Ye olde 2018 happy wrap-up

It’s a (recent) tradition: every year, around this time, I blog a list of good things that took place this year. Let’s get down to it:

1. I traveled. A lot: Portland (Oregon), Nashville, Iceland, Japan, and Barcelona.
2. My relationship with starshaped continued to grow. It’s a stable relationship, which is a novel experience for me. We did an awful lot of fun things together this year, and had an awful lot of fights. But I believe in the power of fighting – your relationship is in trouble when neither of you care enough to challenge each other. So this year was as challenging as it was rewarding.
3. I wrote a blog post that many people got an awful lot out of.
4. I finished two songs.
5. My niece was born. She arrived two months early, but she’s here and she’s doing real well. I’m a proud uncle!
6. My brother married an amazing woman. She’s Brazilian, so I finally have an excuse to learn Portuguese.
7. I discovered Duolingo and started learning Portuguese.
8. I replaced my two beginner basses with a new bass that is just total magic. This bass makes me feel like Bootsy Collins every time I pick it up. I have never held a bass so funky, so slap-happy, so vivacious and just so happy to be played. It’s my forever bass.
9. I finally rode the entire Claire Saltonstall Bikeway. Boston to Provincetown – that’s 140 miles! – in two days. My ass was killing me afterwards, but two 70-mile days in a row is, for me, no small feat.
10. I discovered the podcast My Dad Wrote a Porno, and it’s the greatest.
11. I saw Levar Burton read a short story, live on stage! For a long time TNG fan like me, this was quite a privilege.
12. I finally got to see Weird Al in concert. He played a lot of tunes from the In 3D album, which is the one I couldn’t stop listening to as a kid. So this, in many ways, was the Weird Al show I waited decades to see. The fact that I got an excellent t-shirt out of it also doesn’t hurt.
13. I got to see Hamilton. It’s one of the only musicals I genuinely enjoy, and it was truly a fantastic show and worth the extortionate ticket cost.
14. I visited my parents in their new house, which they built as their forever home in rural Canada. It’s a beautiful little bungalow, suits them perfectly. And it’s not far from a gem of a swimming hole that is nothing short of perfect in the summer.
15. I learned how to do one-color screen prints, which means that if I have an idea for a profane t-shirt, I can just make it happen. So long, CafePress.
16. Drupal’s Media Initiative (of which I am a maintainer) released a media library in Drupal 8.6. It’s modest by the competition’s standards, but it also fills a gigantic, long-standing hole in Drupal core. We busted our asses to get this done in time, and I’m really proud of the work we did.
17. I moved my blogging from Medium to a static site built with Jekyll (this one). Not only is it way more performant (nothing beats static HTML), but I feel so much better re-taking ownership of my data.
18. I got several new pairs of gorgeous custom-made knit socks! Thanks, starshaped. :heart:
19. I started playing Dungeons & Dragons as a scary dragon-man sorcerer (Red Dragonborn), which just sets my nerdy heart aglow.
20. I went to William Shatner Beat Night in Portsmouth, NH (as a spectator, not a participant) and it was everything I hoped it would be.