Year End Review

“I did absolutely nothing,
and it was everything I thought it could be!” – Peter

I often wonder where the time goes through the end of the year and wonder how I didn’t get anything that I wanted done at the beginning of the year completed or goals fell short or whatever is on my anxiety overloaded mind. So I find its helpful to pull out the calendar and truly review if things are as I feared and I am wasting the year away or… perhaps some growth occurred and memories were made. We’ll tackle this quarter by quarter since I want to get to my top 2024 photos at the end.

Q1 – I started studying for my audit section of the CPA and, wow, lots of birthdays up front. We’re still in seasonal depression times so I expected things to be light in Q1. We made some good home improvement progress on the guest bathroom, cement board is freakin’ heavy y’all.

Q2 – The eclipse! Took a walk to our park and watched as everything went dark, wild. We threw our annual memorial day party, we visited Gemma (Fantastic btw), and celebrated our wedding anniversary. I got to see X Ambassadors touring with their new album, and moshed at a Frank Turner show. We took our annual family vacation to Hot Springs, maybe I’ll throw up a small gallery for those pics. I took my Audit exam and began “studying” for FAR.

Alright, sidebar please, I was scanning through photos and found a bunch of my home in April. Q2 means property tax appraisals were sent out, if you’re not protesting your taxes you should be. Here is my promo code for propertytax.io (Promo Code: C65187), this is such a fantastic tool that only requires minimal effort like uploading photos of your 70 year old original gas ovens to tell the city to give you a break because property tax valuations are ridiculous, they never go down. Call your state rep and complain.

Q3 – Kick starting Q3 was a visit to the Second Thought Theater for a production of “Wink” one of the most creative and thoughtful shows I’ve seen ever, funny and thought provoking. We had Madi’s Broken Bow Trip to celebrate her December birthday… You would understand if your birthday was in the middle of Christmas and New Years. The biggest let down of the year was Childish Gambino cancelling his tour right before he came to Dallas. We caught a Morgan Jay show after Oktoberfest at Odd Muse. We visited Petra and the Beast and omg don’t waste your time with anything other than their charcuterie boards. Best in DFW easily, hopefully they find a new spot soon…

Q4 – We visited the state fair, saw the pigs race and ate corndogs and beer. I repaired my dishwasher. We saw a Marcus King show… that, that’s it. Kinda unimpressive. We too a roadtrip to Oklahoma for our nephews birthday, got called for Jury Duty… on a day when the court house had no power, hilarious. Marc Rebillet always makes a great show and we were so happy to see him again in Deep Ellum. Kyle Kinnane was, as always, a fantastic stand up comedian. Easily my favorite one go see his show if he’s in town.

Alright, lets chat about the election, I was completely blindsided by having a one sided view of news coverage so I went ahead and grabbed a subscription to GroundNews and everyone should too. It has helped to make me a better critical thinker about whats actually being covered and find more factual outlets for reporting.

Anyway, I didn’t vote for him, I’m a convicted felon.

Goldee’s is worth all the hype, on par with Cattleack and Franklin’s. Get the banana puddin’. We finished up with our multiple Thanksgivings and Christmases. A trip to the new St. Martins knocking our socks off and visiting Apothecary for a, meh, cocktail nightcap. We enjoyed a Four Day Weekend NYE show and dinner with friends to start the new year.

See Will, it wasn’t so much of a write off for that year.

2024 was a year for getting better at photography too. The biggest game changer was purchasing a light meter that sits on the top of my cameras to help me lock in the best exposure and shutter speeds for the shot. The gallery collage is cool but click in to really get a sense for that detail. I’ll toss up a gallery page when I have some spare time. At the end of the year I grabbed some developing supplies and a scanner off Ebay and processed my first rolls of film from shot to editing. Labs were just taking too long to get my film developed and this is another way for me to appreciate the process.