A lot of people are enthusiastically shouting “good riddance!” to 2009 today, and that’s totally understandable. Our economy went to crap, everyone is up in arms over health care reform and some would-be martyr just tried to blow up another goddamn airplane. I, however, will be a little bit sorry to see it go. Two-thousand-nine was probably one of the best years of my life.
In early ’09 there was snow. And more snow. And then Nathan and i went to Chicago for Valentine’s day and stayed in a delightful little B&B for a couple of nights. I don’t know what it is about Chicago, but it’s just really fun to go there and stare up at the giant buildings and wander around lost and then stop by IKEA on the way home. Feeling romantic, we also stopped into a few stores in the Windy City’s Diamond District and ogled some sparklies while we were there. It was an indicator of things to come.
In March we moved into our lovely downtown loft. It was really awesome at first until we discovered more recently that 1200 square feet is a LOT to keep clean all the time and that being able to hear everything your neighbors yell at each other isn’t really all that fun. It’s been a nice setting for a few parties, but we don’t do that kind of thing terribly often, and even when we do it’s only a handful of people. We’re hoping to rent a house this spring, and hopefully not being able to hear our neighbors will be worth the effort required to keep the lawn mowed and the driveway shoveled.
In the spring Nathan and i started running together. It was a slow start for me again, but i eventually got back up to the three-mile marker again before deciding to take an extended break. It’s still extending, in fact. I got to a point where i could think about nothing but breathing and the pain i was in and that i needed to STOP every time i ran, and for the entire time that i was running. If i run again this year, i’m cranking my music UP and i’m not going to bother trying to breathe correctly. But, more likely, i’m going to get back into dancing instead. And Nathan will be joining me! We start in January, and hopefully it will help me to fit back into the jeans that have recently become too tight to wear. 
In the summer a cute bird couple laid their eggs in our sad little garden box, and we watched their babies quickly grow up & fly away. We took a trip to Oregon on what was probably the hottest week there, ever, and enjoyed visiting Portland and my family despite the shroud of fog out on the coast.
Shortly after we returned my job petered out, and so i signed up for a couple of programming classes at DMACC and started the job hunt, bidding working from home a tearful goodbye. Javascript proved to be very intriguing, and programming logic came pretty easily to me. I only applied for about three jobs in all. One was located right across the street from where we live and dragged out their hiring process so long that by the time they finally rejected me, i had started my new job at Spindustry through Robert Half Technology. I learned recently that I ended up getting A’s in both of my DMACC classes (for whatever good that will do me) and that i get to keep my job at Spindustry! Beginning January 18th, i will no longer be a contractor through RHT, i will be a full-time Spindustry employee, and i couldn’t be happier.
This fall we got engaged, and i’m learning what it’s like to have a heart that is both peaceful and elated at the same time. I bought a 2004 Honda CR-V, and it is getting us safely through the mass amounts of snow that are falling upon Iowa this winter. I’m looking forward to starting to plan our wedding in the coming year (well, i’ve kinda started) and meeting the challenge of becoming even healthier. I have everything to be thankful for and everything to look forward to, and i’m sure 2010 is going to be a great adventure.
OMG movies! This was a Year of Movies for me & Nathan. He signed up for Netflix despite my bitter hatred of the company (because they put un-blockable pop-unders on EVERY FREAKING WEBSITE EVER), and we decided to work our way up through IMDB’s top 50 movies of all time, so our ambition to watch more than one movie a week was high. And that’s just what we did! I’ve written down the titles of 63 movies we watched this year, and there are possibly a few i missed. I believe 16 or 17 of those were released this year.
First of all, we didn’t get through all 50 IMDB picks. We got up to about #36, but we didn’t go perfectly in order and the list is always fluctuating. We also skipped the ones we had already seen. I didn’t enjoy any of them very much except for To Kill a Mockingbird and Alien. I really liked Alien. And it was then that i realized that my love of sci-fi extends far beyond Star Wars, and i was a little bit ashamed.
Speaking of sci-fi (or is it syfy now?), my favorite movie that we watched this year was Metropolis, a silent sci-fi made in 1927. It’s weird and awesome and it’s amazing what they dreamed up and brought to life way back then. The acting is so interesting, and you realize that you’re viewing an artifact when the missing bits of film are filled in with text summaries. Wonderful.
We saw Avatar and District 9 recently, and we discovered that the two movies actually share some plot elements, which explains why so many people are comparing them. Avatar is of course spectacular, and the story isn’t bad (even if it is kindof a recycled Pocahontas). The aliens looked cartooney in the previews, but we found that they didn’t feel that way when we watched the movie. It was better than i was expecting, and while it’s not one of my new favorite movies, i definitely recommend seeing it, and in theaters (*and* in 3-D if you can stomach paying that much for one movie). District 9, on the other hand, is gritty and gory and I’m still not entirely sure whether i liked it or not. I don’t think i did, that’s not the kind of movie i tend to like (we both really hated Taxi Driver, by the way).
I thought The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Gran Torino were both overrated. Coraline and Up are both fun and worth watching. The Hangover was funny, and so was Bruno. Harry Potter and the… Whatever It Was This Year and Angels and Demons were entertaining, as anyone could have guessed. And i must say i found Twilight and New Moon to be pretty entertaining as well. They’re really fun to laugh at (sparkly vampires? werewolves running around in cutoffs??), and it’s also just fun to wonder if Bella will ever become a vampire?! (DO NOT tell me.) A lot of young women adore the Twilight saga, and i’ve discovered that a slew of others abhor it just because the former group loves it, which i think is a lot more retarded than being obsessed with it. Like what you like, don’t dislike something just to be “different”.
Slumdog Millionaire and Milk are really genuinely good movies, so if you’re looking for actually *good* stuff and not just entertainment, those are the only ones i watched this year that i can recommend.
And finally, because i can’t possibly mention the remaining fifty-or-so movies we saw in 2009, i’d like to award Worst Movie I Watched This Year to: Henry Poole is Here. If you didn’t already think Luke Wilson a douchebag for his AT&T commercials, go ahead and watch this movie and join the rest of us.
Since i’ve procrastinated and am now left with three posts to write today, i’m going to keep my books post rather short. I’ve already written about every book i read this year, so you know what my opinions of them are. I only finished nine books this year (and re-read two) but i started several others, and for me this is a pretty significant increase in reading. I haven’t read this many books cover-to-cover since high school. Reading has finally gripped me, and i think my mother must be proud.
(Mom has become a recurring theme in my end-of-year posts. Maybe i should continue referring to what i think she thinks of me in the two to follow.)
Early this year i became sort of fascinated with pregnancy. Since my latter two years of college, i’ve had quite a few dreams in which i am pregnant or have a very tiny baby, so that’s probably what got me interested. That and reading dooce and subsequently watching videos on momversation, and also just being at that age where a lot of people i know are starting their adventures in procreation.
So i read a couple of tales of pregnancy; Accidentally On Purpose and It Sucked and then I Cried (dooce’s book). I learned all kinds of things, like what an episiotomy is and what post-partum depression is like and how very, very little sleep new parents get – and good stuff, like that giving birth can be an almost spiritual experience that may make you feel even more deeply connected to your husband. And guess what? I’m never, ever having a baby. EVER. I got really tired of hearing about the whole thing, especially what’s coming out of either end of a baby at any given moment. I’m definitely over it.
The other topic that my reading this year covered was, of course, atheism. For a while there i was really passionate about it and i enjoyed writing about it until my writings garnered what i maintain were some really unfair accusations. And i noticed that i was really pissing off some of my close friends and relatives, and i was forced to realize that i don’t have the power to change the way people think about things. I decided that it just isn’t worth damaging personal relationships to keep trying. Religion is a topic i really wish people could discuss and talk freely about, but the world isn’t ready yet. I’ve given up on being passionate about this, just like i gave up on being passionate about liberalism and vegetarianism and environmentalism in the past because i realized that it was not making me happy, it was making me miserable. Wanting to change the world is a miserable thing, so this year i want to focus on what i love about it, and read more on that.
I like to write a blog post at the end of each year to sum up what happened during the year and how i felt about it. This year has been a huge one, however, and it’s also the end of a pretty significant decade, so i’m breaking my post up into multiple parts. To kick things off, let’s talk about music.
I acquired about twenty albums this year, and i think it’s worth mentioning that i only stole a handful of them. That’s right, i actually purchased most of the albums i’ll be talking about here. Not that i really think it matters, but it’ll make my mom happy. 
I started the year off by buying We Started Nothing by The Ting Tings, and that’s a reflection of the sort of tunes i listened to all year long. Very dance-y, high-energy stuff with just a few exceptions, including last year’s old-west-flavored Fleet Foxes and nineties-alt-punk-y Girl In A Coma, whom i was delighted to discover at the 80/35 festival this summer. I decided to buy their older album, Both Before I’m Gone, but i hope to also acquire their 2009 release soon.
Other indie/dance albums i enjoyed in 2009 include: Fantasies by Metric, Manners by Passion Pit, Miike Snow’s self-titled album which is very good, Phoenix’s very popular Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix which, in my opinion, is rather overrated as a whole, and probably my favorite album of the year: It’s Blitz! by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Many an impromptu kitchen dance party was inspired by each of these albums, but i think It’s Blitz! entertained us the most. We also streamed a lot of La Roux and Lady Gaga for a while, but i never actually got the albums. Poker Face really started to grate on my nerves after a while.
Another album i’d stick in the same genre is The Rhumb Line by Ra Ra Riot. I love this album, and i spent half the year thinking it was an ’09 release, so i’m mentioning it in this post despite the fact that it was actually released in ’08. It’s such fun, and you’ve gotta love a rock band that includes a cello and violin on (i think) every track.
Ursa Major by Third Eye Blind has been growing on me steadily. It’s a pretty sad album, though, and these days i prefer to listen to happier music. Swoon by Silversun Pickups just wasn’t as good as Carnavas. The Resistance by Muse got a lot of people excited, but not me. I’ve listened to it a few times and it just never really grabbed me. The New Moon soundtrack, on the other hand… I can’t stop listening to it. It’s fantastic. And i wouldn’t be ashamed of that fact if it weren’t for the utter scorn that half of my friends feel toward anything and anyone associated with the Twilight Saga. But more on that in the Movies post.
Some older albums that i got this year include: Third by Portishead, which i didn’t think lived up to all the hype even though “Machine Gun” is a really great track, Red Letter Year by Ani DiFranco which disappointed me pretty thoroughly, The Con which is a good solid Tegan & Sara album, The Shepherd’s Dog by Iron & Wine who never really makes a bad album, Neon Bible by the Arcade Fire for whom i discovered a whole new appreciation and a bunch of Ryan Adams albums which i find quite enjoyable.
So, to wrap up, here are a couple of lists:
Steph’s favorite albums of the year:
- It’s Blitz! by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- The Rhumb Line by Ra Ra Riot (yeah, 2008, whatever.)
- The New Moon Soundtrack
- Miike Snow by Miike Snow
Steph’s favorite tracks of the year:
- “Sleepy Head” by Passion Pit
- “1909″ by Phoenix
- “Zero” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- “Silvia” by Miike Snow
Have yourself a little dance party.
Since this is also the end of a decade, i’d like to crown Coldplay as the band of the aughts. A lot of my favorite bands hit their peak back in the nineties – Third Eye Blind, The Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead (this is arguable), Bjork, and Ani DiFranco to name a few. But Coldplay released their first album, Parachutes, in 2000. Since then, we’ve watched them go from little-known newbies to one of the biggest bands in the world, and with good reason. They’ve released four studio albums and two live albums in that time. I’ve seen them in concert twice, and it was one of the best shows i’ve seen. Of all that they’ve accomplished, though, Parachutes is still my favorite piece of Coldplay work, and it’s also my favorite album of this decade. If you don’t own it, i think you should.
