Plans for 2023 included more frequent posts here. That didn't work out, there were problems with account access. Oh the joys of technology.
So, here I am, shall we try this again?
The last year was one of change, something I'm not a big fan of but also pretty much the only constant in our lives. We fostered a "fospice" kitty and then adopted her late summer. She's still with us although we had a very big scare last week, didn't think she was going to make it. Not only did she make it through the crisis, she's doing really well having just had another check up this morning. She's elder, and has multiple issues, but she quickly became a heart cat, and we love her dearly.
What can I say about work. Work is work. We aren't doing as much of it by choice, we have semi-retired. We still take guests, just not as often. We take time off with more regularity, we almost never used to do that. What can I say, a major hurricane, pandemic, and then an accident the other happy vegan had caused him to be out of commission for quite some time (then surgery; still recovering, but recovery is going well thankfully) gives clarity.
Our summer plans got torpedoed when he had his accident basically on our first scheduled week off. We did manage to go RVing for a couple weeks, which was very nice.
My camera did finally completely bite the dust, in January of 2023. This was a big blow to me as I didn't want to invest a huge amount of money into something I consider myself only marginally good at as a hobby. So I struggled for most of the year with a defective iPhone (it was replaced twice, still having hardware glitches including in the camera which was very frustrating). I held out for the new iPhone release instead of buying a nice camera. I'm still learning with the new phone, but it's a big improvement over my last one. Never in my life have I waited for a phone to be released, so this was new to me as well. It's too soon to say if it will be worth the money, but so far, so good. I did buy an older used camera which is much newer than the old one that couldn't be repaired. I'm struggling to learn all the features on it, and honestly I haven't invested nearly the amount of time I should have by now to learn more. Instead I have been focusing on the cell camera which is easier to learn.
Our computer crashed and burned this year as well. It was a Mac and it stored tens of thousands of photos. Most were recovered, but the issue now is getting new photos on the replaced computer. I'm using an older computer, instead of buying a new one right away, we moved the guest computer into the office and loaded what we could onto it. The photos program took a backseat due to the amount of space it needs, so now almost none of my photos are available on the computer, I have to look at them all on thumbnail size. This is a disadvantage when I'm doing photos for sharing, or photo challenges. I get by though and hopefully in the next few months I'll have that sorted out too.
Both of us here started taking steel drum classes, but he had to drop out after a few classes due to his range of motion from the injury. I've signed up for another round of classes with the hope of improving. It's not easy, no joke there's a lot of notes on the drum (I decided to start on lead tenor, not sure if that was a good move or not) and it seems the older I get the more difficult it is to learn new skills. Despite this, I've persevered, and a friend of mine from a few islands up signed up for the next round of classes too. She's an age contemporary and vegan so we have a lot in common. I think it will be nice to have a friend in class, although everyone in the first classes were super friendly and super supportive of one another.
I'm toying with a few things for the blog, mostly this is more of a therapy tool for me (haha) as I never monetized it or tried for bigger reach but I've hoped that with the vast amount of content on here (especially cooking tips, recipes and what not) that someone has found it useful if they've stumbled upon it. One thing I always planned to do was a vegan on a budget series, like "eat vegan for $20 a week" kind of thing. That's needed more than ever based upon the eye popping prices at the markets lately, but I'm not sure I can devote the time for not just budget recipes, but the meal planning as well as making sure things taste good. We did make it through Hurricane Irma on a very shoestring budget with LOTS of donations, but that included not having a kitchen at all and I'm not going to rely on as much packaged foodstuffs when I do the budget series. Today I'm organizing recipes, cookbooks and my office space for my kitchen reference books. I'm finding some inspiration for other ways to do a series, maybe just pull a book a day and randomly do a recipe. Not sure what to do. I've been intermittent fasting for quite a long time now, and with that I don't like to eat junk anymore. It's become harder to maintain a good level of energy and health the older I get if I eat crap, you know... garbage in, garbage out. So, the budget series with random cookbooks combo might get the nod.
Other than that, my time is filled with volunteering at the local animal shelter regularly twice a week, metal hand stamping (have we ever discussed that here, I'll scroll back and see), work as we take it, and a few other things like photography, recipe testing, and attendant to the kitties at home. Last year did see several animal protests at various venues, that remains on my schedule for 2024.
So, over the next week or so I'll see where I'd like to take these posts in the new year. It's nice to have access here again.
Till next time, go vegan, live vegan, stay vegan.
xo
