The Year in Review

Once upon a time, Christmas and/or New Years included writing an old-fashioned family newsletter. These reports included lots of pictures of the kids, together with a few humble-bragging anecdotes. 

Then my life got ugly. For the last few years I couldn't bring myself to look back, or forward.

Fortunately, things are much better these days. Indeed, in some ways this entire blog is a verbose attempt to catch up with life. 

Rather than repeat myself in a newsletter, here's a quick recap of the year in review:

Best things about 2018:

1.   Family

2.   Mental health

3.   Writing

4.   Vancouver

4a.   …Men’s Chorus  

  

Worst things about 2018:

1.  People with cancer

2.  Frustrating job search

3.  Mean people
4.  Piano bar closed

5.  Moving 

Favorite Nonfiction:

1.  Robert Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

2.  Robert Wright, The Moral Animal

3.  Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind

Favorite Fiction:
 

1.    Andre Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

2.  Andrew Greer, Less

3.  P.G. Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning

Favorite Animated Movies:

1.  Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse 

2.  Incredibles 2          

3.  Ralph Breaks the Internet

Favorite Other Movies (I don’t get to see many other movies):

1.   I, Tonya

2.  Black Panther

3.  Crazy Rich Asians

Favorite TV shows:

            1.   Hannah Gadsby, Nanette 

            2.   Bojack Horseman

            3.   American Horror Story

I've also had a productive year of writing. I published 96 blog posts in 2018, totaling 102,162 words. The most common words are summarized in the word cloud above.  

Favorite blog posts about family:

1.  I Come From Good People (1/7/2018)

2.  Adoption Stories: Think of the Children (12/17/18)

3.  High School Musicals (11/28/18)

4.  Blaming the Children (9/21/19)

5.  Growing Up with the Chorus (11/14/18)

6.  Adoption Stories: How Eleanor Got Her Middle Name (12/13/18)

Favorite blog posts about everything else:

1.  Lilies that Fester (3/25/18)

2.  Six Degrees of Kristin Chenoweth (10/31/18)

3.  My Best Friend Paul (6/7/18)

4.  Lost in a Good Book (10/23/18)

5.  Woke Humans (12/11/18)

6.  Backing Up (12/5/18)

  

Most read blog posts:

1.  About My Yale Law School Classmate Brett Kavanaugh (9/24/18)

2.  Vote for Roger (7/22/18)

3.  Blaming Your Parents (4/1/18)

4.  Caring for your INFP (3/9/18)

5.  Moral Alignment (1/11/18)

Apparently the last two posts are some kind of search engine bait.

[When they came home from school, I gave each of my kids a writing assignment before turning on the electronics.]

Oliver's Top Apps:

1.  Fortnite 

2.  YouTube

3.  Sound Cloud

Rosalind's Favorite Video Games:

1.  Five Nights at Freddy's

2.  Overwatch

3.  Fran bow

Eleanor's Current Favorite TV Shows:

1.  Grey's Anatomy

2.  Friends

3.  Riverdale

4.  The Flash

5.  Jane the Virgin

6.  The Fosters

7.  Gossip Girl

Happy New Year from Bellingham and Vancouver