The Mandelbear's Musings

It's been a rough, busy year, even though it feels, looking back, that I wasn't very productive. A lot of what I'd planned on doing didn't get done; I'm trying to convince myself that packing up the Whidbey Island house and my Seattle apartment, buying a house on another continent, and moving into it lock, stock, and kittycats (it's not the first time I've had occasion to use that phrase) was enough.

Oh, and selling my car, Molly, and buying a new 3-wheeled enclosed mobility scooter, which N dubbed Scarlett. Because it's a car-let.

( The details -- goals from last New Year's Eve )

Total (85 + 100 + 70 + 100 + 100 + 50 + 40 + 70) = 615 out of a possible 900, so a bit over 68%. Not great, but twice as good as last year's 34%. I'll take it.

Another unscheduled action was writing a "what has the bear been doing lately" infodump to be distributed mostly by email to people who aren't keeping up with Dreamwidth. Next year, I guess.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Along with a lot of procrastination (see below), 2023 was notable for

• A trip to the Netherlands with N and G, taking in Leiden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam. Its final week was marred by...
• The untimely demise of our household's pocket panther, Desti.
• Several other deaths, not in my immediate family, but not far from it either.
• My battle, officially from the end of September, with prostate cancer. As of a couple of weeks ago I appear to be winning, but October, November, and about half of December were exceedingly uncomfortable.
• The sale of Rainbow's End North, our house on Whidbey Island. The last house I'll ever share with Colleen.

On the whole, it wasn't a very good year.

And now it's time to wrap up the year's accomplishments procrastinations, and see how I did -- or more accurately didn't -- against the goals I laid out last New Year's Day.

( Dismal details )

So all-in-all, 75+40+80+40+25+10 = 270, out of a possible 800. Terrible. I'm not sure prostate cancer is much of an excuse, but I'll grasp at that straw anyway.

... and so ends another year. Not as bad as the previous one (a very low bar), but I've gotten very little done.

1. The new top goal is moving down to Seattle to live in N's ADU (variously called "the studio" or "the lair"). In particular, I have to move the cats before c leaves in the spring; that means also moving a bed and a recliner, minimum.
   Well, the recliner wouldn't fit, and the bed is really too big for the room -- maybe I should have left the bed and kept the chair. But home is where the cats are. 95% is pushing it a little, but it's my list. I'll take it.
2. I'm keeping self care near the top; I actually did fairly well with this one last year. Not going to be any more specific.
   I'm going to say 75%. Pretty regular exercise (thanks to my physical therapist), not a whole lot of walking -- not going to look at the counts. A trifling amount of weight loss. Two COVID boosters. As for mental self-care, I'm in a couple of grief support groups, and as I said last year, "I didn't actually do much, but I didn't fall apart either."
3. Write more, doomscroll less. I still want to add a couple of "real" posts to my week. I'll settle for an average of one, besides done, thanks, and the occasional s4s. Track by appending the previous month's summary to the monthly Rabbit Rabbit post.
   Well, so much for tracking. But this year's stats so far are: 95854 words in 195 posts total in 2022 (average 491/post), compared to 107466 words in 170 posts total in 2021 (average 632/post). So I wrote fewer words, but averaged nearly four posts/week. And this doesn't count a few posts in GoingSideways, plus a couple more attributed to a certain crab. So I'm going to give myself 75% on this one.
4. Finish what I call my EOL paperwork -- will, advanced directive, power of attorney, and guides to my paper and electronic files. Five items. Includes finding a lawyer and maybe an executor.
   Well, I got maybe half of the documentation done, no lawyer, no executor. So 10%, if I'm being generous.
5. The remaining parts of wrapping up Mom's estate. The financial part is still in progress, and I've done nothing about her computer, files, and online accounts. And I still have to make her memorial page. EEK.
   Um... I think the financial part is basically done, except for the transfers to my own brokerage account. And a few of her belongings have been distributed to the kids and others. So... 50%?
6. Sell or give away Colleen's medical equipment. That will probably mean going through an agent.
   Nothing. Zip. Zero.
7. Singing, dammit. Not much more detail (see last year for that).
   Some planning, a little practicing, and one concert. Maybe 30%? That's stretching it.

So all-in-all, 95+75+75+10+50+0+30 = 335 out of a possible 700, or about 49%. Which, honestly, is lot more than I expected it to be. It was 41% last year (65% the year before, but that was then). So I'll take it.

I really should have included getting the house ready to sell. Which would have rated about 20% at the outside. But I didn't. I hired an organizer to help with putting an estate sale together, but she turned out to be an anti-vaxxer and I decided I couldn't work with her. Other things not done include the landscaping -- the yard is a total wreck after having been abandoned for two years -- and repairs on the house.

Things I did accomplish that weren't on the list included getting the cats to vet appointments (at vast expense), and maintaining and updating GoingSideways.blog. (Mostly not writing -- N did most of that -- but actually getting posts and photos together and uploaded. I should write up the process -- it's effective but probably wouldn't work for anyone but me.)

Posting stats:
all of 2022 by month:
   9076 words in 22 posts in 2022/01 (average 412/post)
   6034 words in 15 posts in 2022/02 (average 402/post)
   6961 words in 18 posts in 2022/03 (average 386/post)
   6624 words in 12 posts in 2022/04 (average 552/post)
   6742 words in 13 posts in 2022/05 (average 518/post)
   7601 words in 21 posts in 2022/06 (average 361/post)
   8632 words in 17 posts in 2022/07 (average 507/post)
   9263 words in 20 posts in 2022/08 (average 463/post)
   8397 words in 16 posts in 2022/09 (average 524/post)
   7634 words in 11 posts in 2022/10 (average 694/post)
   8734 words in 15 posts in 2022/11 (average 582/post)
  10156 words in 15 posts in 2022/12 (average 677/post)
---------------------------------
  95854 words in 195 posts total in 2022 (average 491/post)

Hey, 2021! Don't let the door hit you on the way out. And I thought 2020 was bad... Last New Year's day I wrote:

I would like to think that 2021 will be an improvement on its predecessor, but I am not so foolish as to say so out loud for fear that it will be taken as a challenge.

It didn't work. A year that starts with an insurrection (which one assumes was just practice for the next one), goes on to include my wife dying half-way through, and ends with being snowed in, is not a good year by any stretch of the imagination.

So here are my goals from last year:

1. I'm going to put self-care back at the top this year,... back exercises, walking,... getting vaccinated against COVID-19,... [l]osing weight,... and [m]ental self-care. (5 sub-goals, but fractional completion is likely for most of them.)
   Um, right. 20% each. Back exercises: I count 76, so 20*76/365~=4 percentage points. Walking: 54 -> 3. Getting vaxed: 20. I said it would be a no-brainer. Losing weight: that's easy -- 0. Finally, mental self-care. I think I'm going to give myself 20 for this one: I didn't actually do much, but I didn't fall apart either. Total: 47/100.
2. [T]aking care of Colleen.
   I did what I could. She had two weeks at home before her final 10 days in the hospital, and I was able to visit her there, and be there when she finally left me. 100.
3. Wrapping up Mom's estate... taking charge of her computer, files, and any online accounts....
   As it turned out, I still haven't really dealt with the computer and accounts, and there are plenty of financial loose ends, but I'm going to say 45 anyway.
4. Update paperwork, because 2020. Wills, advanced directives, powers of attorney, Colleen's passport and ID renewals, and guides to my paper and electronic files. (10 items total, to make it easy at year's end.)
   Well, I started... just barely. And I at least looked at my existing will; it's close, anyway. Half of those 10 items proved to be moot, of course. I'm going to say 10/50=20.
5. Music: singing ... and hopefully recording... recorded or streamed concerts, too... Two hours of singing per week gives a nice solid total of 100
   Well, 95 lines in the log, which is more than I expected, but most of those were a lot less than half an hour. I'm going to say 50%, which I suspect is an overestimate.
6. Doing the rest of the sorting in the garage would be a good idea too. Sub-goals of getting all the book boxes sorted and re-boxed by category, sweeping out the northeast corner, putting up the lights, and making the workbench usable.
   I got one light up, and sorted somewhere over half the boxes. 25%?
7. [D]ecluttering, ... downsizing, ... Getting rid of Stuff. Finding places for things. Moving to Seattle part-time makes that hard to assess, but I'll give myself 25% for this mostly because of Colleen's stuff.
8. I should write more.
   Ha! 15%, maybe? Hmm: 168 posts and over 100K words so far this year, and I almost forgot to include $writing-gigs 3-6. Maybe I should say 75%? Still doesn't feel like it.
9. [W]ebsite maintenance needed, including updates to lyrics, cleaning out cruft in the older websites, and creating a memorial page for Mom.
   10% maybe? That's being generous.
10. I should write more software, too... tracking singing and self-care time, auto-linking concerts and DW posts from song pages, and the long-delayed command-line DW client.
    Mostly a lot of 1-liners for tracking, `make save` in MakeStuff/blogging, and not much else. 10, maybe.

Total for all that, 47 + 100 + 45 + 20 + 50 + 25 + 25 + 75 + 10 + 10 = 407/1000, which rounds to 41%. Pretty poor, compared to 68% last year and even 48% in 2019. But I've already said that 2021 was a bad year. I got through it, which maybe should have been a goal all by itself.

As for posting, ...

Posting stats:
all of 2021 by month:
  10548 words in 17 posts in 2021/01 (average 620/post)
   6945 words in 12 posts in 2021/02 (average 578/post)
   6914 words in 12 posts in 2021/03 (average 576/post)
  11164 words in 19 posts in 2021/04 (average 587/post)
  11244 words in 15 posts in 2021/05 (average 749/post)
   6672 words in 11 posts in 2021/06 (average 606/post)
   9853 words in 13 posts in 2021/07 (average 757/post)
   9099 words in 15 posts in 2021/08 (average 606/post)
   9155 words in 15 posts in 2021/09 (average 610/post)
  11220 words in 17 posts in 2021/10 (average 660/post)
   7573 words in 13 posts in 2021/11 (average 582/post)
   7059 words in 11 posts in 2021/12 (average 641/post)
---------------------------------
 107446 words in 170 posts total in 2021 (average 632/post)

Here, for what it's worth, is my review of the goals from last New Year's Day. I'm not sure there's ever been a year I was as glad to see the ass-end of as 2020, though 1990, 1999, 2012, and 2016 all had their awful parts, and I'm really bad at ranking things.

1. I've never been much good at self care, either, so I'm putting it on the list again. At the top. [...] Going for walks and getting to the dentist would be plausible sub-goals.
   No walks, but I did get both me and Colleen to the dentist, multiple times. And... I lived through the year, and didn't catch COVID-19, so I'm going to take that as circumstantial evidence that I didn't do all that badly. Let's say 80%.
2. Mom's hundredth birthday party is still a plausible goal, though she's told my brother and me that if we want one we'll have to plan it ourselves this year. E is studying to be an event planner. Hmm.
   ... Nope; Mom died around the end of October, two months before her birthday. We'll get together by zoom on the day. I'm going to give myself a pass on this one. Dropped.
3. I hit the post-every-day goal of NaBloPoMo last year (after missing it by a few in 2018). Hopefully I can do it again.
   ... but I didn't, by one post. I did hit the much easier goal of at least 30 posts in 30 days. On that basis I'm going to say 97%.
4. I think a full 14 songs during FAWM is unlikely, but I'd like to do better than the five I wrote last year. I'll settle for seven.
   ... but blew it off completely. 0%.
5. Also under music, a concert at Westercon would be a good thing to aim for. I'll put a CD down as a stretch goal. How long has it been now?
   Between a 55-minute concert at Or e-Con and my portion of the Listeners' Choice concert at what would have been Consonance, I'm going to give mysef 100% for this even though neither of those was planned.
6. A little extra income would be nice. A full-time job is out of the question, but a couple of weekends of vacation rental would be possible, as would another writing gig.
   Nope. 5%, because I suppose I might have gotten off my tail and rented the Box Room a couple of times, except COVID. And perhaps a pig might have gone flying by while I wasn't looking.
7. Now that the yard is on its way to being under control (i.e. having money thrown at it), I can put the garden and gravel paths on the list, and add the driveway as a stretch.
   Quite a lot of money did get put into the yard, not that there's all that much to show for it. But still... 85% maybe.
8. I need to do a couple of things in the garage -- get rid of the recyclables, donatables, and trash in the northeast corner; and sort through the boxes of books. Having the rest of the family up together with an organizer would be nice, but it's not likely to happen until Spring at the earliest.
   I didn't get everything done, but L' did quite a lot inclucing trash and recyclables. So 90%?

Total, 267 out of a possible 700, which rounds up to 68%. That compares to 48% last year. I'm surprised. It probably just means that I'm setting the bar too low, which probably isn't all that good for me. Bye 2020 GIF - GIPHY (via Inkygirl on GIPHY)

(Note: this post was started Sunday the 3rd, and planned as Episode 11, but it got pre-empted Monday morning and again on Tuesday. It then got dropped on the floor while wrote Singing in the time of COVID-19.)

I have not been getting much done. I'd originally meant this to be a mix of planning, accountability (i.e. writing out those plans so everyone can see how little I'm accomplishing), and random wibbling. I have moved the random part into another post so you don't have to look at it. TL;DR: see mood.

Actually, looking at my patheticmodest set of goals from my New Year's Day post, I see that I can count at least partial success for #1 (mainly because I did get to the dentist once, but I'm going to count staying home during the lockdown under self-care), #5 total failure for #4, and infinitesimal but non-zero progress on #7 and #8.

(There will be a brief pause while the bear claws his way up out of an infinitesimally deep mathematical hole. This is complicated by the fact that any sum of infinitessimals is still less than any given positive real number...)

(If he were a real bear as opposed to a surreal bear, this would not be a problem, since the real numbers do not include infinitessimals.) Anyway...

There some obvious categories of things I can work on:

1. Paperwork. First my income tax; the deadline has been extended, but it still needs to be done. Then, the stuff aimed at the other certainty: advance directives, powers of attorney, a will for Colleen, and a comprehensive list of important documents, account numbers, and so on.
2. The electronic equivalent of the above probably deserves a separate category. If I don't leave some pointers, some important things will become inaccessible.
3. Music. I need to sing more often, and longer.
4. Writing. Not merely DW -- I need more computer-related (curmudgeon) posts.
5. Organizing and getting rid of STUFF. I'd say that this is a mammoth task, except that the STUFF almost certainly outweighs a mammoth and possibly even a medium-sized whale.

In the interest of making some kind of progress, I'm going to post this even though it feels incomplete. I could work on it for another month, add a sentence or two, and it would still feel incomplete. So...

It's that time of year -- the time when I look back over my goals for the year that was, and cringe. Actually, I did better this year than last. But that's a very low bar.

1. Okay, then. The number one goal is simply getting through the damned year, alive and with one or more roofs over our heads...
   90% -- always nice to start out with something easy. Only it wasn't particularly. And the "alive" part involved more close calls than I like to think about. And there were losses outside the immediate family.
2. There are two bucket-list events coming up; the first is my 50th college reunion. I don't want a repeat of the my high school reunion debacle. I'm going.
   100% -- and I had a blast.
3. The second is Mom's 99th birthday celebration.
   100% -- Same as above. I sang two songs: Get Up and Go, and The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of, and pretty much nailed them.
4. There's a lot of yard work that needs to get done in order to make the apartment over the garage attractive as a vacation rental. Weeding, mowing, and fixing the driveway are the high-order bits.
   I'm going to say 40% for this one. Most of the weeding and mowing has been done, and not terribly expensively. The rest is waiting on the weather, but it'll happen. Fixing the driveway, weeding the gravel paths, and making the garden usable again... not so much.
5. There's also a huge amount of paperwork associated with setting up a vacation rental as well -- business license, tax stuff, all that. Not to mention putting (some fraction of) the associated remodeling on our taxes. Lots of figuring-out to do. Just the sort of thing I hate.
   5%? The only thing I did about setting up a vacation rental was deciding to postpone or cancel it. :P
6. I have to either get a job (which is unlikely and largely out of my control, but I have to at least crank out the applications) or start a business.
   50%? I applied for quite a few jobs, and didn't get any of them. That's probably a good thing. I didn't file any paperwork, but I set up the Computer Curmudgeon website, but didn't promote it. I got a small writing gig as well, though it appears to have been a one-shot, so I don't think it qualifies as starting a business.
7. I have to put in an amended tax return for 2017; that means finding the rest of the receipts for work done on the house. Mostly that's yard, deck, bathroom, studio, and the stairlifts.
   0% -- punt to next year.
8. Having just found out that my posting software hasn't been passing the Music: header up to DW, I'm putting writing a good command-line DW client on the list. Most likely written in Perl, Python, or Go. Of course, it needs to be able to upload as well as post, in order to backfill the music.
   Maybe 30%. The posting software has been vastly improved, and even partly documented, but I never wrote a new client, just improved the wrapper.
9. Speaking of music, we're working toward a concert at Conflikt in 2020. That means not only picking our setlist and rehearsing the heck out of it, but having CDs to sell. This is a huge stretch -- recording new CDs has been on my to-do list for over a decade now (CC&S came out in 2007).
   10% maybe? Maybe. I'm only giving myself credit for that much because the failure really wasn't something I had any control over. We'll aim for something next year.
   Add an extra 5% for getting back to singing lessons and singing at Mom's party.
10. And then there's writing. No particular target, but definitely more curmudgeon and s4s posts.
    100% -- 9 curmudgeon, 19 s4s posts, 5 FAWM songs, and one piece of professional technical writing. (In contrast, 2018 saw 35 curmudgeon posts, but only 13 s4s posts and no songs. I originally had 120%, but I'm taking off 20% because of the poor showing in curmudgeon posts. It would have been more like 75 except for the songs and the tutorial.)

All-in-all, 480% out of a possible 1000, for an average of 48%. Considering that 2018's tally was 45.3 out of 1100, or 4.1%, I'd say I did pretty well by comparison. Of course, I'd set myself a lower bar.

In terms of posting stats, I didn't do as well. In 2018 I wrote 147384 words in 161 posts, for an average of 915/post. I made more posts this year, but wrote considerably fewer words and nearly 2/3 as many words per post on average.

Posting: all of 2019 by month (through 12/30):
   9346 words in 23 posts	 in 2019/01 (average 406/post)
   8891 words in 16 posts	 in 2019/02 (average 555/post)
  14298 words in 19 posts	 in 2019/03 (average 752/post)
   8430 words in 15 posts	 in 2019/04 (average 562/post)
   7851 words in 13 posts	 in 2019/05 (average 603/post)
   9207 words in 13 posts	 in 2019/06 (average 708/post)
   9320 words in 14 posts	 in 2019/07 (average 665/post)
   8133 words in 13 posts	 in 2019/08 (average 625/post)
  10772 words in 11 posts	 in 2019/09 (average 979/post)
   6320 words in 10 posts	 in 2019/10 (average 632/post)
  16056 words in 30 posts	 in 2019/11 (average 535/post)
  11039 words in 13 posts	 in 2019/12 (average 849/post)
----------------------------------
 119663 words in 190 posts total in 2019 (average 629/post)

I should make "summary of the year" and maybe "summary of the decade" posts. Or maybe "The Last 20 Years". I don't think I will just yet. You'll find some of that in my next "State of the Bear" post (which I haven't finished, but have at least started). For now, let's just say that 2019 sucked in many ways. So did a lot of 2018. So did...

I'd love to see 2020 turn things around and be a great year, but I'm not going to count on it. See you tomorrow next year!

... and as usual, even a lot of things that should have been easy didn't get done. I'd say that I blew it completely, but that's probably letting myself off easy.

Let's look at the goals for this year:

( tl;dr: a total disaster )

45 1/3 out of a possible 1100. Average: 4.1%. Not one of my better years. Possibly my worst.

On a perhaps more encouraging note, here are my posting statistics by month:

Posting stats:
all of 2018 by month:
  14297 words in 11 posts	 in 2018/01 (average 1299/post)
   9412 words in  7 posts	 in 2018/02 (average 1344/post)
   8753 words in  5 posts	 in 2018/03 (average 1750/post)
  11671 words in  7 posts	 in 2018/04 (average 1667/post)
  11813 words in 17 posts	 in 2018/05 (average 694/post)
  14436 words in 15 posts	 in 2018/06 (average 962/post)
  19415 words in 17 posts	 in 2018/07 (average 1142/post)
   7579 words in 10 posts	 in 2018/08 (average 757/post)
   9339 words in 12 posts	 in 2018/09 (average 778/post)
  12017 words in 11 posts	 in 2018/10 (average 1092/post)
  15617 words in 30 posts	 in 2018/11 (average 520/post)
  12774 words in 18 posts	 in 2018/12 (average 709/post)
----------------------------------
 147123 words in 160 posts total in 2018 (average 919/post)

It looks as though I've been posting about every other day most months, and nearly every day in November. Not sure what happened in February through April -- those were little more than the done posts. Okay, that wasn't really very encouraging.

I'm not really up to writing a narrative summary of the year. I prefer stories with happy endings and, preferably, not too much bad stuff getting there. I also hate cliffhangers, and this year certainly counts in that category.

... or something like that. 2017 was very much a mixed bag. Let's go back to last New Year's Day, and a post titled "This had better work...". I think, for the most part, it did. That didn't keep it from being horrible.

So here were my goals for this year:

1. Downsize. Get rid of as much stuff as we feasibly can, so that we can...
   Yeah; we still kept too much stuff, but we did a pretty good job and got rid of somewhere around 2/3 of it. In the end, it all packed down into three 8x8x16 containers. 100%
2. Sell the house. Preferably in such a way that we can move out somewhere around the middle of June.
   About $100K less than we really planned on getting for it, but we did it. Between that and the necessary repairs, we ended up with a lot less money than we needed. 90%
3. Retire. If possible, after the house is sold. If at all possible, after my stock vests in mid-June, because we're going to need it.
   Did that, at the end of April. 100%
4. Move. No idea where; we've had enough monkey wrenches lobbed into our plans that I could start a hardware store.
   ... and here we are on Whidbey Island. 100%
5. Settle in. We will have emergency exit plans, but hopefully won't have to use them.
   I wouldn't say we're completely settled, but the place feels like home now. 90% (unless you count unpacking all the boxes, in which case more like 75%)
6. Take care of myself. Self-care is one of my weak points. Diet, exercise, ... damned if I know -- I hate exercise.
   I have not been taking very good care of myself. Still no walking to speak of, though I appear to have lost between 2 and 4 pounds since last January in spite of that. Psychologically, I don't feel as though I've made much progress either, but hopefully I'm learning to be a little easier on myself. 20%?

I wrote, "Is that too much to aim for? I hope not." I don't think it was too ambitions. I also wrote: "There are a few things I'd like to do, if I can:" -- That was a lot less successful. No surprise.

• Get back into recording.
  nope. 10%, because N and I did start singing lessons.
• Do a lot more writing. I wrote a book once; it's not impossible for me to do it again.
  
0%
• Do a little woodworking.
  10%, but only if you count putting up shelves in the new house.
• Do something that will bring in a little money. I'm not sure I'm up for contracting again, but writing could do it. So could an album or two. And maybe I could start a patreon.
  Nope. 0% Didn't do any volunteering, either.

In spite of 2017 being really sucky in a lot of ways, our household (now called The Rainbow Caravan) seems to have gotten out of it more-or-less okay. We have a nice house, plans to make it better, and two new kittens. That has to count for something, right?

2016 SUCKED. Right up until the end, and it's planning to stick around for an extra (leap) second just to rub it in. I want to be up at 23:60 to watch it die. Not that I expect 2017 to be any better.

Last year at this time I wrote It's been a harrowing year. [...] What got us through it was the love and mutual support we have for one another, scary amounts of money, and a great deal of help. But we got through it. We got through as a family. There were times when I honestly didn't expect to. But here we are, at the end of another year.

Um... Yeah. That. Less money and outside help, but certainly Trump's election provided a lot in the way of outside motivation. Any plans we had at the beginning of the year were basically blown to hell in November.

So... let's look at last year's goals. Guidelines -- that's what I called them. Anyway.

1. Music: I tried something indefinite last year, and didn't get very far with it. So this year, let's aim for an album: Amethyst Rose. The stretch goal would be to add Lookingglass Folk.
   Pretty much a total bust. And I gave two solid concerts and didn't manage to record either of them. 10% if you count concerts, 0% otherwise.
2. Writing: Write more poetry, and aim for at least one non-fiction (software-related, most likely) article per month.
   No poetry to speak of. Between DW and Quora I managed quite a lot of writing, but very little of it was organized. Maybe 35%.
3. Exercise: Walk on weekends. Stretch: get my bike repaired. (That's been on the list since before I moved to Seattle, so I don't have much hope.) Nope.
4. Food: Eat better: more salads, fewer take-out lunches. Take off more weight -- I've been stalled for months. At least under 190, and preferably under 180.
   I ate a lot more leftovers this year, My weight went up ten pounds, thanks to my doctor taking me off my diuretic. I dunno - 10%?
5. Psych: Last year's "health" goal was all about depression, but I also made a list of plausible stress-reduction techniques, a few of which I actually tried, and I'll keep working on that. But the main thing has to be procrastination. I'll get started on that... sometime? Tonight, preferably.
   Or later. I did get a fair amount done, though, and my dysthymia and anxiety were mostly under control -- at least up until November. 40%.
6. Web: Convert the main websites to HTML-5 and CSS. Finally get around to writing the correct lyrics-to-HTML converter (using tables instead of monospaced fonts), and a good browser-based songbook/setlist viewer to go with it. Get some experience with popular CMSs: WordPress, and if possible Joomla and Drupal.
   Well, I got the lyrics converter written, if not actually deployed to the web. And my favorite emacs mode for web, html-helper-mode, has been upgraded to HTML-5. In addition, I put three projects up on GitHub. 75%?
7. Work: Get a new job, or get unstuck at my present one. The former is more likely. If possible, something that's mostly or entirely work-from-home. If not, get started on building a consulting business (web-related, or something else in the software range) that can fill that role.
   Hmm. I did get unstuck. My present project looks dicey, but we may be able to pull it off. I may still have to jump ship, but if I can make it until next June I should be due for more stock, which the gods know will help. I'm going to give myself a 90% on this one.
8. Household: Get the household workshop set up and, um, working. That means organizing the garage and the downstairs kitchen. Do some serious planning (as opposed to just reading blogs) toward the eventual move-out into tiny houses.
   Well, ... I'm not sure how to rate this one. A lot of organizing in the garage, to be sure. And the planning. Not the plan we expected to have, to be sure. But we have a plan.

To quote the song that has become another household anthem, "All the dreams that I had when we started, Have crumbled to dust in my hand."

Well, here's to an age that's departed,
And to pictures we drew in the sand.
All the dreams that I had when we started,
Have crumbled to dust in my hand.

Guess I'll pull a new map from my pocket
Never mind where the old ones have gone
And I'll look for a new road to follow
By the light of the Millennium's dawn

And we -- all of us together -- did. We found our new road. It looks kind of steep. OK, very steep. More next year, but the way forward involves selling the house, retiring, and moving. Hopefully in that order, because otherwise we can't afford it.

Wish us luck!