Birthday greetings...

A very Happy Birthday to atiejen, may you have a wonderful year of fannish fun!

New Year's Eve...

The end of the year has made me very retrospective and thoughtful. It's been a year of interesting changes for me - I look around and don't see my life as much different, and yet I feel there are improvements. (Losing weight, for example.)

In the last few days I've done a few things I wanted to do before the end of the year. Goodness knows my life still seems more full of omissions than achievements, but I can work on that.

It's been a good year. Things were bad for a while but are improving by leaps and bounds. My highlights of 2003:

• Firefly. Funny, exciting, smart, and with Mal Reynolds too. TV doesn't get better than this.



• going to Escapade and hanging out with other fans



• visiting the Chicago area and seeing The Two Towers with my Chicago friends



• beginning the Walking To Rivendell project, and actually succeeding in five months - and thoroughly enjoying the freedom of being able to walk anywhere.



• joining the fitness club and getting really into the work-out thing with weights and cross-training machines and rowing machines.



• listening to books on tape and so not feeling deprived that I never seem to find enough time to read.
  
  
• surviving a change of supervisor at work, and actually finding that she's a terrific person, and feeling generally better about my working life.



• enjoying my regular meetings with Lisa and Lynne to discuss life, the universe, and what we want to make of out lives. Largely because of them, and through finding the right books at the right time, I've improved my health and brought a lot of worries under control, and have become more optimistic about things that were getting me down. I still haven't solved the big problems, but the little problems are being tacked and overcome one by one. It's a nice feeling - that life is improving and I have friends on my side to help.



• watching Smallville regularly with people who have not only become dear friends but who don't much like Lana Lang either. Getting to know some wonderful people like acampbell and having a great time with Smallville as a fandom. A passionate love of Michael Rosenbaum's version of Lex Luthor has helped to keep life exciting, too.



• discovering the Catwoman comic and rediscovering Batman. Discovery of some great new comic book writers - well, new to me - like Ed Brubaker and Brian Azzarello. Add to that, some great comics on an ongoing basis from the likes of Jeph Loeb, Brian Michael Bendis and Neil Gaiman.



• Pirates of the Caribbean, which thrilled my swashbuckling heart and gave me a whole new hero - Captain Jack Sparrow. I will never see pirates the same way again! This was the surprise of the year.



• returning to regular practice of yoga, and reading further on the subject, and discovering new wonders in it all the time. Finding a wonderful teacher and a class that's convenient. Discovering that I can still do a good headstand and finally feeling I have a handle on trikonasana.



• seeing Eddie Izzard in Toronto and wandering around Church Street on Halloween night. Seeing Sandra Shamas in Ottawa. Laughing a lot.



• seeing Visiting Mr. Green.
  
  
• getting into the Livejournal thing. Going from "what am I doing here?" to feeling I belong. Meeting all sorts of great people, and getting a forum in which to discuss things with some long-time friends as well.
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• the hatching of Domino, now a strapping big budgie six (almost seven) months old. What a great little guy. Of course, I love them all - was it only last year that I got Simon and Kaylee? What great feathery company they have been all year, and the irrepressible Wisdom and Pryde as well.



• writing some stories that were fun and plotting, planning and starting many more.



• getting a wonderful new computer with wonderful new capabilities and a printer that actually works.



• seeing The Return of the King
and finishing off with the certainty that my favourite books have become a trio of equally-loved movies.

Bonan novjaron al c'iuj!

To all my lj friends....






May 2004 be all you hoped for!


(The graphics here are from Eos Development, my favourite graphics site.)