Monthly Archives: December 2009

best of 2009: coming to a screen near me

I’m trying something new for me this month, a web community challenge: Gwen Bell’s The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. Find the best the year has offered me, and review, remember, contemplate, reflect, and celebrate it. There’s a question/topic each day.

I haven’t posted in the challenge lately because I don’t have good picks for the topics from the past week and a half. But I do have something to write about today.

December 30 — Ad. What advertisement made you think this year?

I don’t pay attention to advertisements all that much. I usually ignore them on television and I skip over ads in magazines and generally ignore them on the Internet. But I do try to see promo spots for new and favorite TV shows and I try to catch the preview for the next episode of shows I’m watching. I don’t mind spoilers all that much (I can’t really complain too much about them: I often skim the ending of a book after reading some of it…might sound nuts to you but it’s what I’ve been doing for decades. I read slowly and I’ll get to some good part and want to know now what will happen, not wait ’til I reach it. So I start skimming and suddenly, I’ve skipped to the end. Rest assured, I still go back and read the whole book. But that’s not the point here, is it).

My best of 2009 advertisements are fun things: commercials for TV shows. Some were just well done — Dexter comes to mind — and some were welcome announcements that a good show was returning would soon be back, such as My Boys and Eureka. And then there were the ads promoting a new show, USA Network’s White Collar. They intrigued me and I am a fan of the show now. So they worked :-).

But I have to say, the best promotional ads for the past few years have been most of those for USA Network’s show Psych. The cast there clearly has fun doing their ads and “psych outs” and they are always a hoot. I will stop fast forwarding and even back up a recorded show just to see their ads. Doesn’t hurt that I find the show a lot of fun, too.

Hmm, I have more to write but I think I’ll go relax with a bit of TV now….

long and happy night

★☽ ★

Today is the winter solstice. Usually folks say it’s the shortest day of the year which feels sad. But last week a friend spoke of it being the longest night of the year, and suddenly it felt better.

Nothing is really changed. I did not have a shorter workday and I will not have a longer rest tonight.

But it’s still a much nicer night now.

Happy solstice.

best of 2009: singing of heroes

I’m trying something new for me this month, a web community challenge: Gwen Bell’s The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. Find the best the year has offered me, and review, remember, contemplate, reflect, and celebrate it. There’s a question/topic each day.

December 20 New person. … Who is your unsung hero of 2009?

My unsung heroes are the nursing, physical therapy, and cafeteria staff who helped ease my mother’s suffering this summer at Enloe Medical Center in Chico. In the surgical ward where Mom spent her time, doctors make daily rounds and visit the patients briefly, checking on how patients are recovering after surgery and such. The nursing and related staff are the ones who take care of so much of the patients’ needs and these lovely people treated Mom with caring and true concern, tremendous patience, and great gentleness along with great competence and professionalism. Many of these lovely people went to extra lengths to help. Even the student nurses I met were wonderful, each in their own way. I don’t want to write a lot about this; it’s too much to revisit Mom’s ordeal in detail. But I just want to acknowledge all the wonderful staff who tried to make Mom as comfortable as possible, to ease her pain, and also extended much kindness to my brothers, my sister, and me as we spent our time at Mom’s bedside.

Thank you all; you were true heroes in our lives this year.

snow, good and bad

snow is a wonder, creating a calm and peaceful vista.

    snow comes to soften
    the landscape’s harsh look and
    still the din outside.

but sometimes, i’d rather it pass us by…

    i dread this snowstorm,
    too soon for me. not ready
    to clear the paths.

disclaimer: never said i’m a writer.

best of 2009: in a word

I’m trying something new for me this month, a web community challenge: Gwen Bell’s The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. Find the best the year has offered me, and review, remember, contemplate, reflect, and celebrate it. There’s a question/topic each day.
December 17 — Word or phrase. A word that encapsulates your year. “2009 was _____.”

Whew, 2009 was a lot of things, a lot them on the downside, too. It was a very harsh year. It was a year of loss, of sadness, of longing, of deterioration. Looking back, I see that some of that isn’t completely true, that it’s just how it feels to me. There were some good things in it. One reason I’m doing this challenge is to seek out the positive and remind myself that the year has not been as wholly bleak as a quick reflection shows.

So I’ve been toying with words and phrases for 2009 all day. One good word is challenging. This year has been that. I ignored some of the challenges, put them off for the coming year.  But some could not be ignored and surprisingly I rose to some of the challenges and impressed myself that I had. I’ve often feared that I’m someone who would fall apart under these circumstances. We like to believe we are dependable but I doubted myself. When those challenges came this year, I didn’t fall apart. I endured and even contributed, pushing past some of my failings and frailties.

2009 was also a year of transitions. That’s partly a nice way of speaking of my losses: some of them have significantly changed my life. I’ve felt adrift a lot this fall. I have responsibilities and I plod on because of them, but within me there’s been turmoil and disorientation and always that doubt. I used to trust to the future and now there’s a lot of uncertainty.  But to balance that, I’ve also started to explore some areas I’ve always assumed were beyond my reach and to try to find a voice in disciplines I never considered before and to rekindle old interests I let die down long ago. And I’m trying to push myself to push myself more. I’ve grown complacent and defeated and old in recent years and it’s time to get past all that. So 2009 is a year of changing and hopefully a prelude to a stronger year ahead.