2022 - A Year in Review

 Yep, 2022 is over. Time to go over what happened. And yes, I still have a flair for stating the obvious, so that didn't change with the new year. LOL

Let's see... 

I started out 2022 working on getting my 17th book ready for publication.  Song of Storm and Shroud hit the electronic shelves on 3/21/22 to a chorus of crickets.  Huge thanks to the 3 people who bought a copy.  

In all of 2022, I sold 30 books in 2022 for a whopping $54.  I would've sold more if I'd had the money for advertising, but I had no money. Which leads me to...

The big news of the year, of course, was the fact that I went back to work full time after an 18 year hiatus.  I am an office grunt.  I answer phones, file stuff, provide general backup for people whose jobs are more important than mine, etc.  The rented mule. The corporate mushroom. A busy bee.  The job is accomplishing it's intended purpose and that's all that matters.  I like it about 90% of the time, which is more than I've liked several other jobs I've had in the past.  

I had hoped that once I settled into my job, I'd have time to write.  I didn't count on the fact that once I get home, I don't have the energy or the will to write in the couple hours I'm home before bedtime.  My brain has entirely shifted away from anything creative.  I still hope to write again, but I wouldn't hold my breath while waiting on another book if I were you.  You'll turn blue and fall over.

In weight and activity news, I started the year at 182.2 pounds and ended the year at 165.2 - 17 pounds lost.  I wish I could say that was due to being active and eating less, but it's due to stress and eating less. I'm not home to graze.  I eat lunch - usually yogurt, a cheese stick, some ham chunks, and grapes - and then dinner and a bowl of ice cream.  I keep a bag of mixed nuts and a bag of Hershey's minis in my desk, and munch on those from time to time.  (I hand out candy bars to co-workers more than I eat them, though.)  I did have this great idea that I would walk on my lunch break (30 minutes), but I've only done that once.  Thus, my walking for the entire year was only 33.65 miles.  No biking at all.  My biggest activity these days is cleaning the office at work, once a month-ish.  I really need to up my activity level for 2023 so I don't turn into an atrophied lump of meat.

Tomorrow, work is having a big in-house thang wherein they go over the year before and address ways to improve and goals for the year ahead.  I had to fill out a sheet on my goals, etc.  I'm a grunt.  I have no goals except to do the best job I can do with the limited resources and control a grunt tends to have.  I mean, I'm 52 years old and post-retired.  What goals am I supposed to have?  Try not to fuck anything up too bad so I can keep my job.  (No, I did not put that on the form, but my bosses knows where my blog is at, so they're probably reading this anyway.  :waves:  Hi, guys.  Don't worry, no one around here reads this blog except you.)  I think I wrote 'continued improvement in all aspects of my work' - or if I didn't write that, I should've.  

Okay, I think that's it.  Not a whole lot of action in my year.  As for the year ahead?  Well, I don't have any goals or resolutions for the new year.  Keep working.  Keep breathing in and out.  Keep progressing toward Hubs' and my combined goals. I think we're thinking we can put in a wood stove by the end of the year.  

How was your 2022?  Do you have goals for 2023?  

Saturday Reading Wrap-up: 2022

 It's the last day of the year and since I didn't finish any books this past week, and I'm not likely to finish the book I'm reading today, I thought I'd just go ahead and wrap-up my Year in Reading.  

I started the year with a goal to read 75 books.  I missed it by 3.  Which actually isn't that bad, considering that when I started the year I had no clue that I would be spending the last 6 months of the year working full time.  

If you want to browse through the books I read in 2022, go here: 2022 - Books Read.  (And there's always a link to all my years' Books Read posts on the left side of this blog, underneath my book links.)

Nothing really surprising in the list.  What's surprising to me is how few of the books on my list I actually remember reading.  I mean, I totally forgot that I read The Three Musketeers this year, but it's on the list, so it must be true.  (Wait, I think I remember reading it now.  Derp.  It was read on the Kindle.)

Toward the end of the year, I read a lot of hardcopy books.  Since I was working again, I had the extra scratch to feed my used-book habit.  Loads of unread books on the shelves and it takes less time to grab one of those than sort through ebook listings to find books I want to read.  

I ended the year with two unread ebooks and an unread e-short story sitting on my Kindle.  Maybe I'll start the new year with those.  

In book buying, I picked up 109 new books in 2022.  80 of those were ebooks, leaving 29 hardcopies.  I read or attempted to read most of them.  There are 6 I haven't touched yet and one I don't intend to read because it's for my collection of old writing books (English Grammar and Composition, c1963). Two of those I might not read any time soon - a Hemingway and a book about Frederick Douglass.  I bought those for my collection of literature.

On the 'attempted to read' side, I DNF'd 31 ebooks and 7 hardcopies.  3 hardcopies are going back to thrift stores - 2 because I either had another copy of the title and one because I decided I didn't want to read it.  (Having already DNF'd the first book, I did not want to start the second.)

I could go through and sort all the genres I read, like I've done in the past, but I don't want to.  Suffice it to say, there's a ton of mystery, crime, suspense, etc.  Feels like I read more SF and literature than usual. 

And that's about it.  I'm not sure what 2023 will bring in reading.  Maybe I'll set it for 50 this year and hope for reading a book a week.  We'll see.

How was your reading year?  Did you reach your goals?  

Thursday This n That

 Yes, I am aware that it's Friday. 

I woke up late yesterday. I drank coffee, smoked a cigarette, took a shower, made my lunch, got dressed, and headed to work. Woo.

I'm doing genealogy again.  For some reason, I'm drawn to death certificates. I find it interesting to see how people died.  So, I already knew about the one grandfather who was crushed between two trains on Thanksgiving.  I found out one of his brothers was strangled to death by an overhead door.  Another grandfather was killed in a mine collapse in the salt mines in Detroit.  (Yes, there are salt mines in Detroit.)  He was one of six men trapped.  They got his and another two bodies out, but three guys are still down there.  Like I said... interesting.  Or I'm just morbid.

There are three bald eagles that hang out near work.  I regularly see them and hear them as they're flying in lazy circles over the woods.  It's pretty awesome.

The area hit record highs yesterday.  It got to like 70 degrees.  After last week's negative 6.  I expect another round of the crud to hit the area shortly.  I haven't gotten any of it yet.  Knock on wood.

I was so pooped after work yesterday, we had TV dinners.  Banquet has upped their game from the last time I bought those.  Better flavors and textures.  Last night, we had chicken fingers with macaroni and cheese and corn.  Yum.  Last week, we had Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes, and the potatoes weren't like sawdust.  Yay.

I desperately need to go fishing.

Well, it's 7 o'clock.  I should probably go get dressed and make my lunch. I hate going to work.  Oh, I don't hate working... just the going.  I'd really rather just sit around in my jammies than get dressed, hop in the car, and drive to the office.  :shrug:  But who wouldn't?

And on that note, I'll let you go.  Have a great day, wherever you are.  

Monday Update - Week 51

Obviously, no update yesterday because it was Christmas.  Yeah, that's the ticket.  We actually did something a little different this year and started celebrating Christmas on Saturday.  Three whole days - because I have today off - of eating ham.  I also made a pineapple upside down cake. Yum.

Yesterday, I gave myself a present.  I paid for a month of Ancestry.com and spent most of the day swinging in the family trees.  Got one branch of Hubs' tree back to a man born in 1548 Manchester, England.  Woot.  Also, I think I found Mom's one cousin who she lost track of years ago.  And I found a picture of Great, Great, Great Grandpa Homer.  

Yes, he's holding a rather large snake and sitting next to what I think is a buffalo skull.  (If the pic blows up big enough, you might see those aren't paintings around him - they're display cases full of dead critters.)  He was a lawyer before the Civil War and after, he became a taxidermist.  I also learned he was severely wounded at Antietam, which might explain the change from law to stuffing animals for fun and profit.

The big news of the past week, you know other than Christmas, was the cold snap.  It got down to negative 6 degrees F here.  Thursday, we had ice and then snow.  I went to work and ended up coming home after only 90 minutes because I didn't want to get trapped at the office.  I made it to work on Friday and worked a whole day, so it's all good.  Of course, when I got to the office and stripped out of my layers of outdoor clothes, I discovered it was FREAKIN' 52 inside the office.  We got the heater working in short order (lucky my co-worker knew what to do), but it didn't warm up the office enough to shut off again until almost 2.  Our own 'furnace' (it's a heat pump), ran non-stop for like 72 hours and couldn't get the house above 66.  Enough, Mother Nature, you're drunk.

I have to spend some time today getting spreadsheets ready for 2023.  Other than that, not much else is going on.  How was your holiday weekend?  

Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 12/24/22

 It's Christmas Eve.  Know what that means?  I have one week left to finish enough books to reach my goal.  Unfortunately, I started the week off with two DNFs.  Blerg.

I picked up a suspense and a romance this week in ebooks.  And I have a Christmas short story waiting for me to read, too.  No new hardcopies this week.

Books Read:

72) Irish Red by Jim Kjelgaard (12/24/22) - Kids' Literature - 5 stars. I hadn't read this one before, but I love BIG RED.  I've had this one for years, and I don't remember where I got it or what I paid.
Review: "Not quite as awesome as Big Red, but still a very enjoyable and positive book. Get a copy for your kids! (And read it yourself. LOL)

71) The Island of Dr. Moreau by HG Wells (12/17/22) - Literature - 5 stars. I hadn't read this before, but it's Wells, so yeah, not exactly a new-to-me author.  Picked up for a dime from a thrift store.

DNFs:

12/20/22 - mystery. 25c.  What happens when a mystery is written by a stifled literary genius, a soul crying out to write flowery prose but forced to write stuff that will sell?  Gale force boredom of the long-winded variety.  No need to get all poetical there, dude, just give it to me straight. 

12/18/22 - suspense. 50c. Yup, I gave up on Hammer of Eden.  I didn't like any of the characters, so I really couldn't care less what happened to them.  :shrug:

Currently reading... I didn't start a new book yet.  I need to download those ebooks and the short, because we we without internet for a couple days.  Blerg.

What was on your reading list this past week?

Monday Update... Since I Keep Forgetting Sundays

It occurred to me on Saturday that I had forgotten to do a Sunday Update last week. I had every intention of rectifying that yesterday.  And then I went and forgot again.  Derp.  So here we are on Monday morning with not a whole lot of time and not really that much to talk about.

It's gonna be a weird week at work because I volunteered to change up my shifts a little.  No biggie.  But instead of going in at 9 today, I'm going in at 8. Tomorrow and Wednesday are 9am.  Thursday 8, Friday 9. :shrug:  You probably didn't need to know that, but typing it out helps me remember.

I picked up Christmas dinner yesterday.  Ham.  It's not exciting, but it gets the job done.

For reading news, see Saturdays.

In baking news, I made chocolate cake cookies with mint patties pressed into them.  I'm taking some to the office and leaving some for home.  

The weather is supposed to be gross this week.  Snow and frigid temps.  Blerg.  Oh well.

No activity.  And I gained a few pounds, which is weird, but it is what it is.  Maybe I'm finally past the stress reduction.  I'd rather not gain it ALL back, though.  Weight: 164.2.

I heard from Owl yesterday.  She's doing well and sounds happy.

And that's about it for the excitement that is my life.  Now, it's time to take a shower and start the 'getting ready for work' process.  Have a great day, everyone!

Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 12/17/22

 Not the most exciting of wrap-ups, but hey, it's somethin'.  

I have 5 books left to read in the next two weeks to reach my goal.  I'm skeptical.  I know, reading 5 books in two weeks ought to be a breeze for me, but working has severely limited my reading time and gumption.  I'll make a valiant effort, though.

No new books this week.

Books read: 

70) The Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven (12/13/22) - SF - 5 stars.  Larry's not new to me and this book has loads of reviews.  Bought for 25c at a thrift store.
No Review.  What could I possibly say about this that hasn't already been said?

No DNFs

Currently reading... The Hammer of Eden by Ken Follett, in hard cover.  I'm not sure I like this one, so this might be a DNF on next week's list. I'll figure out today whether I'm going to finish it.

What was on your reading list for the week?