Oh hey, it’s 2016

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How did that happen then?

So, I think I missed my year in review thing for 2014, and I’ve felt a bit sad about that. But hey. Instead of worrying about it more, here is my 2015 in review, since 2016 has arrived.

A few days ago we were sat with our friends seeing in the New Year and talking about how hard 2015 was. Everyone I know seems to have had a tough 2015. It certainly felt that way from my personal perspective.

They were commenting that they sent their application in to move to the US in January. Having checked, we started dinking with the paperwork in January… And getting the house actually ready for sale. I spent most of the actual year just decorating. Decorating and finishing The List. It’s weird to think that the last year has largely been spent just in stasis. What is weird though is that actually? actually? Actually… we sent our application in in May. Those first 5 months of faffing and getting all of our ducks in some kind of row-based-organisation may have made the process feel painfully long, but they paid off. Because we’ve arrived and many things have aligned.

Although I’ll grant, I still have no job.

So whilst it feels like 2015 was really, really stressful stasis, most of that stress (as is so often the case with me) was self inflicted. Some of it was shite like the NCLEX exam which it turned out was not quite the disaster predicted. And whilst I’ve been looking at posts for something other than decorating, I’m finding that that part of my perception is right, I did mainly spend the year decorating. We did do some fun stuff though. Beyond the decorating, I did manage to cram in some more fun tasks – like building the greenshed. I also spent an inordinate amount of time on my 1920s/30’s bike that is currently traversing the ocean.

Some of the highlights of the year were in London. We spent a lot of time, relatively, visiting various museums in London. We hit up a fabulous Daphne Oram exhibit at the Science Museum, and also saw an utterly amazing Cosmonaut exhibition. And we saw a phenominal exhibition at the V&A called The Fabric of India (which I don’t seem to have written about weirdly).

We also had one of the most stunning holidays we’ve been on, dragging the Prius thousands of miles through Norway – a place which I’d wanted to visit for a very, very long time. Especially since I’ve a friend over there and had wanted to see her in her natural stomping grounds. And understand why she said it was so incredible. We didn’t quite make it all the way up to see her, but I do understand now. It’s just stunning.

What has been less fun and continues to be a bit of a pain is that my laptop broke… It still spontaneously reboots and now the battery (its second in its 8 year life) is dead. I’m trying to decide what the future holds for it. I’m loathe to replace something that, broadly speaking, does most of what I need. But a retina/infinity/ultrahighres display is really tempting. Of course, at the moment, not having a job means that ‘plugging it in all the time’ is pretty much the answer.

I did have some tech successes though. The media server was upgraded and although for a while it became a pain in the ass, it eventually got sorted and turned into a nice piece of kit. When it arrives in the US it’ll need a new power-supply though, as the current one is only 240 volt. Grr. The RiscPC has been repaired – with much help from John. Sadly the original mainboard is beyond salvage having been doused liberally in battery gunk.

Also with help from John, the Squeezebox2 was resurrected, adding more exciting kit to our Logitech Squeezebox collection. Much loved and completely unsupported now…

And of course… Rebecca returned to the road. Again. Briefly. She’s now in a shipping container crossing the ocean. Or something like that… hopefully she’ll be here soon, along with the rest of our stuff. At least, that which fitted in the container.

And all of that leads us into 2016, where we’re considering building a house, starting a business, and are currently planning to move somewhere neither of us have ever lived before. Which’ll be an exciting first for us.

And I’m starting this year in my trademark soothing fashion. With a driver’s exam. Woot.

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.