Happy New Year!!!

2014, you were a b*tch of a year.  The “Year of Neverending Change” at work.  The “Year of Surprise Repair Surprises” at home.  Read more books cover-to-cover in 12 months than I ever did before (an even 60).  Couldn’t lose the 20, 25 pounds of extra weight I carry despite a stretch of summer and December workouts.  The wife continued to move ever upward and ever onward in her career, God bless her for that – I managed to stay employed.  As far as my writing goes, well, did outline a novel and write the first 2,000 words.  Now only 88,000 to go, give or take a few dozen.  My two beautiful daughters continued to grow, to thrive, and to simply amaze me.

Now … for 2015 …

How ’bout –

Finish that book!

Drop that weight!

Two simple goals that would make me a very, very, very happy middle-aged man.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Be Truly Counter-Cultural!

Practice a peaceful religion faithfully and rigorously!

Read from the canon of Western Civilization literature (i.e., the “Great Books”)!

Know the United States Constitution and the Federalist Papers by heart!

Be fearless and outspoken in your opinions!

What a great gift to yourself – and the world! – this New Years!

2014 Best-Ofs!

  

Best Book Read

Fiction:

Lord Valentine’s Castle, by Robert Silverberg.  Reviewed here.

Runner-Up:

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque

Non-fiction:

Prime Obsession, by John Derbyshire, not reviewed, except for a “READ IT NOW!” if you even mildly are interested in this sort of thing.

Runner-Up:

A Stillness at Appomattox, by Bruce Catton, reviewed, sorta, here.

Worst Read

Red Tide, reviewed here.  Loved it as a kid, disillusioned on a 2001 re-read, hated it in 2014.

Best Movie

Around the World in Eighty Days, DVR’d.  All around excellence: humor, action, vision, music.

Worse Movie

Godzilla (2014), seen in the theaters, reviewed here.  Worse more in a “disappointing” sense than a “bad / terrible” sense.

Best Movie Bonding Experience with my Girls

They’ve recently gotten really into watching “Svengoolie,” the show with the portly and weirdly-dressed ghoul who hosts cheesy black-and-white movies on channel 19, Me-TV.  Specifically, the episode which aired The Mummy’s Ghost (a movie which has the most awesomely-named dog in movie history…)

Runner-up: (tie) Planet of the Apes (the original Heston version), Fantastic Voyage 

Best Phase

The nominees:

Lovecraft (January-March)

Maths again (February-April)

Tolkien Revisited (May-June, October-November)

The Iliad (July)

Silverberg and Majipoor (July-August)

Ancient Egypt (August-September)

Fr. Cedric (August-October)

World War I (November-December)

… and the winner is …

Gotta be the six weeks / five hundred-plus pages I spent with Robert Silverberg on Majipoor.

Best Experience

Great Wolf Lodge, February 2014.  What a great idea for a mini-vacation winter break!

Runner-Up: Discovering my long lost physics book from my childhood.

Worst Experience

Watching that episode of Walking Dead with the two little girls, March 2014.  Damn you, Walking Dead!

Song of the Year

Uh, dunno.  Not really a “musical” year for me.  Didn’t buy any CDs.  Didn’t listen to much classical, preferring classic rock stuff I listened to when much younger.  Listened to a lot of Grateful Dead in the fall, a lot of Jethro Tull last month or so.  Considered picking up a Doors compilation/remaster sometime over the summer but wallet was too tapped out.  Played mostly Led Zeppelin on the guitar all year long.  So, if I had to pick something to pick something, I’d pick:

“Brokedown Palace” by the Grateful Dead, only because I played it for the girls in the car one rainy Saturday.  Little One thought it an “incredibly sad song,” but neither one paid it as much attention as I did.

Best Blog Post at the Hopper

This one!