Happy Old Year?

The obligatory blog post referencing the year past:

2012 began in January, which is kind of old hat for a year, which is kind of how last year went. A few notable changes, but not much new.

We lost our oldest cat, Ruckus, who was aptly named and is much missed. We gave up our oldest car (see previous post on Kermit). A new cat (Monday) came briefly into our lives, before finding a permanent home at a refuge for cats with feline leukemia.

Ruckus, making himself at home in whatever container he felt like.

New furniture and paint helped personalize the house we bought in 2011, but much is left to be done there. And the new living room furniture is perpetually covered to keep the cat hair off of it, so we only partially experience it.

Our two beagles each had surgery. Opus’ gall bladder was removed, and Cecilia had to have a ligament reattached to her right knee. (Probably torn from chasing one of the cats.) Both are still convalescing, or, as they say in the ‘hood, convalescin’.

No particular progress was made with getting myself into better physical shape in 2012, but a plan exists going forward, and I did buy a bike in June and regularly use it to get to the train station.

I can’t say that anything significant happened professionally, either, in 2012. I hope that changes in 2013, but it will depend largely on budget money becoming available for additional training.

A trip to New York in August was the highlight of the year, but I was put off by the city’s lack of recycling containers throughout Manhattan. What’s up with that? I saw a couple of them in Central Park, and that was it. Everything else went into the garbage. And the service in restaurants was horrible, almost without exception. Is going out to eat in New York an exercise in being ignored or something? Is it some sort of performance art I wasn’t in on?

So that was 2012 – a year of buying furniture, giving away a car, saying goodbye to an old friend, tending to our pups and visiting NYC. 2013 has a low hurdle to clear.