A K-Shaped Year

It's not easy summing up — well, any year, really — but especially a year like 2025 has been in my life.

Since the sine wave that was 2023 and the broadly upward, though far less intense, trendlines of 2024, 2025 has yielded a rather starkly dichotomous path.

And so, much like talk of the ongoing "K-shaped" economic recovery, the line graph of my life feels like it has diverged into two different directions.  A lot of aspects of my life are going quite well right now, arguably better than they've ever been.  Others are truly not great, and arguably have never been worse.  That alone is bittersweet and more than a little frustrating.  But the biggest part of what has me leaving 2025 feeling so adrift is that everything seems flipped on its head.

It's incredibly disorienting, and frankly a bit unnerving, to find myself doing so well in areas where I've historically struggled while simultaneously doing so poorly where I've historically excelled.  Of course, I'm exceedingly grateful at every turn that it's not all bad news.  But the good gets better and the bad gets worse in seemingly equal measure lately.  So it's understandably hard to justify focusing on gratitude when there's still a lot of work to be done in turning half of my life right-side-up again.

And that kind of hints at the details behind the headline: It has been a full and busy year throughout, and nothing has been static for long.  The first quarter of my year was largely directed toward an increased spirit of volunteerism, while the second was about polishing skills for the betterment of community.  The third quarter was about scaffolding sustainability onto those skills while helping a friend through crisis.  And most recently, the fourth quarter has been focused more on equal parts personal and professional growth.

It's certainly not all been roses.  But there have been a lot of bright spots to keep me going.

Who knows what 2026 will bring?  All I know is it's about time to dive right in.

Random tangent: Mom retired on Friday 19 December! And her coworkers bought her an air fryer as a parting gift. She set it up tonight and used it for the first time to make some fries which were deliciously crispy!

Wrapping Up and Revving Up

Well, there's not a lot to say, and it took a while to get to this point, but ultimately it's clear that 2024 turned out much better for me than 2023.

Not nearly as good as I'd been hoping — and certainly still with its share of downswings and disappointments — but, in the end, it still held more ups than downs, and I'm leaving 2024 feeling pretty good.

It has certainly been an interesting year, and 2025 promises to be interesting as well.  Hoping to keep the positive juices flowing well into the New Year.  We shall see.

Random tangent: Apparently ABC's Puerto Rico party was reliant on many generators following this morning's near island-wide blackout.  The show must go on, I suppose.

A Sine of the Times

Welp.

I'm not sure where to start closing out 2023 but "welp".  Since I'd ended 2017 with a similar sentiment, I'd posit that maybe it has something to do with years ending on a Sunday — which does feel weird to me despite years beginning on a Monday feeling quite natural — except 2006 was pretty awesome, so it's probably just a periodic coincidence.

It being a Sunday, there are the usual distractions of football as I write this.  But I have to write this earlier than usual, because Mom is performing in tonight's New Year’s Eve Concert at the Erie Playhouse which, while it will surely be entertaining, will take up a bit of extra time this evening.

So despite the fact that it is still light out as I write this, there is still much of the familiar time pressure to distill the year into something digestible for this blog.  Since I hear that a picture is still worth about a thousand words (more or less, adjusted for inflation) and I'm still a math geek at heart, I think my 2023 can perhaps be most concisely described by this sinusoid:

Very rough and not quite to scale, of course, but still freakishly accurate in spite of its simplicity.

In short, while the first quarter of the year certainly wasn't perfect, most of my 23-based cautious optimism was ultimately panning out.  By March, I was feeling pretty good about most aspects of my life.  That lasted for most of the spring, but heading into May and June things got a little rougher, and then the setbacks truly began in July.  Just as April and May were a new apex, October and November were a new low.

Most people who are close to me know a few details of some of the setbacks that befell me in the second half of this year, and I'm sure those who don't can understand why I am not really going to say much about them here at this time.  Frankly, there are very few people with whom I feel comfortable talking about all of them.  Needless to say, each was significant in its own way and I've been working with those around me to move forward from each as I'm able.

And don't despair for me: I wouldn't have plotted the end of the graph as I did if I didn't truly feel that they're collectively moving toward resolution by this point.

Huh.  "Resolution."  A bit unorthodox, but I'll take it.  Such unbridled optimism is normally far too sanguine for my liking, but I really do need a good dose of it in the year ahead.

So anyway, much like the passing of the seasons are sinusoidal, so, too, has my year gone.  Sure, it's out of phase with the seasons by about 2½ months, but the extremes felt just as wide.

It's not like I'm hoping for a sigmoid in 2024.

And so for a math geek like me who still likes the number 23, all that's left to do is to celebrate one more numerological quirk as we waltz into the new year on 12/31/23, or 1,2,3; 1,2,3.

Ah! Ah! Aah!

Random tangent: NBC has Sunday Night Football tonight, but as hoped ABC and CBS are both breaking their New Year's Eve programming for news at 22:00 EST for a second year.

A Refreshing Respite

Huh.  I find myself in the usual position of writing this in the waning minutes of the year, but this time I'm finding it weirdly kinda refreshing, albeit still in the usual and frustrating way.

In particular, I'm struggling a bit to recap the year that was, in part, because, for the first time in a while, I have quite a bit of optimism for the year ahead.  (I suspect I'm not alone.)

Don't be mistaken: After the trials of the last few years, it'll be critical not to enter 2023 with any particular expectations.  Walk in slowly, no sudden movements, don't startle it — all that good stuff.  But I think, despite the necessary modicum of caution, there's actually a lot of concrete reasons to be hopeful.

Work life is progressing.  Stabilizing from the peak-pandemic chaos, surely, but not into anything resembling the past.  We welcomed new coworkers in April and May to expand our team, and they're already helping bring us well into our next phase of existence, as we continue to have more prominent impacts across campus.

And yet somehow, personal life is maybe progressing even more?  I finally have some decent answers to some long-standing questions.  Of course, major answers, while helpful, often beget further questions.  So still a bit of work to do there, especially in the weeks ahead.  I'm never one for resolutions, of course, but nevertheless poised for progress and positivism there, too.

Meanwhile, family have been struggling a bit here and there, especially these last few months.  Some ups, some downs, to be sure.  But broadly a bit more on the better side than the worse side at present, which is a relief.

In any case, it's been busy, and it's been good to have a bit of a break from it all.  During my stay in the Erie area, the weather sure has been, uh, variable: We broke the record low on 23 December with a temperature of –2 °F (–19 °C) on 23 December, only to break the record high a week later on 30 December, with 64 °F (18 °C).

Ah, home, sweet home.

Now if I could just get over dealing with the last ten days' worth of sugar.

Random tangent: It looks like all three major networks arranged to break from their primetime New Year's Eve programming for local news an hour early, at 22:00 EST.  Makes sense: Not only is the overall pageantry less rushed, but also ABC no longer has to cut away from national just as it hit midnight in Puerto Rico.  I hope that's able to stick around in future years, and wasn't just a one-off because this year's broadcasts aren't on a weeknight.

Muddling through the Middle-y Mush

Gosh, this has gotten tough.

At least I can rely on starting with a generic statement on just how tough I find this.  Why do I do this again?

This time last year, I wrote of ending 2020 "in the middle" of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, a year that went by like mush.  Well, if 2020 was mush, gosh, what even was 2021?  Just as vaccinations rapidly ramped up, plateaued, and even started ramping down… suddenly variants! First Delta and now Omicron; or, I guess, δ and ο.  Good thing I learned the Greek alphabet back in undergrad.

(Sigh.)

There's definitely been a sense of collective burnout in the air lately.  Maybe my persistence here on this blog is a way to rail against that instinct at this particular moment.

But gosh, this has gotten TOUGH.

Why are we so inept at testing infrastructure compared to other nations?  Sure, the specifics of these variants can't have been predicted but, like, it's not as though we didn't know enough to know that something was likely and that maybe we should prepare for it this time.

On some level, every time the situation changes course, there's an element of "we've done this before, so we can do it again"; but on another, there's "oh no, not again", coupled with the knowledge that different situations are, in fact, different — who knew!? — and so tend to require rethinking and reinvention anew.

And absolutely nothing is ever "done" or "finalized" or "settled" anymore.  Not that that was ever strictly true, but it at least used to be true enough to count on to a reasonable degree of approximation.

So there's definitely a Sisyphean empathy going on right now.  Or something similarly discomfiting like that.  I'm too tired to think of anything better.

The flip side of different situations being different, of course, means that 2021 has allowed us to get some good things in, though.  After a year off, we managed to hold Music Camp in July with surprisingly few material modifications, getting it in just before Delta came onto the scene.  As emergency use authorization for vaccinations had only just been approved down to the age of 12, all sorts of considerations and adaptations were considered, and many adopted, allowing us to provide a meaningful experience while cases were near their summer minimums.  Had camp come a few weeks later, or the variant a few weeks earlier, the situation could have been wildly different — if it would have been able to happen at all.

Just one more way in which everything's been a little harder at every turn.

For all the stresses, work saw a successful semester with predominantly in-person instruction.  We're at the point where I, for one, am certainly trying to regain composure from the sort of emergency footing we've found ourselves on for the last nearly-two years, and get back into dealing with a lot of deferred backburner stuff that, in the interim, has grown a bit bigger.  Such is the nature of emergencies, of course.  The endeavor has thusfar seen mixed results: Such is the nature of ongoing emergencies, I guess.  Here's just hoping, however the coming term goes, we're familiar enough with our responses that we can continue to adopt "adapting" into our vernacular, albeit hopefully requiring a bit less of an all-encompassing effort each time.

Other vague personal developments continue.  Again, it's been tough to find the time, the energy, the motivation.  While I'd hoped this would be a significant year in that realm, many of those things got backburnered for a bit, too.  As we close out the year, I am finding support and at least starting to make progress on some.  More in the coming weeks, and further in the weeks after that, I'm sure.  2021 bleeds into 2022: My tasks and goals really fundamentally remain the same.  When will they be "done" enough to share?  Soon enough, I hope.  Finding words is half the battle.  Maybe I should blog more.  (Ha!)

Most years have some unique quality to them, even if it's a bit fleeting and hard to pin down.  But yeah, this time, I'm really struggling to distinguish 2021 from 2020.  Perhaps as I make my way through 2022, that will become a bit more clear.

Random tangent: David's a bit upset that Carson Daly's out of the New Year's scene at NBC, and they've gone with Pete Davidson and Miley Cyrus, it seems.  We'll probably check out a bit, but may stay with Seacrest.  Also, I heard thunder at 23:38 — not often that happens on New Year's Eve.  

Ending in the Middle

Uh, well.  Words continue to fail.  But I'll give it a go.

How to properly synthesize a year that has come and gone mostly like mush?  It's probably not possible, and yet our collective culture remains imbued with the compulsion to try.  Myself included.  More so than usual, TV presenters and news anchors alike have been signing off their final broadcasts of the year with a far more noticeable, and often overt, "good riddance" than the traditional look back.  Fare thee (not so) well.

If you're familiar with my New Year's Eve posts — and frankly, even if you're not — you're probably aware that it's been a good long while since they've had that "holiday letter" quality where I actually recap the highlights of each month individually in any meaningful sense.  I've never really been able to maintain that in the best of times, and — I'm not sure you've noticed — this ain't that.  Sure, I often go through spells of a few weeks to a month or so where I feel I'm deeply uninteresting, but this year, I'm not even sure I could pick out much from my life about the average day from late-March through June.  That, in itself, is pretty remarkable.

So, yeah, after muddling through those first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic (which should need no further context), by July, I'd learned a bit about what works for me and what doesn't when it comes to dealing with the "new normal".  Although aspects of my apartment had honestly not been serving me too well for some time, it's amazing how quickly a living space can almost completely stop working for you when circumstances change and you end up having to use it quite differently.

Fortunately, I also spent much of the extra time at home knowing I would soon need to move from my apartment of 7 years.  Combined with plenty of time in the space and few things to distract me from myself, that provided sufficient motivation to help me cultivate a level of self-awareness that would be necessary to plan a more amenable setup in the new place.

Unfortunately: Moving during a pandemic.  Still not thrilled about that, honestly.  Thankfully, right around a local minimum of cases, which made essential travel and assistance from family possible.

More recently, though, through the holiday season, it's been worse than ever, nearly everywhere in the US.  For my part, the responsible approach has meant a very different holiday period: Christmas Eve Chips-'n'-Salsa over Zoom, though my folks started without me!  One Christmas family gathering that definitely had a time appointed… and then just not followed through upon.  And trying very hard to arrange for some sort of human connection time each day so as to keep my mental health afloat.

There have been positive moments: One reason my immediate family eagerly dug into the chips without me at first was because they had just come out from the cold, having celebrated a brief and "socially distant" Christmas Eve service with members of their church in the parking lot of its brand new building — finally complete enough after rebuilding from a 22 July 2018 fire which I didn't even mention here (I told you I'm bad at this!) that in any other circumstance, it would have been a major celebration.  Instead, services are being recorded inside for the foreseeable future.

Music Camp had to be cancelled of course, but we did a virtual thing which was centering.  I've had some professional and personal accomplishments, too, but it still really hasn't felt right to highlight them amidst (gestures broadly) THIS.

Of course, as I've said before, the end of a year is hardly ever the "end" of anything, but just a reflection point — and, hopefully, an inflection point when necessary.  It certainly feels truer than ever now, heading from what might as well be, and in some ways truly feels like, the 306th of March into the 307th.

I've learned a lot about myself in the last few months, and the work on that — just as our collective work with ending this pandemic — will continue well into 2021.  All in all, I think I've actually been managing reasonably well.

Another Decade Done

Another year through… but this time, I don't feel as though I have much to say.

In some regards, it's just that I'm not particularly feeling reflective tonight.  A mid-week Christmas contributed to a whirlwind holiday season for the family, and so it feels as though I've really only just finally managed to slow down a bit.  In other regards, it may just be that at this point in my life, no news is good news.  Or at least, not bad.  The usual, anyway.  Meh.

Not that nothing happened, of course.  My mother visited me in Pittsburgh for two long weekends this year, in both March and September, to help me get out of some ruts and catch up on some ever-needed cleaning.  And I visited, as usual, in May, July, and around the holidays. 

In January, I finally found a local dentist, and even though they're a little far away, they're great.  I served on a jury for a three-day trial in February, and I moved my office at work in July on the very day I returned to work from Music Camp.  Elections were relatively uneventful this year, and all of the normal fall events were successes.

But zooming out to the whole decade, it's really interesting to see how far I've come.  It's amazing how much is hidden at that level: I was still in college ten years ago.  Now I'm several years into a career.  Careful (and even not so careful) readings of past year-end recaps would show you that it hasn't actually been that effortless.  It still isn't.

But, really, tonight, I'm just feeling thankful most of all.  Wrong holiday, but eh.  Those are my feelings.

Happy New Year, all!

Random tangent: Fox's New Year's Eve with Steve Harvey was excited about breaking the world record tonight for most people performing YMCA.  A record which was last set by me and (apparently) 40,147 other people in El Paso at the 2008 Sun Bowl, 11 years ago today.  I still participated from home while I watched.

Ending a Tiring Year

It's New Year's Eve and I'm feeling awfully tired.

I'm pretty sure most of that is related to a mild sugar crash from all the food I ate at my grandparents' house while the family was over there to watch Pitt play in the Sun Bowl and have dinner.  (Though the game was more enjoyable than last time in 2008, it was still a 14–13 loss.)  But since this is an annual time of reflection, I suppose it rings somewhat true to how the whole year has gone, too.

My great-grandmother fell ill in late January, resulting in a quick up-and-back trip back home to see her one last time before she ultimately passed away on 1 February at the age of 103.  Then, just as I was getting through the busy season of Carnegie Mellon's Spring Carnival in mid-April, while dealing with a nasty ear blockage (thankfully easy enough to resolve), I got word that my paternal grandmother had been taken to a hospital in Pittsburgh.

So the next couple weeks were filled with visits until she was transferred closer to her home, leaving me just enough time to deal with the end-of-year craziness at work, and to run my first primary election as a Judge of Elections on 15 May.  While we knew her time was ultimately short, there were moments when it looked as though she might live a while longer.  And so, just as we entered a period where we were breathing a bit easier, and I'd set aside some time to help overcome executive dysfunction and tackle some of those self-improvements from last year, on 15 June, she passed away peacefully in her sleep.  I was asked to play some of my music at the funeral which was held five days later — and thank goodness I didn't drive back home in the torrential rains that hit Pittsburgh that evening.  Before I knew it, it was Independence Day, and then it was off to Music Camp, and right into the preparatory run-up to fall semester.

I took a little time off, though, in September to recharge a bit by spending a weekend in Maryland with my friend Will from undergrad.  This, of course, ended with my return Greyhound bus running nearly four hours late and getting into town around 03:30.

Then, I was busy as usual in the fall running Alumni Band Day for PBAC in October and Demosplash in November, followed by a running much busier general election on 6 November and a whirlwind lead-up to the holidays, including having to suddenly overcome the aforementioned executive dysfunction in early December to get a bit of cleaning done ahead of a visit from the landlord.

But in the wake of that busyness, I think I set myself up for some successes ahead.  And thankfully, the holiday season has been pretty restful.  And while I've never been one for resolutions, I actually think I've ended up in a pretty good place, and am ready to build further on it.  We'll see what that means a year from now.

Welp.

Hmmm…

Apparently I had aimed at the outset of this year to improve my fitness, be more diligent about housekeeping, and make more intentful connections with friends.  And, well, a lot of that sure sounds familiar… because it's a lot of the same goal-oriented thoughts I've been having in more recent months, too.  Welp.  Maybe I should intentfully read over my blog posts at intervals throughout the year.  (Or maybe keep it at the front of my mind by just writing here more often, lol.)

This isn't to say that I haven't progressed in the past year.  Just in perhaps less-visible ways.  After nearly a year of part- and full-time hourly work, I officially became a salaried employee in April, which has come with its own twists and turns.  Being a big part of a small team is thrilling and challenging, but at the end of the day, it's often hard to fully step away from whatever might be weighing on me at work.  Often, I've been surrounded by various activities and friends which have helped me to keep some semblance of balance.  Other times, some of my least-helpful coping mechanisms from my long-hours grad school days come back to haunt for a day or two.  But all in all, I've been doing pretty well.  Here's to continuing to hone and adjust that life balance in the future.

Anyway, in some sense, I've managed to recharge over this holiday week.  Unfortunately, a major lake-effect snowstorm on Christmas Day and a second round at the end of the week contributed to our not making it out to some family gatherings this year.  Officially, 84.3 inches (214 cm) of snow fell at Erie International Airport between 24 December and today.  So, I'm a bit restless with cabin fever and ready to get back at my goals, whatever they are.

Random tangent: Even though we'd lately not been caring much for his show, I feel bad for Carson Daly this year. With New Year's Eve on a Sunday, NBC opted to rely on their Sunday Night Football program, but then the NFL decided not to flex a game to the evening slot, leaving a schedule gap that couldn't be filled with New Year's Eve programming in time. So they got stuck rerunning Dateline NBC and two episodes of The Wall instead.

Taking a Step Back

It wouldn't be New Year's Eve if I weren't semi-frantically running around — physically, metaphorically, or otherwise — to cram things in before the end of the year.  Today has been no exception.

Part of that involved doing duty for the Pitt Band Alumni pep band at this afternoon's basketball game against Notre Dame.  Since I got a couple tickets to give away, I invited my friends Ed and Erin to watch the game.  Unfortunately, Pitt lost 78–77 in overtime, but fun was had by all.

It's also the end of an era in Pittsburgh, with the Port Authority of Allegheny County changing its fare policy for the first time since its inception on 1 March 1964.  Among other changes, paper transfer slips are being eliminated, so I spent a little time to get a small keepsake.

And of course, there was the leap second this evening at 23:59:60 UTC (18:59:60 EST), which obviously had to be celebrated by a nerd such as myself.

Now I'm racing against the clock blogging, and I'll be eating hastily-made New Year's Eve Nachos shortly.  You'd think I'd learn...

But enough about my day... this is the day I traditionally talk about my year.  So let's take a step back.

At the end of 2014, I wrote that it had felt like a continuation of 2013, "with many of the same accomplishments and many of the same struggles."  I think 2015 and 2016, taken together, can probably be construed similarly for me.  Maybe part of that is simply the natural course of things, as my personal perceptions of time accelerate.  Certainly there's been a lot of adversity in my life this year, but there have also been several successes, and most of what happened in both spheres this past year have simply built on what happened the year before.

Probably the most notable for me has been my recent shift into the once-elusive "gainful employment".  I still can't quite believe it — to be honest, I don't think much of what 2016 actually brought was on my mind at the start of the year — but that's certainly something I'm pleased about.

In a lot of other ways, though, 2016 has been rough for a lot of people, and I think almost anyone would be lying if they said they'd come out unscathed.  But amidst all of the chaos and uncertainty, I think that there's a lot to have gained from this year, and that I'm all the stronger for having lived it.

Random tangent: It's a Ryan Seacrest year here tonight, although that's made much easier by the fact that Carson Daly's show is only airing from 23:30 to 00:30.  There's a little of Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin mixed in, though, for flavor.  At least "twenty-seventeen" has clearly won out.  Can you imagine "two thousand seventeen"?  It's already a lot of syllables as it is!  (Gloria Estefan said "it's almost 2007".)

Moving Forward

Here we are, at the end of yet another calendar year, and this one has just flown by. Some part of that feeling has certainly been the result of the unseasonably warm weather we've been having so far this winter, but I think more of it has been just me keeping busy, building up my life, and having a great time with great friends.

Seriously, though. Whereas last year, I felt there were some areas in which my life wasn't moving forward despite progress in others; this year, I feel very much that I'm improving in almost every respect. The question is not whether I'm doing better, but only by how much.

The year hasn't been without obstacles, of course. In fact, 2015 has thrown a lot of stuff in my way, and it's come at me from just about every angle imaginable, and all throughout the year. But meanwhile, I've been able to continually look at each situation from a couple steps back, to reassess and consciously adjust my priorities as changes of plan have become necessary, and to surround myself with the companionship of amazing friends through thick and thin. And that, more than anything, has helped me through.

Not to understate any previous friendships I've had, but I can't think of any other group of people with whom I've felt so comfortable to share almost anything that's on my mind — whether it's a silly little pun, deep emotional anguish, or anything in between. People who have ceaselessly contributed so much to my life, both tangibly and intangibly, and to whom I would not hesitate to give right back in a moment of need. People around whom I feel most at peace to be, quite simply… me.

That said, most of them are still out-of-town for the holidays (as was I, of course), but I've even managed to keep things pretty balanced without them at my side — I'm in just that significantly better of a place, mentally. Which would have seemed so unattainable a year ago. It just goes to show that it can and does get better.

So it seems a little awkward by comparison that, since my parents are currently traveling, I'm back in Pittsburgh to ring in 2016 at a party in the South Hills hosted by an acquaintance (a bit better than "friend of a friend") with all of their friends. I had to have my New Year's Eve Nachos separate from the rest of the family this year, and I've had to retreat from the party for a short while to write this on my phone, but I'm still having a great time. And I wouldn't change a thing.

Here's to moving forward into 2016!

Random tangent: While writing this, it has been hilarious how some of SwiftKey's predictions have just been regurgitating pieces of individual emails I've written.

Building

Another year is behind us.  And it's been a weird one.

In many ways, 2014 felt just like a continuation of 2013, with many of the same accomplishments and many of the same struggles.  While 2013 saw the beginning of a concerted effort toward self-awareness and self-improvement, 2014 saw this effort continue.  Some days, in some ways, it feels like I'm leaps and bounds ahead of where I was then.  Others, it seems like I haven't moved at all.  Mental health is a tough thing to maintain, especially in graduate school, and the calendar year doesn't necessarily offer the cleanest points of comparison for progress.

That said, over the last few days, I've been blessed with the ability to disconnect (at least partially) from my day-to-day duties, which has helped me step back and assess my life, where I am and where I want to be.  It'll be a big year for me in 2015, as I keep molding myself bit by bit into someone I'm ever more proud to be.

Random tangent: We're more-or-less back full-circle to watching Ryan Seacrest's show this year, with the exception of a few musical acts, despite the fact that we can't stand Fergie.  Carson Daly's countdown show has just become dry, and after several disappointments including not even getting to see the ball drop one year, it was time for a change.  At least a higher proportion of people are on board with "twenty-fourteen" and "twenty-fifteen" this year.  Slowly but surely.  Habby Nerrrrr!

Phew!

It has been... well... it's been a year.  A rough one at that.  I've never really been particularly averse to the number 13, but in retrospect, I've had the kind of year that probably would have warranted a little triskaidekaphobia.  While each month seemed to come with something new to try to beat me down, over the course of the year, continued self-discovery has allowed me to get back up and keep going.

Of course, there's been a lot of actual positive for me this year, too.  I continue to teach and make progress toward my master's degree.  And though my life is still in quite a period of transition, it's a lot more stable than it was not too long ago, and I've been making a lot of progress toward personal goals as well.  So, while I don't have a lot of grand events to look back on here, all in all, I'm pretty pleased with how I'm coming out from this year.

It's still been really busy, so all I have time left to mention is that I've scarfed down my New Year's Eve Nachos and I'm ready to ring in 2014.  Here's to no longer having to fail to write legible "threes" at the end of the date.

Random tangent: The Carson Daly pre-show this year was getting so uninteresting we actually had to switch to a Seinfeld rerun.

Onward

Well, here I am again.  I have no excuses for my silence here of late, but for once I don't think I actually need any.  As those who know me can attest, I've been pretty darn busy over the last several months.

But busy as it's been, 2012 has been a great year for me, I think.  After a year of postbaccalaureate classes, I was admitted in March into the master's program at Pitt's Department of Computer Science beginning in August.  As a result, I'm living much closer to campus now than I was in the spring and summer, within walking distance (which I've been keen to take advantage of).  I've also made a lot of good new friends this year, while staying connected with some old ones.

My first semester of graduate study was about as tough as I was expecting, but a few situations out of my control made for a bit of a bumpier semester than I'd hoped for.  Overall, though, I handled the situations pretty well and am glad to be moving forward from the experience.

Moving into the new year, I was asked a couple of weeks ago to be a part-time instructor for the department, teaching a course on Microsoft Office in the spring semester; I teach my first lecture a week from today, which is crazy.  So it's been a bit of a working holiday this year, getting a syllabus and plans together... but it's been a fun one with family nonetheless.

I would write more, but I've obviously been quite busy.  It should therefore be no surprise that I'm writing this in the last few minutes of the year, as always.  (Years may go by, but some things never change.)

Onward into 2013!

Random tangent: We're still watching Carson Daly's show for the ball drop tonight, but a certain cousin's affinity for Taylor Swift requires us to shift to Ryan Seacrest's show for a few moments.  Happy to see that Seacrest has finally gotten on board with "twenty-twelve" and "twenty-thirteen".

A High-Velocity Year

Ah, 31 December: The last day of the year.  Time for reflections on the past, New Year's Eve Nachos, and OHMIGOD has it been five MONTHS since I've written on my blog??!?!!?

Well... the best explanation for why it's been so long since I've written here is because, simply, I have way more interesting thoughts than I have time to write any of them here.  This may be some form of the proverbial "good problem to have," but really, I'm not sure.  I find it nearly impossible to bookmark or backtrack to a thought for long enough to write about it, as my thoughts are constantly moving forward.  I think they call this phenomenon "stream-of-consciousness."

Anyway, the thought-time imbalance is caused mostly by the fact that one can think from anywhere, in parallel with performing other tasks, while writing here requires being at a computer and not being busy doing other things.  Most of the time, I have one of these, but rarely do I seem to have both.

But enough of this meta-blogging nonsense.  I find that too often I set out to write something novel here only to end up writing ever-longer diatribes about why I haven't written anything novel here for ages, and it just spoils everything for everyone.  Why should I write about writing, and specifically about not doing it, when I could just be doing it instead?  Who could possibly care enough to read what I have to write about (not) writing?

Crap.  Now I'm meta-meta-blogging.

Anyways, onto the "meat" of this post, which is primarily on the topic of the year that we've just been through (twenty-eleven, for those keeping score) having reached its inevitable ending.

As you've no doubt guessed by now, the reason I've been so busy this year has been due to the immense amount of change that has been going on in my life... and the high velocity with which it has happened.  While at home earlier this year after graduating, I struggled to figure out what my next steps in life should be.  Through February and March, I studied for the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam, the first step toward professional licensure for engineers, which I took (and passed!) in April.

Then, in May, a lightbulb went off in my head that, academically, computer science was the missing key.  So I signed up to take the GRE in June, began making arrangements in July to take courses, and headed back to Pittsburgh in August.  And now I'm a student again!

Obviously, it wasn't quite that simple, and there's a lot more to explain... but as has become as much of a tradition as writing these year-end posts, I'm writing a good deal of this in the last several minutes of the year while also trying to do other things simultaneously.  As such, I'll be cutting this short but intend to continue in the near future (ha!).  Nevertheless, I'm pleased to report that my first semester of courses in the CS department went exceedingly well, and I have high hopes for the future.

I wasn't lying 364 days ago when I said that I had no idea what 2011 would bring.  It certainly didn't fail to bring me, and I can't wait to see what 2012 will bring.

Random tangents:

• Oh, and the computer issues from July are issues no longer; as a computer science student, I was more or less forced to get a new computer in September, the arrival of which was very welcome.  The only reason I mention it is because the aforementioned issues were featured in the post adorning the frontpage of this blog for the last five months.
• As with last year, we're watching Carson Daly on NBC tonight.  We're quite the anti-Seacrest family now.

Here We Are Again

Well, here we are again. The end of another year.

As I write this, I'm half-watching NBC's Minute to Win It while mom finishes cooking the second course of our "fancy"-ish New Year's Eve dinner, even though it's nearly two hours since we had the soup. I'll probably have to go eat well before this ever gets posted, but the beauty of blogging is that you'll never know where I left off!

(And yes, if you happened to remember from last year's end-of-year post, the second annual New Year's Eve Nachos are going to be one of the courses. Eventually.)

Twenty-ten has been an interesting year for me. I know you probably couldn't tell that from this blog, but it's true! Most of the stuff I've gone through in 2010 has been rather personal in nature, which is a large reason why I didn't write much of anything here. Still, it comprises a lot of what has shaped 2010 for me, so I'll do my best to summarize things a bit for the benefit of my readers.

If you've been paying particular attention, you may have noticed that I recently changed my mini-bios on many of my social networking sites (including, naturally, the "About Me" section on this one). That's because I have officially graduated from the University of Pittsburgh on 18 December 2010 with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, an undergraduate certificate in Nuclear Engineering, and a minor in Music.

But wasn't I supposed to graduate in May? Didn't I actually participate in Commencement back on 1 May? The short answer to both of these is yes.

The slightly-longer-but-not-too-in-depth answer is that I had had some personal issues in the fall of 2009 which had affected my schoolwork and caused me to earn some incomplete grades. After a full 19-credit slate of senior-level courses in the spring of 2010, I then could refocus myself on finishing those last requirements for graduation. Unfortunately, other external pressures prolonged this effort past August and reset the goal to December. And I hate being so vague, but it really is better in this case. Sorry.

I moved back in with my parents at the end of July, which I'd written briefly about at the time, and which has thusfar remained neither largely good nor largely bad. It just is.

Although I worked toward my graduation steadily throughout the year, I spent the last part of November and the first half of December frantically picking up the pace and finishing everything that was left, at the expense of putting off other routine tasks (among which, obviously, was writing for this blog). And so, on 20 December, once all of the graduation stuff was finalized, I found myself with nothing more than a long list of things to do (literally, I made a list, even including individual episodes of television shows I'd intentionally missed). And I've been slowly whittling away at that list ever since, so that I can begin 2011 at least mostly unencumbered by 2010.

Anyway, here we are again. In the waning minutes of 2010. I'll forgive myself for having written last year that I was excited for a new decade to begin in 2010 when, as ABC Australia wisely noted, this is technically when the decade rolls over. I guess I was just dealing with the "modern" understanding of a decade. Writing the "1" seems to have meant more. But surely writing two of them will be even more significant?

So, I'll put up with the unfortunate double-keystroke in "2011" which I'd mentioned last year. And I'll actually post some of the photographs I took in 2010. For as much as I'd looked forward to 2010, I'm looking forward to 2011 more.

Random tangent: Carson Daly is saying "Twenty-Ten" and "Twenty-Eleven," whereas Ryan Seacrest is only further promulgating the ignorance in the old "Two Thousand and..." way. No disrespect to Dick Clark, but I think that after tonight, I'll be switching my New Year's Eve loyalty to NBC until further notice.

Hopes for a New Decade

Alas, it is time for another year-end post. But it's not just the end of a year, it's also the end of a decade. Yikes!

There is now less than half an hour left in the 2000s. I'm writing this on my laptop in the family living room with my mother falling asleep in the chair next to me and my brother upstairs microwaving the New Year's Eve Nachos. Dad's upstairs and will come down later.

New Year's Eve Nachos are a relatively new tradition in the Parenti household, actually, in that they've only existed since 24 December. You see, on 20 December, Mom came back from the store with chips and salsa (among other things, of course). By 22 December, David was insisting that we eat said chips and salsa. I suggested we wait until a special occasion — Christmas Eve, in particular. Christmas Eve Chips-'n'-Salsa would become a new tradition. Okay, fine.

Christmas Eve came and we were eating dinner and Mom asked if we were "still doing the New Year's Eve Nachos," completely getting both the holiday and the food item wrong (although to be fair, she was kind of close). We corrected her, but then decided that New Year's Eve Nachos would also be a good tradition to start.

So we did.

Anyway, I still can't quite grasp the fact that we're on the cusp of 2010. It's just always seemed so far away, and yet... here it is! Heck, it's already here in so many parts of the world.

Earlier today, I was doing some year-end data management and typing 2010 repeatedly into some spreadsheets. I mentioned to my brother how much I like typing 2010 as compared to recent years like 2009, 2005, or even 1996.

You see, for as long as I've been able to type, every year has had a repeated digit in it (and in the cases of 1999 and 2000, a triply repeated digit). In order to type a doubled digit, one has to release the appropriate key before depressing it again. It slows you down. However, for 2010, I don't have to fully let go of the zero before I hit the one. It's wonderful! (Or at least, it will be until 2011 puts a kink in the works for a year.)

But not only will the new year bring the end of the "double-ohs," it will also bring new beginnings for my life.

As 2005 turned into 2006, I wrote that I was excited for new "firsts" entering my life in the coming year. That sentiment is certainly repeated again now, four years later, as I prepare to finish my college career in just a few short months. I still have no idea what I'll be doing come May, but I'm excited to live 2010 to the fullest.

That will certainly mean some big changes for me in the coming year, some personal and some not. I may not know what 2010 or the ensuing decade will bring, but I'm ever hopeful that things will turn out for the best.

Way Over Your Head

I bet you thought I wasn't going to do my traditional year-end post, didn't you?

For those of you who knew about my recent travels, this post may just come as a surprise. It certainly won't be in the same form as usual, but I'm getting it out there nonetheless.

As I type this sentence, it is currently 0304 UTC, and I only express the time that way because I'm miles above the ground and have no clue what state (or time zone, for that matter) I'm over at this time. Although I suspect we're over the Central time zone, and I promise I'll find out for sure later.

In case you're a little bit confused, I've been in El Paso, TX since Monday 29 December with the band and am now on our return flight to Pittsburgh. Since we're expected to land at about 23:20 EST, the only way I can get this post out by year's end is to use two-thirds of my remaining battery life to type this and the remaining third to take brief advantage of the free wireless Internet at Pittsburgh International Airport and upload it quickly before we leave.

Pitt's football team played in the Sun Bowl this afternoon against the Oregon State Beavers, and the last three days in El Paso have been one big "fiesta" leading up to the main event.

We met in Pittsburgh at 06:30 EST on Monday, and were busy either flying, practicing, performing, or whatever until we returned to the hotel at 22:30 MST (i.e., 00:30 EST, a full 18 hours later). Then Tuesday morning was a continuation of the whirlwind with a Battle of the Bands and another brief rehearsal before we got about 90 minutes of free time. I'm pretty sure most of us took a nap. Then off to the Fan Fiesta (where another Battle of the Bands was held), and we were free for dinner.

So all in all, over the course of the last three days, the band have had precious few hours of unstructured time. Not to mention that our hotel was right across the street from the airport, and there's not too many of those "authentic Mexican restaurants" within walking distance.

And then, of course, there was the game. Which we lost, 3-0. As one of my colleagues said, it was far more a matter of Pitt losing than of Oregon State winning. Such low-scoring games are always frustrating, especially when you're down and there are so many turnovers (including two in the first minute of play). Pitt stepped up to the plate in the waning moments of the game, but it was too little, too late. If only they'd played like that from the beginning...

But it certainly wasn't all bad. Not at all. Although the lows in El Paso were nearly identical to the lows in Pittsburgh on Monday and Tuesday (about 34 °F or 1 °C), the highs ranged from 60-65 °F (16-18 °C), whereas Pittsburgh was... well, let's just say it was colder back home. I got a bit of sun at the game today and am probably burnt. Which doesn't typically happen in December.

And then, of course, there's the time spent with friends. We may not always get along like peas in a pod, but it's good to see some of the people you care about and haven't seen for a while. And it provided a little bit of an escape from the hectic holiday season.

As I said, earlier, we're projected to land in Pittsburgh at around 23:20 EST, which means we'll probably be busing back to Oakland when the ball drops. And since I'll be away from home for the first time on New Year's, staying at a Pittsburgh hotel until my parents come on New Year's Day, I don't want to ring in 2009 in such a lackluster way as just saying "Happy New Year" on a darkened bus full of sleepy, grumpy people (grumpy because we lost and they're tired, not because they're generically grumpy people).

Anyway, I think that, should the celebration be unsatisfactory, I'll reserve the right to stay on El Paso time for celebratory purposes only until after it's midnight there. Maybe somewhere they'll be selling sparkling grape juice at 01:00? I don't know, but it's worth a shot, right?

In any case, I hope all of you have had a very happy holiday and I wish you all the best in 2009.

This is Tim, signing off from way over your head, at 0328 UTC (with 25 minutes of battery left for Pittsburgh).

Random tangent: Apparently, the in-flight movie for this flight was really short, so they're supplementing it with an episode of Numb3rs. Too bad my headset doesn't work.

Revisiting a Rather Nice Year

Here we are again in the last few hours of a rapidly waning year, waiting patiently for the arrival of 2008. It's a time of reflection for many, and so, in keeping with what appears to be becoming this blog's tradition, it's time for me to reflect.

January opened with a second consecutive Photoshop doodle just before I went off to begin my second semester at college. As usually happens around the fourth day of a new year, I had a birthday, this one rendering me nineteen. Once the celebrations died down, I was re-assimilated into life in the city as well as classes, including a rather challenging honors chemistry lab.

February, or Feb'y as I called it for much of the month, was really, really cold and snowy, but it passed by without much incident. I'd been afraid of what 02/07/07 had in store for me, but it really ended up being a rather normal Wednesday. I officially declared my major, had a bunch of exams, and was just plain swamped. But it all turned out well.

The madness of March came upon me, and I ended up travelling quite a bit, to Hartford, New York City, and Buffalo with the pep band. In favor of my academic pursuits (which, after all, is why I was at school), I opted not to go to San Jose, though, so I still haven't experienced the West Coast. Oh, well; I'm sure I'll have more opportunities to travel in the future.

April was peppered with concerts as I came down the home stretch, and then tragedy struck another college campus, while our own was slightly jarred as well. I finished my group service project with DRS, and my first college year went out with a bang.

May and June were fun, even though I wasn't able to end up with a job for the summer. I had a few projects of my own to keep me busy. One of them, which came to fruition in July, was to arrange four-part harmonies for the Canadian and American national anthems. The ultra-hyped 07/07/07 came at the beginning of my first "stint" as a camp counselor, but other than that, nothing really radical happened.

August brought the end of life to four of my teeth, but I'm sure they're okay with that. Then, after over three months at home, I got itching to get going again back at school. I also escaped the curse of Friday the Seventeenth while I was at band camp in Bradford, so I don't have to worry again until October 2008.

September and October were the bulk of the first semester in my major. Some classes were much easier than expected, some were much harder. In November, after a busy band season, I was inducted into one of the band fraternities, and that has turned out to be a very rewarding experience.

December started on a high note with Pitt's stunning upset victory over West Virginia in football, but then finals came around, and that wasn't so stunning (and I swear, I'll post more about that at some point). The holiday season snuck up on us all as usual, as well as the annual slew of colds and general malaise. I don't know; this December just felt different. But Christmas was fun, in all its iterations.

Before being caught up in the "Christmas high," I recall having thought that 2007 just needed to end. I think that was just because of recent events, though. I mean, if December wasn't great, but the rest of the year was good, then that's not all that bad, isn't it? All in all, 2007 was a rather nice year, I'd say.

Still, I'm optimistic for 2008. I'm growing up. Life is getting to be more important. Big decisions will have to be made. It's scary, but it's also exciting. I don't usually make resolutions for January, but this year I've got plenty. And if I can manage to keep just a few of the big ones, I'm sure to have a great 2008!

Happy New Year everyone!

Random tangent: You'll recall that my brother got angry that we had sparkling red grape juice to ring in 2007 rather than our traditional sparkling white (actually, you might not recall that). Well, this year, after a trip to the grocery store, Mom realized that we didn't have any non-alcoholic celebratory beverage, and proceeded to blame us for not reminding her. But then she realized, as I had done much earlier, that there was, in fact, sparkling grape juice in the refrigerator already. Of course, it's red. Oh, well; David'll live.

An Amazing Year

Here we are in the last few hours of 2006. Midnight has already fallen over the entire eastern hemisphere and is rapidly approaching. I'd better make this post count. So I'll start by comparing this year to my expectations last year:

Honestly, as 2005 wanes, I hope 2006 will bring some exciting "firsts" into my life. I don't know what they'll be, but I'm really hoping they'll be fun.

This is what I wrote one year ago today in my New Year's Eve post for 2005. And for the most part, that's exactly what happened. With 2006 being the first full calendar year I've had this blog, I can actually go back and look at what I've documented... which is good, because I don't think I'd otherwise be able to think of much in time for the new year. Time to get reflective.

I started January by making a little something in Photoshop in honor of the year, and in doing so, opening the doors to the world of opportunities that awaited me. Four days in, I turned 18, which was certainly the first of many milestones. Actually, if you count December 2005, which is when I got accepted to Pitt, I was in the middle of a big stretch of "happy," which continued on 13 January when I received notification of my awesome scholarship. But, as always happens when classes are ending, the stress of finals and papers came on in the latter part of the month. So much stress, in fact, that I created a Wall of Shame to vent my frustrations. Thankfully, I haven't had to do that since.

February was an emotional month. I lost my girlfriend for still-unexplained reasons, and I met a new friend who helped me through my sadness. I reflected on the antics of other friends and escaped the threat of another Friday the Seventeenth. And of course, the Steelers won the Super Bowl. How great is that? Meanwhile, District Choir was preparing me for things to come...

March and April were probably some of the most fun months of the year, but they were also extremely stressful. It started with Region Band, where I missed States by one chair. Then Region Choir, where I made States. A few days later, we said goodbye to the cats we'd been babysitting, and before I knew it, my family was with the marching band in Florida, and I wasn't really able to practice my music for States while we were gone. But I ended up getting fifth chair anyway; quite an accomplishment! And amidst all this, I was switching Calculus books and finalizing my decision to go to Pitt. Missing all that school gave me a bad case of senioritis, but I stuck through and finished the incomplete work I'd had from the third quarter. And of course, I got measured on Easter, only to find that I hadn't really grown much at all.

May was madness. The first ten days were overflowing with blog-fodder so much that I wrote a huge post that got lost in the abyss of cyberspace, so I declared and celebrated a day of remembrance for it. Which reminds me, I'd better save this post right now. Anyways, I got a new girlfriend; I was a little worried about going off to college, though... she didn't think it would be a big deal. I wonder who was right.

June was a big deal. As I said last year, "For almost my entire life, June 2006 has been the endpoint of any long-range plans I have had." We had our senior class trip on 06/06/06, then baccalaureate the next day, adding gum to my locker, and by the time it hit me, I was halfway through my speech. Minutes later, I graduated. Preparations for college rapidly progressed after that, as I went down to Pittsburgh for orientation late in the month, which unfortunately was my then-girlfriend's birthday. This had been scheduled long before that, though.

I started July with a huge graduation party, and we celebrated Independence Day by watching my grandfather almost die while holding a lit emergency flare. Good times... But then I got really sick and started writing thank you notes. It's probably a good thing, though, because at least they got done.

And then August came. I got my driver's license, and then was thrust into college life. Things get sort of lumped together from here.

Throughout September and October, I learned a lot at Pitt: about myself, about others, and about life in general. There was lots of stress in varying shapes and sizes, but eventually I adjusted to the situations. Getting involved with the band certainly helped me there.

In November, I had another busy week, and my girlfriend and I finally broke up as a result. My streak of avoiding Fridays the Seventeenth had ended, but I don't have to deal with that again until August 2007.

And in December, I got my grades back, some pretty good numbers to show for all my hard work. The year came full circle with the arrival of my new computer, much faster and cooler than the now thirteen-year-old machine I mentioned last New Year's Eve, which still sits in our basement. And I finally got to see some family that I'd been missing... and some that I hadn't.

All in all, I really did do a lot this year. I loved 2006, but we're on the verge of 2007, and we must move on. You can imagine, however, how I felt as I sat in church this morning, and the substitute pastor said that 2006 was behind us, and that "we must bury it, approaching 2007 in a new way." Don't get me wrong; I'm very optimistic for 2007, but 2006 will hold a special place in my heart. But why wouldn't it? We shouldn't bury all of our past. How else would we learn from our failures, and enjoy our successes?

And so, before New York's ball drops in a few hours (and Pittsburgh's ball rises), let me say as I said back on the first day of this year, it's 2006 and I'm proud of this year, dangit!