Tag Archives: year in review

2020 In Life: My “Year like no other”

Posted on by John

This past year has left and will leave its stain on us for the rest of our lives, and will be one mentioned in history books. I am, and I do not say this lightly, thankful that I survived, and always mindful of all those lost to the pandemic and to the other issues that have rocked us throughout. In the midst of our national and world strife, each of us have had a personal story in 2020, and so I’ve decided for the archives to capture a bit of mine.

January opens the same way it had for the previous 2 years of our marriage, with my wife and I preparing for and getting excited about our anniversary (January 27) trip. We have this crazy theory that the enjoyment or lack of in our trip sets the tone for the whole year going forward. Miami in 2019 is one we still talk about, having lived up to our hopes for a honeymoon destination. Tampa of 2020, about which I only wrote that one entry because I figured you didn’t really care,… did not. For several reasons but probably the biggest was that it was so cold! We were shocked that the temperature never really got out of the 50s from the Monday we arrived until it finally climbed on that Thursday as we readied to depart.

The second reason, at least in our opinion, is that there just wasn’t a whole lot to do. We got caught in a gale really at St. Pete Beach on Tuesday and were fortunate not to have been swept into the water at the edge of a long pier. On Wednesday, we opted to go to Orlando’s Universal Studios, which was pricey but a unique experience as most of the rides were inside and based on movies. A very visual experience, I still managed to have fun filling some of it in with my imagination.

We had already known that February would be quiet, as she needed to get a personal surgery that would put her down for most of that month. But we were all fired up to get back going by the end of March, with plans to attend River Dance at DPAC. I think I would have enjoyed that, but…

There came COVID. Well after I had already been officially diagnosed as diabetic at the end of February, a condition I’d no doubt had for at least a year prior and probably longer.

Even as I dealt with the complications of starting to manage that, I remember the shock and fear I felt as the pandemic kicked into full gear. I first took it seriously when the NBA and other sports in rapid succession shut down on March 11, and only a week later I’d left work and entered a 2-month quarantine. Remember that just prior to then, we were being told to worry more about the flu than this new thing called Coronavirus that was not likely to spread widely. Oh how wrong they were.

April and early May proceeded relatively quietly, until a jaw infection that had probably been festering for a year decided to rear up and cause big problems, leading to three teeth being pulled. Ouch. I was glad to have gotten through that challenge as well, and more that it hadn’t turned out to be something a lot scarier.

In June, I lost my father to cancer. I think I’m still dealing with the grief of that loss, as I was hoping to have time after COVID (whenever that is) to hang out with him. I was also tasked that month with returning to work under the mask mandate and no longer using public transportation because of all the safety changes that had been made. But fortunately for me, things have mostly gone smoothly with regard to that transition.

The rest of the year, July to December, was relatively uneventful. Unusually so really, thanks to this virus. It’s why I managed to set a new books-read record and get something like 10 book reviews out in total. We, like everyone I think, had that brief period from July till October where we almost thought we had COVID coming under control, then boom! It’s been up, up, up, since then sadly. No more trips, and then basically locked inside once the October temps dropped.

On balance though, I am thankful to still be here dealing with these minor inconveniences. Hopefully things are truly starting to look up, as we wonkily roll out the vaccine and some degree of immunity develops. I seem poised to have a fantastic, if incredibly busy 2021, but there’ll be more on that in the subsequent entry. Hang in there folks, I think it’ll get better soon.

Cha-cha-changes

Posted on by John

Welcome to the first official post of 2015! Yeah I know, some of the Louisiana entries were made during 2015, but they were referring to an event that happened way back in ancient times of the year previous. So, here ya go.

Man, has this year gotten off to a rockin’ start! It is setting up to challenge me in ways I’ve never really been challenged, but that will help me get closer to where I want to be pretty quickly. These changes are happening on both a professional and personal level.

First, excitedly, I have been named President of the Norrie Disease Association. This was necessitated by our previous president having to step down due to some unfortunate circumstances that have made it difficult for him to continue in that role. While the reasons make me sad, I am still appreciative of having this opportunity and hope I can make the most of it. I got a strong vote of confidence from my fellow board members, though I honestly am not entirely certain why. Me? One who is sometimes too shy to make a simple phone call? Who definitely has a ways to go before he is as assertive as he would like to be? But, I hope I have made and am making progress in this area, and it will help to have such knowledgeable people to assist me as I do so. We’ll see if this August’s conference goes off fairly well.

RELATED: Five Years of the NDA

Second, this city and the Triangle Transit system have decided to pull a bit of a switcheroo on me. They’ve altered some of the routes that I take, especially that which I use to get home from work. I hadn’t known this initially, I suppose because I wasn’t smart enough to check the service changes page they posted shortly after the year began. This meant I got stuck at Durham Station downtown for 30 minutes, in the cold wind! I have since been trying to learn how to get from my old bus to the new one, and a cool thing is that BlindSquare GPS, an app on my iPhone, can actually tell me where the buses are within the station. Well it probably has some set database that doesn’t change often, as some of the numbers are transposed a bit. For example, the 700 now stops where the 400 used to, so it still calls that the 400. But as long as I know this, I can easily still use it to track my location. Hopefully I will know it by rote soon enough.

The final change I will talk about at this point is in my reading habits. Check out my 2014 Booklist, which you should find in the “Pages” section of this site. There, I note that I consumed 34 titles last year, a record for me. Many of these titles were by so-called “indie” authors, as I’ve befriended them on Twitter and wanted then to check out their works. As local writer Monica Byrne noted in an article that discussed her book, 2014 was actually the year of the indie author in many respects. One of its best reads, The Martian, had been put out by an unknown guy named Andy Weir. The thing I most liked about this book is that, while he clearly knows his stuff regarding what the planet is like, how one might experience a mission there, etc.; he does a good job of making things understandable to those of us who maybe don’t have such advanced knowledge.

I also took in more nonfiction than I ever have before. I’m thus starting off this year in the same way, currently reading a very popular title called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks about a black woman who’s cancer cells were scooped in the 50s, implanted in a dish, and have gone on to aid in lots of research, medications, and the like. It’s an interesting read.

I have it as a goal this year to reach fifty (5-0!) books. That’s a lot for me, as I normally don’t have a whole lot of time to sit and read. I’m doing them two at a time though, and already about a third of the way through both books three and four.

I have them all in my iPhone these days, using the Audible, BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) mobile, iBooks, and Kindle Apps. All of these apps have their pros and cons, but as far as functionality goes I think Audible tops the list. In Kindle, if I happen to get a notification it shoots me to the top of the page I was currently reading. In iBooks, I am slowed by having to wait for the page-changing announcement to disappear, though I suppose I do like this announcement since I can keep track of my progress. And in BARD, the audio books work fine, but I wish the Braille books would be automatically marked when you stop. If I forget to set a mark before closing the app, it’ll jump back to the beginning of the book and I must then find my place again. Depending on how far I’ve read in, this can take a while!

Anyway, that’s a quick scan of 2015 as it has unfolded thus far. It looks to be an entertaining year, full of unexpected occurrences. I just hope most of those are favorable for me and for us all. More soon.