This past year was notable for the changes in our neighborhood. We learned late in 2012 that the Oakwood North subdivision was coming to the Weatherford property across the street from us. Construction was rumored to begin in May 2013 but nothing ever seemed to happen, other than surveyors markers going up on the property. It wasn’t until October that the bulldozers finally came, making short work of the ten acre property. Our quiet dead-end street has since become quite busy, with construction trucks parking outside our home daily.

Around the same timeframe, our neighbors the Giras began construction of their home behind our home. Their site prep work crews got a little overzealous and cleared trees from our property, which the Giras agreed to replace. Meanwhile, their home was built quite quickly and now is days away from being occupied. Despite the tree-clearing snafu, we look forward to having them as neighbors. We will, however, miss the privacy their wooded lot provided between us and Glascock Street.

All of these changes aren’t necessarily for the worse; they’re just different. We look forward to greeting our new neighbors and introducing more people to the joys of living here.

This year had some wonderful family moments. One of the highlights was the five days we visited Kelly’s cousins at their lake house in northern Wisconsin over the Fourth of July week. There were over fifty of Kelly’s relatives there, with more kids than you could shake a stick at, and the fun never stopped. It. Never. Stopped. Whether it was jet skiing on the lake, the swimming, the fishing, the catching up, the incredible conversations, the games, the music, or the laughter, it was a delight to spend those days getting to know my wonderful wife’s family. It was pretty-much unforgettable.

We also managed to skip town for a few days in beautiful Abingdon, VA, at the end of summer, where we rode along the Virginia Creeper Trail again and explored Southwest Virginia. We had a fantastic cottage right at the foot of the Creeper Trail and Travis and I had fun racing out to the busy railroad tracks next door whenever a train would pass by. That’s my idea of a vacation: lots of outdoor time spent exercising and exploring.
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This year was full of blog-related news. Early on, I had to migrate my site from one hosting provider, VPS Farm, to another, RootBSD. VPS Farm offered wonderful service and had tools built to allow me to maintain my site anytime I wanted. RootBSD has been a good hosting provider as well, with near-rock-solid performance and a friendly, knowledgeable staff. Most of this transition was behind the scenes for most of my MT.Net readers, thankfully.

My blog showed up in a number of places. Earlier this summer, my friend Scott Huler linked to a post I wrote about our solar PV installation (more on that in a minute). The post brought quite a bit of traffic to my site and made me think of ways I might make money with my blogging. I approached Salon regarding a blogging position they had and reactivated the dormant Google AdSense ads I once had on my blog. Now the advertising revenue pays for about half of my hosting fees. I’m not living large but it’s better than nothing!
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I went back and forth on including Edward Snowden on my list, since I normally like to include just things that I’ve been directly involved with. There’s no denying that the spying revelations brought forth by Edward Snowden has affected me, if in no other way than to sour me on the state of American affairs. Tapping German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone? Go for it. Terrorists in Yemen plotting a bombing? Vector that Hellfire straight through that phone. But UNICEF? Brazilian oil companies? Innocent American citizens, who ostensibly have the right to be free from suspicion and unreasonable searches? Way, way, WAY over the line.

Fortunately one federal judge has seen the light and declared this collection is “likely unconstitutional.” Another one said it’s legal “because 9/11.” I saw a post somewhere today asking if we’ve reached the point where anyone spouting “because terrorists” to excuse their overreach can now properly be told “shut the hell up!” I’m thinking we have. In fact, I’m thinking we reached that point a long, long time ago.
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It’s that time when I take stock of the passing year. Kicking off this year’s list is health, both mine and others. I was fortunate again this year that all of my loved ones lived another year. I know I won’t always be able to say this and I know how fortunate I am that I still am graced by the presence of some truly wonderful people.

As for my own health, I began taking it more seriously this year. The new job I took in February and the schedule it required kept me from my daily early-morning dog walks I had enjoyed. I began to miss this simple daily exercise and it soon began to show in my elevated blood pressure. Last winter I had gotten fit enough that I had to take out a few links from my wristwatch to keep it from spinning around my wrist. I was thrilled when I realized that a belt I had last worn a decade ago now fits again.

This progress didn’t last long, though, as the stress of my job and easy access to breakroom snacks led me to mindless snacking at the office. I finally wised up, cut the snacking, cut way back on my beer intake (ooh, that was hard), and cut my weight from 182 pounds earlier this year to 169 pounds Friday morning. This is the first time my weight has dipped below 170 in at least a decade and I couldn’t be happier. I’m even wearing slacks again that last fit me over ten years ago!
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