted, they’d graduate with an unbearable load of debt. I will probably keep doing the interviews, though.
My husband has been traveling almost constantly thanks to his vaping advocacy work. In my role as schlepper-in-chief, I went with him to Las Vegas in March and Reno in July. I hadn’t been to Las Vegas for upwards of 20 years, and if it’s another 20 years before I go back, it might be too soon. Reno I quite liked. We were staying at the Peppermill, which is sort of on the outskirts of town, but I had a chance to see some of downtown Reno with some of my WordPress friends. It seems like a livable sort of city.
Stefan also did a lot of traveling to trade shows and conventions on his own, starting with the SFATA conference in Chicago. He’s been to North Carolina, Miami, Las Vegas, Houston, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C. That’s a lot of trips to the airport, and there will be more in the future. They can’t finish that BART extension fast enough, but Not Blowing Smoke has certainly taken off.
We made two trips to Los Angeles: once for ECC and once for WordCamp LAX. During the first trip I had a chance for a brief visit with my aunt and cousins in Pasadena. Have I mentioned in the past 30 seconds how much I hate driving in Los Angeles? Traffic in the Bay Area, and on Highway Perpetually-Under-Construction 4, is bad enough. Traffic in Los Angeles is enough to make a person give up driving.
We had a bit of excitement right before Independence Day when our lawn caught fire because some idiot decided to set off a firecracker in the street…in the middle of the worst drought California has ever known. Fortunately my neighbors were alert and we were able to put the fire out before it did more than blacken the grass.
I had a great visit with my mother on Labor Day Weekend. We went to Half-Moon Bay and Yosemite, and I drove across the Sierras twice in one day. (I don’t recommend that, especially if you are attempting to get home in a timely fashion.)
Mom also bought me the Best Gift Evar, a carpet steamer. The state of our carpets was such that I was embarrassed to have anyone in the house. Naturally the cats barfed all over the newly-cleaned carpet within a week, but I’ve just done some spot-cleaning. Of course, we might have a bit of a problem entertaining anyway, since Stefan is never home. And clean carpets or not, I seriously, seriously need to get a housekeeper.
Hairballs notwithstanding, the cats continue to be happy, healthy, and adorable. They’ve wanted extra attention the past few weeks. Now, in addition to assaulting me every time I pick up the phone, Bece has taken to squeezing herself between the laptop and the graphics tablet (yes, there is a kind of tablet that attaches to a computer, instead of replacing one). This does not improve the ergonomics of my work environment, to say the least.
I’ve pretty much stopped reading print books. Mom gave me a Kindle right before we went to Rotterdam last year, and it’s been my constant companion ever since. The adjustable type size certainly helps my aging eyes, plus it weighs a lot less than the giant hardcover books I used to bring home from the library. The library’s selection of Kindle books could be better, and most of my favorite authors (or their publishers) don’t participate in Kindle Ultimate, but many authors give the first book in a series away for free in hopes of selling the rest. It’s worked on me a few times and I’ve discovered a number of new authors. The Kindle screen is bad for illustrations and diagrams but perfect for novels, which I consume at a rather terrifying rate.
And that’s pretty much the news from Oakley for 2015. I need to wrap this post up because my friend and former housemate is coming over to help us celebrate New Year’s Eve over at Providence Bar and Eatery.
Happy New Year, everyone!
