New Year list items!

• Happy New Year!
• This year we made 161 dumplings. This is more than last year. And exactly as delicious.
• Nearly all of the old pre-WordPress log is now back online (at exactly the old URLs, too; yay, Panix!), so you can now follow the dumpling-count links ‘way back into the past if you are so inclined, and enjoy the old #996633 based color scheme (or the alternate CSS skins, haha I was so l33t back then!).
• I go back to work tomorrow, after being on vacation for quite a long time due to having neglected to take very much vacation during the year.
• Work is, as I have mentioned previously, in Manhattan! I am exceedingly fond of Manhattan, and these days regularly wish it were a bit closer to home, or that one had (and could afford) a nice little pied-à-terre down there to spend the night now and then.
• The other day (while on vacation) I went down and had dinner with the little daughter, and then went out for a night of amazing jazz and blues at two prominent and wildly different Harlem clubs: Minton’s, and Paris Blues. Drank more than I had in years (bottle of beer, a screwdriver, and like four sangrias), walked a lot, and had a great time; the day deserves a weblog entry of its own, but may not get one given how much I’ve been writing weblog entries lately, so here we are.
• While I haven’t been weblogging, I have been hanging out now and then on Quora (where I have apparently answered like 68 questions, although most not recently), and on Twitter (soooo much time on Twitter; it is among other things where I get most of my news).
• Among other things on Quora, I answered a question with what turned out to be more or less that “How I Outgrew Libertarianism” post that I’ve been meaning to write here for years. Maybe I’ll eventually post it here, too, as-is or fleshed out.
• I’m still in Second Life a few times most weeks, but not nearly as much as I used to be. Not sure why, exactly; probably the four hours a day of commuting every week day has something to do with it! (A SL client that worked on Metro North would be interesting.)
• I was in WoW (rogue, demon hunter, priest, etc) pretty intensely for awhile after the expansion came out, but I got bored as usual at about the point where the main things left to do involve organized raiding parties.
• After consulting the little boy about it randomly, I started playing SWTOR in early December, and rather quickly found myself with a max-level Jedi Shadow. (SWTOR doesn’t seem to have web-page character profiles, tsk!) The game is extremely WoW-like, except for being in space, and having a stronger notion of linear stories than WoW (and a whole lot more voice-acting and cut-scenes; a whole lot).
• What else, what else? Just finished reading Single White Monk, and am vaguely thinking of writing a review and posting it somewhere. It’s an odd book; despite being about (parts of) the life of a Zen monk, there’s hardly any Zen at all in it, explicitly or otherwise.
• Donald Trump and his odious administration continue to do awful things to the nation and the world, primarily out of a desire for wealth and power, and secondarily due to ignorance and incompetence; I hope that among other things 2018 sees the Republican Party’s role in the U.S. government significantly reduced.
• I admit that I have not been going to protests or calling my (already anti-Trump) representatives as much as I did earlier in the year. If I made New Year’s Resolutions, one of them would be to get back to doing more of that in 2018.
• Another one would be to have more compassion, and less snark, in my discussions with people that I disagree with on Twitter. (See our earlier discussions on how best to show compassion for, say, neo-Nazis, in a way that maintains compassion for everyone else.)
• I’ve gotten pretty good, I think, over the years in noticing that, while it would probably be neat to own that thing, I would also be perfectly happy not owning it, and by not buying it I avoid increasing the number of unnecessary things I have. Another resolution would be to do a similar thing with food, and notice that, while it would be yummy to eat that thing, I would also be perfectly happy not eating it, and by not eating it I might be healthier in the long run.
• One barrier to that is that eating (unlike owning objects) is in many cases helpful in staving off anxiety and depression, which while still well-controlled (yay, Rosuvastatin!), is also still always there in the wings.
• I’m sure there were other things I was thinking of posting as list items here, but I can’t think of them at the moment, so perhaps I will post this soon.
• Happy New Year Some More!