kmusser

Just going with bullet points this year:

• I mostly failed to come out of hermit mode, will keep trying.
  
• The finances have mostly recovered though, only travel out of state was a jaunt up to the Finger Lakes and one Chicago trip, but I'm hoping this year will have more.
  
• I did succeed in reading more, will do a book update soon, but currently on Chernow's Hamilton biography which is great.
  
• The year was obviously dominated by the train wreck of an election, the effects of which are just getting started, I'll be keeping up my little news summaries.
  
• In gaming still addicting to EU IV, Stellaris and Civ failed to de-throne it. For board games, most played new game is probably Orleans.
  
• So many celebrity deaths - first up on this years see them before they leave us list is Aretha Franklin.
  
• Cubs win!
  
• Faire without Pyrates :-(
  
• Brunswick gains its own brewery!
  
• Changes at work as my boss has been busy fighting cancer, the rest of us have had to pick up some of the slack, still going good though and hoping work can survive the Trump years as we did the Bush ones, just laying low and keep collecting data without calling too much attention to ourselves. On the plus side did a handful of freelance projects, so might increase that if thinks turn south.
  
• A lot of change and 2017 promises more, one thing reading history has taught me is that our country has faced worse and survived, just hoping it can do so again.

No news on the move, still waiting for someone to buy our place. Active renovations are done, so life is not quite as frantic, just need to maintain the place in viewable condition. That does mean having to make the commute are little more often than would otherwise be necessary due to our cats tendencies to leave us unwanted presents that need to be cleaned up. Bleh. Otherwise still mostly in hibernation mode, with what free time I have going to Ingress or my latest computer game obsession which has been Europa Universalis IV. That said I will be at faire this Sunday, so hopefully will see some of you there. That and closing day are likely to be my only faire days.

So the house renovations are still consuming my life, but we are making progress and I think we'll be on track to list the house within the next week or two. Once listed we can begin the house hunting in earnest, perhaps actually moving sometime in September? Once move is done I want a week with nothing to do other than play computer games. After that perhaps I'll attempt having a social life again, at least I'll get to see a few of you at TCEP.

Will be short since I didn't like this year very much. Starting out spending the 1st quarter out of work was not good. The financial hit from that left me feeling like I was playing catch up the rest of the year, and both zammis and radiant_one struggled quite a bit. The shutdown in the fall didn't help. Did I do anything useful with the enforced time off? No, I became even more hermity than usual and mostly played computer games, though in fairness Skyrim is pretty frickin' awesome. I also played a lot of Ingress, a sort-of virtual geocaching game - join the Enlightened, free on Android. Only travel was a weekend trip to Mt. Gretna, PA and visiting family for the holidays. Highlight was radiant_one finishing grad school, that at least was definitely a cause for celebration.

Best books: Digger by Ursula Vernon, Daughter of the Sword by Steve Bein, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver

Best new to me music: Thea Gilmore, Murphy's Heart; Salsa Celtica, El Camino; Ramblin' Sailors, Bright Shining Clear. Ramblin' Sailors also get best concert attended.

Best new board game: probably Lewis & Clark, though I've only played it twice. Most played game is probably Kingdom Builder.

Best movie: I didn't get to see many, probably Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing.

Best TV: Game of Thrones, Sherlock, Downton Abbey

Computer games: I've actually gotten more into them than I used to be. Besides Skyrim and Ingress, also lost quite a bit of time to Victoria II, Civ, and various older games like Master of Orion II thanks to Gog.com. Lost a weekend to LOTRO. Am currently eyeing Assassin's Creed IV and Europa Universalis IV.

So I made it to 40 this year.

Cons: This year seemed to have an awful lot of death, I lost an aunt, Sam lost her father, and it seemed like a disproportionate number of friends lost immediate family members this year. While I know death is necessary it's a little easier to deal with if it's not all concentrated at once.

Pros: On the plus side I did get to do a lot of great travel this year with trips to the Midwest, San Diego, Outer Banks, Cornwall, and Aruba! Also my families, both those I was born with and those that are chosen continue to be awesome. I'm very grateful to you all and glad a bunch of you got to celebrate my birthday together. Also, Skyrim. Also, Del is still with us.

Other: For good or for ill the election dominated much of the year, I'll be glad for the break before we have to go through it again.

Currently I'm still in Chicago with the family, having a good visit except that everyone in the house except me is sick :-( Coming back to Maryland tomorrow. Next Saturday is Brunswick Games Day!

Thanks to all that participated in birthday shenanigans, many games were played, wine was drunk, cheesecake was eaten, friends were snuggled.

Just did a clean-up of the friends list, primarily deleting defunct journals of folks that have left LJ. If I deleted you but you do still use your LJ acct for reading, let me know and I'll add you back.

A note on my current use of social networking sites:

LJ remains my primary blog - any content of substance will be posted here, anything of an even vaguely sensitive nature will be friends-locked. Travelogues and the occasional blog-like entries will be public.

I have a FB acct mostly for keeping in touch with my family, it'll have links to my public LJ posts and occasional status updates that I want the family to see.

G+ will also have links to public LJ posts and status updates directed more towards friends and the occasional "yo, does anyone want to game tonight?" type posts.

Boardgamegeek I have an acct to maintain my game collection and buy/sell/trade games, I don't use it for networking.

Linkedin I have an acct, but it isn't used for anything. If I have an acct on any other SNS I've forgotten about it.

As for what I read, if you post content to LJ or G+ I will probably read it. Content posted to FB, Twitter, BGG, or linkedin will probably be missed.

As usual how much time I spend on social networking sites is heavily dependent on how busy work is, if it's busy they all get dropped, when it's slow I'll read and comment more.

If you want to get a hold of me IM is best, or e-mail if I'm not online. Messages sent via LJ, FB, BGG, linkedin, or G+ will reach me but it might be a couple of days before I check them.

A quick note to let folks know I'm still alive. The day job has been keeping me way too busy to do much blogging, that's ok, job security is a good thing. In other news my Ticket to Ride contest entry is essentially done so will be sending that off with fingers crossed. Otherwise I've been enjoying the streaming Netflix and catching up on shows the rest of you have watched ages ago *cough*Dr. Who, Torchwood, BSG, True Blood*cough*.

Farewell to 2010. It was a pretty good year for me, most of my wishes from 2009 were done. I think the main one that fell by the wayside was working on game design. Still not sure when I'll get to that. Travel was dominated by sun and included Tortola, San Diego, and Hawaii - hard to go wrong there. 2011 will include a trip to the Lake Tahoe area and possibly an Alaskan cruise. Biggest accomplishment for 2010 was getting the 2nd home and radiant_one out of the parents house - she should have her own wheels later this month at which there will be much rejoicing.

Here's to a joy filled 2011.

I am safe and sound, the Metro crash is on my regular commute route, but I had driven in today rather than train.