2008 year in review

Recycling my version of the end of year meme; it's scary how many years I've been doing this for!

I'm afraid that the major event of this year was I started dating

cartesiandaemon. (We officially got together on 29^th February, but in retrospect we're dating the relationship from Christmas 2007, as we spent the two months after that acting like a couple while deciding whether we were going to get together.) And the relationship has developed more positively than I could have predicted, and we've done lots of reading eachother's books and fun travelling round Europe together, and he's introduced me to more films than I've ever watched before. And I've learnt things about myself that I couldn't have imagined without this relationship. So yes, 2008 was the year of being appallingly couply.

Work was much as last year, I procrastinated and fretted lots in between occasional bouts of enthusiasm. As a result 2009 is going to be a year of panic about job-hunting, and quite likely changing career direction. It's a shame, because I have many reasons to like my job, but it just hasn't quite worked out.

Other than that, 2008 was a year of even more engagement in the Jewish community here. I've got to the point where I feel really settled here socially, mainly through said Jewish community. I have got to know several people I regard as friends, and there are lots of others I get on with and who are reliably pleased to see me.

Significant Events

I prepared five young people for bar mitzvah, and all of them had positive experiences.

I spent time with my Aussie cousins.

I visited the far north of Sweden, and had a romantic weekend in Florence!

I heard Leonard Cohen live.

I acted as an intinerant preacher in Oslo over Succot.

Books

CJ Cherryh: Cyteen

Matt Ruff: Set this house in order

Jo Walton: Farthing

Lois McMaster Bujold: The warrior's apprentice

Ian McDonald: The river of gods

Also two absolutely superlative, mind-blowing short stories: Ted Chiang's Story of your life, and Lois McMaster Bujold's Mountains of mourning. The collections they're drawn from (Stories of your life and Borders of infinity) are very good too.

I read 62 books this year, many lent to me by

cartesiandaemon, but only managed to review 39 of them. Oops.

Music

This has been a really good year for music. I got the point where I'd bought everything from eMusic that I already knew I wanted, so I've started exploring there and on other music-related social networks, and discovered a lot of cool new stuff. In spite of the soppy theme of the year, we don't really have an "our song";

cartesiandaemon isn't heavily into music and we don't generally spend time together in places where background music is playing.

Ashley Maher: Crown for adorning

The Weepies: Gotta have you

Marissa Nadler: Diamond heart

Noa: קרן אור (Ray of light)

Wolfsheim: Heroin she said

LJ posts

srb: Not dieting

rysmiel: An evolution in SF rant

redaloud: Norn Iron

hatam_soferet: Flying with ink

elusis: Not dieting

My posts

Privilege