Kyle and I on New Year’s Eve 2008.

I had a great New Year’s Eve. We went to a 1933 Prohibition Party in Valley Ford. We dressed up like the 30s and danced to the musical styling of the Bluebellies. Then we stayed up until 4 a.m. talking and the next day went to McNears for lunch. Having a good New Year’s is such a relief. I hate downer New Year’s.

Just for the record, I thought 2008 was a great year. I’m a little tired of people complaining about it. Very few people I know had bad things happen to them in 2008, so I don’t get all the good riddance stuff and the hiding from New Year’s Eve.

I don’t feel like writing a long survey like I’ve done the last few years, but here are some highlight from 2008:

Kyle and I spent the first year in our own house and did a lot of remodeling. It wasn’t as hard to adjust to the financial burden as I had anticipated, although we did cut back on some of our usual indulgences. Still, I had a lot of fun. I saw art and science. I went canoeing and snow shoeing and camping. At home, I planted a huge garden and read over 70 books. We got a free trip to Las Vegas and went on a couple of road trips. In September, we went to Kentucky to visit friends and family. While there, I went to a writer’s conference and saw Joyce Carol Oates speak. We also had parties throughout the year, the most fun of which was an impromptu election party to watch Barack Obama take the presidency.

Our silhouettes at an art exhibit in Kentucky

Professionally, both of us did well this year. I wrote a lot of articles, including ones for magazines like Entrepreneur and The Writer. I got to interview writers and artists such as Anne Lamott and Nellie McKay. On top of that, I published short stories, judged a book contest, and held a literary reading. Kyle got a book deal with Pearson Publishing, became a columnist for Linux Journal, and gave a lot of speeches, including one at LinuxWorld. He also got a promotion—he’s now Systems Architect at QuinStreet.

Squash from the garden

The year wasn’t perfect, of course. Obviously, there’s the economy, which is depressing. There were some projects that didn’t work out and some minor disappointments here and there. And some things were just lame. Still, a good year.

I will answer one question from the survey: What are some things you would like to do in 2009?

I’d like both of us to finish our larger writing projects before April. I’d like to go to Puerto Rico, be more active, and save some money. I’d like to be more involved in the art community as a whole, whether that means supporting other artists or just playing around with art myself. And I’d like to emotionally win over the onslaught of negativity and fear the news is throwing at me every time I turn on the TV. That last one is a challenge indeed.

Redwood tree from my Humboldt County road trip.

I hate to admit it, but this is me: Vehement Anti-Cell-Phone Guy Finally Caves.

Whiting said he was reluctant to accept the “encroachment of technology” into his personal life, and explained that he “[does not] plan on becoming one of those people with cell phones.”

“This is for emergencies only,” he said. “In case my car stalls on the freeway and I need to call for help, or in the event that I absolutely must get in touch with someone but am away from home.”

Whiting first used the phone Sunday night to check movie times for March Of The Penguins.

“In fact, I use it so little that, when I went to the theater, I forgot to turn off the ringer,” Whiting said. “When it started ringing, right away I said, ‘Who’s the jerk with the cell phone?’ and I didn’t realize it was me. Suffice it to say, I felt very guilty.”

“It was my girlfriend, though, so I had to take it,” he added.

I still think cell phones are leashes. I still think they allow us to drift through life in personalized bubbles. I still think their effect on community and traffic is suspect. Nevertheless I was forced to get one because, well, life just went that way. Apparently The Onion gets around to all of us eventually.

(The above is a representation of the future, not an actual photo of me on a snowmobile.)

In 2009, I plan to be more active (!). I have already written a list of things that would make me more active (!) and have taken the first steps toward more activity. I just booked a snowmobiling trip in Tahoe for next month, I’m going dancing tonight, and I’m planning to take a trip to Puerto Rico in mid-April, whereupon I will do active (!) things like hike in a rain forest, dance salsa, and wear a bikini. Okay, so wearing a bikini is not active (!), but it is daring for me, which seems important right now.

I have been really burying myself in my work lately, which seems to be bringing this on. Therefore being active (!) does NOT include the following:

reading
writing
staring at screens, TV, computer, or otherwise
eating things
drinking things
working on the house
walking around downtown Petaluma

That is what being active (!) does not include. It DOES include the following:

Snowmobiling, as mentioned above
Ice skating for the first time
Tennis
Walking in places that are not downtown Petaluma
Seeing plays and musicals
Seeing live music
Hiking
Going to literary events and readings
Going on a boat!
Whale watching?
Museums
Day trips to other parts of California
A trip to Portland or Southern California
Art shows
Riding more roller coasters?
Painting pictures
Tidepools

And so on…

(To be clear, being active (!) is not the same as being sporty. Active (!) = fun and no pressure. Sporty = pressure and not fun at all.)

Hurrah to an active (!) 2009.

O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.

– Ezra Pound

Merry Christmas! As a Christmas gift, listen to Fiona Apple’s charming rendition of Frosty the Snowman here.

I haven’t read Sarah Vowell’s new book The Wordy Shipmates, about the Puritans, but I probably will. I enjoy Sarah Vowell’s style quite a bit. I like how she’s unafraid to combine high and low culture, how she’s unflinchingly honest about her nerdy ways, how she can write about someone like Lincoln and draw comparisons to her own life in a way that’s both entertaining and convincing. Plus she has to have one of the best last names for a writer, ever.

So I was surprised to see some in the literary set turning against Vowell. First, Michael Silverblatt practically accuses her of bringing down high culture because she mentions The Brady Bunch in one of her essays. Then the NYTimes pens an oddly personal review of The Wordy Shipmates, calling her annoying, making fun of her accent, and mentioning all the famous friends she has. Also, her politics are annoying to them: “Perfectly early-millennium coastal (green, be good, Obama, etc.). Can she really take pleasure in plumping for an autofill ideology that’s so widely shared?” Huh?

Even Jezebel noticed this trend against Vowell. It’s very strange. The reviews I’ve read of the book that weren’t dealing with Vowell as a person seemed to find it entertaining and moderately enlightening. This is probably all Vowell was going for. Yet there’s definitely a whiff of accusation floating around that Vowell isn’t quite intellectual enough, not as a writer but as a person. It seems unfair. I thought about it and came up with four reasons this might be happening:

1. She’s friends with famous people like Jon Stewart and Jake Gyllenhaal, plus she did the voice of an animated character in a movie (The Incredibles), and people feel it’s time to take her down a notch.

2. Her Gen-X sensibilities are out of style, so people feel it is time to take her down a notch.

3. She likes the Puritans, as in really likes them as thinkers and people, which is un-PC and uncool, so people feel it’s time to take her down a notch.

4. The book isn’t any good, in which case people probably should take her down a notch.

Time for another YouTube video. This one is about cats. Cats are small predatory carnivorous species of crepuscular mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and its ability to hunt vermin, snakes and scorpions. It has been associated with humans for at least 9,500 years. Cats are the best animals. See above video for proof.

On Saturday, we celebrated my birthday. I’m 32 now. We went to a fancy-pants restaurant in San Francisco. I had curried chick peas for a starter and arctic char (a fish like salmon) with nettles and lentils for my entree. I wore my new dress. We shared a nice bottle of wine. It was all very elegant.

Maybe two hours later, we were back at Petaluma at a cowboy bar, singing karaoke. Not only were we the youngest people in the bar, we were the most stylish. The men around us were wearing cowboy hats and the women were wearing sweaters with teddy bears on them. None of us like cowboy bars or country music–we just wanted to sing karaoke. However, when my husband and friend started singing “Family Tradition” in their best country twang, whipping the cowboy hats and teddy-bear sweaters into a frenzy in the process, I thought that the evening could not contain more contrasts. And that is the pro and con of putting me in charge–each thing we do may well be wildly different from the last thing. Weirdo.

There’s this blog about the Daily Routines of writers and artists. Most of it is pretty boring. I will simplify what most writers–including me–do for you: They get up early in the morning, have coffee, and write until between noon and 3 p.m. Then they stop. (I don’t actually stop then because I need to earn a living, but I do switch from fiction to nonfiction around 1 p.m.)

Anyway, some writers are more interesting than that. My favorite was Gertrude Stein, who had the greatest. daily. routine. ever:

Miss Stein gets up every morning about ten and drinks some coffee, against her will. She’s always been nervous about becoming nervous and she thought coffee would make her nervous, but her doctor prescribed it. Miss Toklas, her companion, gets up at six and starts dusting and fussing around. Once she broke a fine piece of Venetian glass and cried. Miss Stein laughed and said “Hell, oh hell, hell, objects are made to be consumed like cakes, books, people.” Every morning Miss Toklas bathes and combs their French poodle, Basket, and brushes its teeth. It has its own toothbrush.

Miss Stein has an outsize bathtub that was especially made for her. A staircase had to be taken out to install it. After her bath she puts on a huge wool bathrobe and writes for a while, but she prefers to write outdoors, after she gets dressed. Especially in the Ain country, because there are rocks and cows there. Miss Stein likes to look at rocks and cows in the intervals of her writing. The two ladies drive around in their Ford till they come to a good spot. Then Miss Stein gets out and sits on a campstool with pencil and pad, and Miss Toklas fearlessly switches a cow into her line of vision. If the cow doesn’t seem to fit in with Miss Stein’s mood, the ladies get into the car and drive on to another cow. When the great lady has an inspiration, she writes quickly, for about fifteen minutes

A few weeks ago, Marcia and I ditched work and drove out to Bodega and took a random country road. At the top of the road, all these Welsh-looking calves came and blocked our path. There were about six or seven of them. They were very friendly and came up to the car to say hello. Marcia took a cellphone picture:

Perhaps I should go back there and try to write?

Meet Jonathan the tortoise, believed to be the oldest living animal. He’s is at least 176 years old. He was “photographed during the Boer War around 1900, and his life has spanned eight British monarchs from George IV to Elizabeth II, and 50 prime ministers.”

Apparently, Jonathan still likes the ladies: “Despite his old age, locals say he still has the energy to regularly mate with the three younger females.”

Also, Jonathan might even be older than 176. According to a spokeperson from South Atlantic island of St Helena, where he lives: ‘Jonathan is the sole survivor of three tortoises that arrived on St Helena Island in 1882. He was already mature when he arrived and was at least 50-years-old.’”

Go Jonathan, go!