I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror at work this morning and thought: I look 34. This is interesting; I've been 33 for a while, will be 33 for a while yet, and still...34. I don't even know what that means, and I'm generally crap at telling anyone's ages beyond "considerably younger than me" and "considerably older than me," but there you have it. And then I took my employer's online health assessment and it said I was the physical equivalent of 31, so basically, what the fuck ever. :)

Hi!

So that whole plan to update regularly with summaries of the goings-on in my life...yeah, not so much. In my own defense, I have continued to post and comment semi-regularly on Google+, and that pretty much encompasses my limited futzing around on the internet these days. (Too busy at work, too preoccupied at home.) I read DW nearly daily, but the lack of proper mobile interface continues to hamstring me on that front. Anyway, you've heard this all before. What you haven't heard, unless you're one of the cool kids at G+ (in which case you're likely not reading this anyway), is what else I've been doing in that time. Cripes, I was still playing TLR when I last posted here? How time flies...

November: Election stupidity, mostly. Work shenanigans included planning the division holiday party (Dodger Stadium, what what). Re-joined employee choir for the holiday show. I don't recall much else...it was really busy at work.

December: Drove to Vegas with tcdohl to see The Killers in concert at the Chelsea Ballroom at the Cosmo. Absolutely spectacular show, but I am officially too old for GA/standing room only. Especially when there are two opening acts (and the second one, ugh, just ugh). But I paid good money for those tickets and I'd do it again anywhere we could actually reserve seats. Later, managed to actually see a movie on Christmas Day (Les Mis, natch...oh God, Russel Crowe, why so terrible). Worked Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve; on the latter, got my car totaled by a moron who got tired of waiting for a left turn (yield on green situation) and decided to make her turn directly into my car instead. That situation took four months to resolve itself, and I still haven't put in for a salvage title, but it's pretty much dealt with at this point. Ugh, NYE-day sucked. NYE-night was funny as hell, on the other hand, as tcdohl and I did the usual champagne-and-caviar thing while watching a progressively less controlled Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper devolve on live TV.

Published manuscript count: An even 20 to round out 2012. Food truck count: Perpetually rotating courtesy of the Friday Night NoHo Food Truck Fest, weekly April through November. Big win for the Get Shaved shave ice truck this year. Song of the year: Miss Atomic Bomb, by the Killers, though Muse's Madness was running a close second before it got overplayed to hell and back.

January: Made a halfhearted attempt at personal and professional organization. Went to Carmel to moderate a panel at the Western Regional Meeting. Obtained a permit to wear shoes with heels in excess of 2". No, I am not making that up.

February: CommuniCon! The only non-work/professional related conference I've ever been to and/or probably ever will be in the future, but it was worth it. Also, actually getting to play Hawkthorne. Other than that, February was pretty boring.

March: Had a birthday, but didn't do much for it -- midweek celebrations are kind of iffy around here. Had a nice lunch with work people, at least. :) Mostly spent the end of the month dealing with Passover and car repair nonsense. March also kinda sucked, come to think of it, but at least I found and heard the SCOTUS oral arguments for the Prop 8 and DOMA cases. I continue to be amazed that they post all those online...avail yourselves of the magic anytime :) Oh, and we started watching tim's kitties while he was away in Vancouver for a couple of months. There are a few good kitty-picture posts on G+ if that's your thing.

April: A couple of days of weirdness and commiseration over the Boston Marathon bombings with friends and coworkers who've intersected the area in our pasts or presents. Discovered Sherlock; promptly fell in love and finally wiped the last vestiges of both the Vorkosiverse and TLR from my template of current obsessions. Finally got serious about house-hunting (dooooogggg, I want a dog, a big white fluffy dog and that requires a yard); went under contract only to break it five days later due to a legal issue with the seller. More on that later/elsewhere, since, y'know, legal issue.

May: Waited and fretted over the house situation. Decided to make over the master and guest beds and bought a shit-ton of linens. Season 4 of Arrested Development came out and lo, there were very few fucks to give. Had a bit of a skin cancer scare (well, been having one for the better part of the past year, but finally did something about it); wound up reassured by a much younger than expected dermatologist that it was nice safe precancerous cells and enjoyed the resulting fun with liquid nitrogen. Judging by his comments, I'm going to have more of that to look forward to in the future. Whee! Except for the itching part, which was not whee.

June: Seller's legal issue (supposedly...argh, more on that later too) got resolved June 5; promptly went back under contract with the original terms. Three fun-filled weeks of inspections, appraisals, repairs, and waiting waiting waiting later, closed on June 27. Cue three frantic days of moving (big ups to tcdohl, tim, and Leslie's son Corwin for being the brute squad on this one) and cleaning prior to our apartment lease ending June 30. But hey, aside from the mandatory $250 cleaning fee, I'm getting the entire rest of my security deposit back -- even though Lulu chewed the shit out of the office carpet -- because after having us there for five years, our landlord was going to replace the carpet and paint the walls anyway. Woo! Etc.

Anyway, we are now residents of Lakeview Terrace. You can visit anytime, provided you're not unduly upset by the massive renovations we are already beginning to undertake, the dog we're actually going to try to get now that there's a yard for him to run around in, and/or the chickens we're pretty sure we want to adopt as well, because, dude, pet chickens! (No roosters, though, I get precious little enough sleep as it is.)

July (so far): Dad and his girlfriend flew in on the 1st to visit. We spent a couple days with them -- well, I had to work last Tuesday, but I drove them to Forest Lawn for what turned out to be no apparent reason afterward -- and mostly sort of got settled in the new place before driving up to the Bay Area on Weds. Borrowed Alex's apartment, took in a July 4 baseball game (A's vs. Cubs, aka the inter-family rivalry...Cubs lost, of course), and then had a surprise run-in with deanwilson on Friday before driving back home and spending the weekend unpacking, organizing, and acclimating to the house and the kitties. Got paper acceptance #25 over the holiday weekend (and this was a big one, two years in the making; still shooting for 30 before the year's end.) And now, as they say, you know the rest of the story.

Amusingly enough, what brought this all on was digging up my old LJbook (that pdf thing you could make back when the mass exodus was beginning...hmm, looks like they're still around) and coming to some pretty startling realizations about who I was twelve years ago, what I felt comfortable sharing about myself, and how much that has all changed. Even so, I found I missed the vivid depictions of my daily life, because with the passage of time I have forgotten so much of what I was so sure I'd remember in stark detail, and the prospect of losing my current memories in the same way disturbs me to no end. (Of the grad school years, on the other hand, I'm just as happy to be largely free.) So expect some more detailed rumination in the near-ish future, whenever I need a break from puttering about the house (!!!) and/or have thoughts more suited to this quiet, reflective forum as compared with the more largely sarcastic, amusing shoot-from-the-hip exchanges of Google+.

They say thirty is the new twenty
And twenty is the new thirty, shit I guess
Makes sense, 'cause fifteen-year-olds seem twenty
And twenty-five-year-olds seem ten