Comparison is the enemy of joy, or something like that. Or perfection is the corrupter of progress. Something like that? Thus, I shall not be comparing this year to others, but simply reporting, as is tradition, this year’s happenings in simple-past-conjugated-without-subject bullet points.
In somewhat-but-not-guaranteed chronological order, In 2024, I…
- Didn’t play any Baldur’s Gate (or any game for that matter), though we did play a lot of the “Ghost Game” and “Pig Game.” 👻🐷
- Bought 2 cars (Note, Clipper) and said a sad goodbye to our beloved 2007 Subaru Outback Legacy Wagon. The Clipper is a mid-engine, 4-wheel drive, turbo, extra-light class van with a 660cc engine.
- Had many multi-family get-togethers such as:
–Dressed as ultraman with the family for the Mishima Halloween Parade
–Gathered at Riverside Park, Ayutsubo Park and more - Went to the dentist about 10 times, mostly to get my rear-most lower left and right molars repaired properly. Around 20 years after teenage fillings, these two molars cracked in half randomly thrice over the course of 5 years. All three times, the dentist did an emergency repair. This time, a new dentist took one look at my mouth and said, “I need to fix these disasters.” ̶S̶o̶ ̶y̶a̶y̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶m̶e̶,̶ ̶I̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶f̶u̶n̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶o̶l̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶p̶e̶r̶l̶y̶ ̶g̶r̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶r̶u̶s̶h̶ ̶f̶o̶o̶d̶.̶ ̶F̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶!̶Hmm… that metal tooth fell out after 3 weeks, but I got a new and improved one, again. Here’s hoping! 🦷
- Found actual meaning in my job, the first time since I was 18 and working on the oil rigs. I guess it’s good to take a 20-year-break sometimes. 🙃
- Built or helped build the following personal or professional projects: 💻
–HTML5 Study in Japanese (Django, raw css)
–Kawane Events (Laravel)
–Tokyo Hotel Reservation System (Laravel, HTMX, bootstrap, vue.js)
–Video Education Courses site (Upgrade from cakePHP 3.8 to 4.5)
–Scraping Restaurant Details across Japan (Django, Scrapy)
–Various others (Vending machine management, Driver’s Ed, Health app) while learning little bits of tech and tools like Flutter, Docker, Mamp, and whatnot for web, Android and iOS. - Got the highest possible perfect 990 score on the TOEIC test 💯
- Stopped English teaching
- Actually learned to ride my unicycle
- Grew my hair long again
- Excitedly watched the 2024 Redbull Rampage (now with women!) as a family
- Harvested limes from our lime tree 🍋🟩
- Embraced Yoshikei life (excellent fresh-ingredients-to prepare meal-delivery service)
- Got 2024 Monotaro t-shirts (5th iteration of yearly shirts since 2020 for me)
- Bought a 3d printer (Bambu A1 mini) for the family; loving it!
- After exhausting so many different options for two years, we finally successfully healed my daughter’s skin with Dupixent, which costs $3,803.20 USD a carton (and patients require 6 cartons for an entire one-year treatment… that’s more than my entire salary for the year!) Oh, it was free here in Japan. Absolutely life changing. 💉
- Celebrated the opening of our friend’s 120-year-old “Guest House Mikansei” in Kawane 🎉
- Built, among many other things, a one-person-desk for the guesthouse using reclaimed wood from a hundred-year-old sliding door
- Went “Plum Blossom Viewing” in Atami in January with the family
- Was introduced to some “secret mountain bike trails” in the area, and rode them a bunch 🚲
- Swam in Byoubuiwa and found a secret river swimming spot, too!
- Ate melon pan on genpe gawa with my daughter
- Went to an awesome bbq party inside a mechanic shop in the countryside in Kawane
- As a little side gig, helped clear out a multigenerational house of decades of junk and treasure over many weekends
- Went, again, to Nijinosato park in Shuzenji and rode the mini-train to mini-Canada 🇨🇦
- Spent 5 days (including my birthday) in the hospital with my daughter due to some kind of asthma attack
- Bought a sumitsubo at a flea market; I’ve been searching for one forever
- Kept some giant rhinoceros beetles and stag beetles as pets for the season
- Guided some Canadian friends to Mount Fuji Subashiri 5th station so they could summit it 🗻
- After buying a cheap RC car for my daughter’s 4th birthday, bought myself one for a Christmas present
- Also gifted myself this “Mint Sauce” book; I loved the single-page comics in the back of MBUK (Mountain Bike UK) magazines so long ago…
- Perfected the art of making “Tamago yaki” 🍳
Goals for next year? I have some health goals (diet, exercise, that kinda thing) and some digital cutback goals… but basically I just want to be a good Dad and partner, keep doing well at my new job, and maybe build a boat.