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2013 was a year of great change (well, I changed jobs and started a business, but for someone that spent 14 years at his first job out of college, that qualifies as a “great change”). If I had to classify 2014, I’d have to say it was one of the best years I’ve had in a while. It was the year I started a serious running regimen and ran my first half-marathon. It was the year I started a podcast. It was the year I started archiving old user group newsletters on the Internet Archive. (On the downside, I lost both a cousin and a neighbor to cancer.) Of course, this is strictly on a personal level; at a nation and world-level, ish was pretty awful this year.

Here’s a look back at my year with unimportant events mixed in with unimportant events. A few pictures are thrown in. Some links. Etc. Thanks to ThinkUp for making it particularly easy to find content to include in this post.

(Previous years-in-review collected here.)

The Year, By Month

January

First (non-RT) tweet of the year: “Fans of the Daily Ping, rejoice! @paulmcaleer and I are happy to announce the launch of the Yearly Ping – http://yearlyping.com/”
We enter the 21st century with a new HDTV
The Sears TV stand saga begins

February

My cousin Carolyn passes away after a battle with cancer
18ish inches of snow
Sears TV stand saga nearly ends

March

Apparently, nothing happened.

April

Apartment complex right by my work burns in a three-alarm fire
Met up with Arquay at MWC, our old stomping grounds
The podcast launches
Ramsey turns two. Birthday party is a combo train/flip-flop party.

May

Easy Star in Leesburg!
Apple is a jerk
11th Poplar Spring 5k
Found a dog in Medford, kept him for the night, found his people the next morning

June

Rasine’s softball team wins their division’s championship
Ramsey does his Tall Man impression
Caught two flies humping
Ramsey makes his Washington Post debut
Started the second half of the year off by stepping up my running routine big time
Ran a good Race for Independence 8k (7:50/mile pace)

July

Hit the batting cages with Alex and Rob for the first time in years. Got an enormous blister.
Helped a turtle that was on his back

August

I get an e-mail from a third cousin that found me via a DNA match on 23andme. We’ve been in close touch since fleshing out our family tree!
Family trip to Smith Mountain Lake
Family trip to Lancaster, PA and Dutch Wonderland
Ran 13 miles and felt like I’d run into a brick wall by the end

September

Our neighbor Ron passes away after a long fight with brain cancer.

October

Ran my first half-marathon, the Freedom’s Run, which goes through the battlefields of Antietam. I finished in just under 1:57 (the official time was a bit off since it was gun time and not chip time). Ran it with middle school friend Tara and Loudoun Veg friend Sue.
The Bing Maps street view camera caught a shot of me walking at lunchtime. When they came back around, I mugged for them with the full-on gunshot finger points, but sadly that image did not get captured.
Ten years vegan!
My last birthday before turning 40.
2nd Annual Vegan Food Stamp Challenge
Bitten by a dog while running.
Halloween: Rasine – Warrior Cat, Ramsey – Babymetal

November

Rasine in the Washington Post
Family trip to NYC for Thanksgiving
10-minute catch-up with high school friend Dave one-year-and-a-day after our last meeting

December

Got called for jury duty, but was sent home after someone key to the case didn’t show up.
Rasine and her softball team make the Loudoun Times-Mirror

Favorite Picture of the Year

(courtesy of Deb Durant)

RIP

Based solely on the folks I RIP’ed on Twitter (or FB). People I knew personally in bold. Dates are when I tweeted, not the actual death date.

1/10: Rynn Berry
1/12: Sam Berns
2/5: My cousin Carolyn
2/17: Wayne Smith
3/6: Geoff Edwards
3/6: Edith Kramer
4/15: Rocky the Goat at Poplar Spring
6/2: Yuri Kochiyama
7/30: David Middlesworth
9/7: Ron Leoni
11/14: RA Montgomery

Media Consumption in Numbers

Books finished: 21
Movies watched: 83
Songs listened to: 17,737

Books I Finished Reading

This year my goal was to finish Jan Potocki’s The Manuscript Found in Saragossa after having false-started a half-dozen times in the last ten years. Success! Finished the year out with three books tied in some way to death or dying. For those in the midst of dealing with it (or just looking to think about it after avoiding it), Being With Dying and Being Mortal are highly recommended and compliment each other nicely.

Listed in order finished.

A Straight Road with 99 Curves: Coming of Age on the Path of Zen
by Gregory Shepherd
Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac (From Works of Eugene Field Vol VII)
by Eugene Field
Confessions of a Mask
by Yukio Mishima
The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Fighting the Big Motherfuckin’ Sad
by Adam Gnade (zine)
A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power
by Jimmy Carter
33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day
by Dorian Lynskey
Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men
by Mara Hvistendahl
The Late Starters Orchestra
by Ari L. Goldman
The River of Souls
by Robert McCammon
Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece
by Ashley Kahn
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
by Jan Potocki
The Fun Parts
by Sam Lipsyte
The Dhammapada: A New Translation of the Buddhist Classic with Annotations translated by Gil Fronsdal
The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances
by Matthew Inman
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage: A novel
by Haruki Murakami
The New Kings of Nonfiction
by Ira Glass
Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year
by Tavis Smiley (with David Ritz)
Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death
by Joan Halifax
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
by Atul Gawande
Nine Horses: Poems
by Billy Collins
Rashomon and Other Stories
by Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Total number of books finished: 21 (three fewer than 2013)

Books re-read: 0

Books written by someone I know or have at least spoken more than a sentence to: 1

Physical / Ebooks (incl. Kindle Singles) finished:

20.5

Fiction / Nonfiction / Poetry:

Buddhism / Music / Death (Buddhism & Death overlap by one book):

Books in progress at the end of the year: 2

Movies I Watched and Re-watched

I declared 2014 the Year of Argento, with a goal of watching all of Argento’s films (mostly) in order. I got just about halfway there and will continue the effort (which will surely get more difficult as I venture into his significantly less interesting later years).

Discovered a new favorite director this year in Krzysztof Kieślowski. Absolutely loved his Three Colors trilogy and got started on his Decalogue series. As usual, I didn’t see too many films from this year, but the ones I did see I really enjoyed (Birdman, Grand Budapest Hotel, Big Hero 6).

Listed in order watched.