I guess so, why not? In no particular order, here are memories, items consumed, experiences experienced during the dumpster fire of 2024.
Gigs played
According to my handy spreadsheet, I played 18 shows: 6 with PITO, 7 with SGs, and 5 as a sub. Spread out pretty well between the bands, I guess, but I would have liked more shows overall. Financially speaking, about $2300 for the year, but that's not counting PITO take, which we put into the band fund pot for whatever. I may need to cash that out just to have it in pocket.
I subbed with Greg Hoy, the Greenwood Music Collective, Del Vox and Lawnlife. I think those were the most lucrative, bringing in $1100 total. The gigs from Greg and GMC and $$ I had left over from 2023 also funded the butter bass, so that was coooool.
Books read
Finished the year at 36.5 books read, with Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest completed on 1/2/24. My most read author was Catherine Ryan Howard, with five of her books. For the most part, I liked her books, but I think I got burnt out. I read three more of Alexander McCall Smith and they were all meh. I need more Inspector Varg; those are good books.
Guilty reads continued with CJ Box and Lincoln/Child. Robert Galbraith entered the list again, with another long, drawn out book. She just needs to get on with the will they/won't they angle and get it over with.
Don Winslow concluded his career with City in Ruins and that is a bummer. Richard Osman with a new set of characters in We Solve Murders, which was perfectly entertaining, but I rushed through it because I had several books on hold that were hitting at the same time.
Best choice of the year was re-reading the Millenium series, featuring Lisbeth Salander. I found a hardback copy of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo at a nearby Little Free Library and grabbed it. Of course, I grabbed a Kindle copy and started reading it. I know I had read the trilogy sometime before (spreadsheet shows prior to 2020, likely way earlier than that), but it had been long enough that I recalled hardly any of the details. I blew through that and the sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire, before moving onto some other books. As mentioned, I finished the last book yesterday and have moved onto the series continued after Larsson's death. We'll see how these books go.
Games played
I have no spreadsheet for this but basically I played Division 2 this year, reaching 1k SHD finally. I revisited (again) the original Division, and got to level 30, where the enemies are easier to kill, mainly because I'm leveled up now. It still holds up and I love it, but do wish it had the QOL updates that D2 has.
I tried Dying Light, an FPS zombie type game with Division style leveling. It's cool and runs great on my computer, but I need to dedicate more time to it. I end up rolling back to D2 most times.
I picked up Jedi Survivor and it's cool, but man, something is different from the first one, that I loved so much. Maybe I got burned out on it?
I finally finished RDR2's main story. Good stuff, though I'm still working on the epilogue. I need to go back and do side quests and random stories. Too good to not do, but just a big time sink.
For Christmas, I got Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and despite the horrible title, this game is the best game I've played in years! It is so much fun! It is beautiful, it ticks all my boxes (exploration, light action, killer story). The sound effects (punches and guns, esp) are straight out of the movies. The voice acting is top notch and though Indy doesn't look and sound *exactly* like Indiana Jones, when you are immersed in it, he is Indiana Jones. It is quite awesome and I can't wait to see how it plays out. I think I'm about 75% done with the main story now and all the side quests will be killer.
Shows watched
Hard to remember earlier in the year but most recently, it's been Schitt's Creek. My second watch, Marci's first and we both love it. It's nice to revisit and we should be finishing it in the next few nights.
We also started all these female detective shows. Elsbeth is one. It's funny and charming and Elsbeth is a great character. Matlock is basically the same show, only with an overarching storyline, in addition to the mysteries of the week. And then there's High Potential, which I don't like as much, but the star is easy on the eyes, so there's that.
Sad to say, we watched another Golden Bachelor/ette, but this time, there was an Asian bachelor, who obviously had no chance, but they sort of turned him into a mascot. Plus, he reminded me of Dad a bunch, so there's that.
Music listened to
Not much new here. Mainly yacht rock and classic rock, as always. I didn't fall for anything new, nor did anything old catch my ear. What is music anymore?
Cool things in 2024
Oh, I got a job in late January. Back at the IEC. Loving it and they love me. Will see how that goes this year as the building is scheduled to close in July. Supposedly there are plans to move us all to EC1, but that's not concrete at the moment, hope to learn more as it happens.
Took a road trip with Riley in May to bring him back from CMU. Nothing special happened, but it's fun to spend time with the kids in that capacity when there's nothing to do but hang out. We missed Marci's birthday, but made it up to her when we got back.
Haley is motoring through WWU. She has/had? a new friend, Evan, that she met at the Y over the summer. Then the other night she brought home a friend (non-student, he's in the Navy) named Blake, who was polite enough. She was taking him to the airport. She will graduate this spring and is excited for it. Not sure what is going to happen after that, but I'm guessing she's moving back home.
Marci has been at her job doing her best. She's getting tired of it; they changed leadership this year and it's been a struggle. That and getting teacher pay and working teacher's hours has been a challenge for sure. Not sure what the plan is, but maybe a new school will be in the works for 2025?
Overall, things are fine. We are making things work and surviving. Mom says things will be even better for us this year. Not that things were bad in 2024, but any growth and improvement is great.
Let's get it!!
