Not To Be Trusted With Knives

2023 Year In Review

January 1, 2024 by Beth

Another year with very little blogging means that I’m relying mostly on photos to even remember what I did this year! It was a fairly uneventful year, but with a few big highlights.

My New Hobbies

The number one highlight of the year for me was learning how to do stand-up comedy. I took a class in Sept/Oct that culminated in a showcase at the comedy club in New West on Fri, Oct. 13. It ended up being so much more work than I could have imagined to put together my 5 minute set, that I ended up behind on a bunch of other work, so I didn’t get to dedicate much time to writing or open mics for the rest of the fall. A few of my comedy classmates have been really good as consistently writing and getting out to open mics, but I discovered that I’m not good at getting out there spontaneously – I really need it in my calendar ((Not sure why this is a surprise to me, as that’s basically how I get anything done in my life.)). So I’ve decided to set myself an open mic schedule and get dedicated comedy writing time into my calendar. I did do an open mic while visiting my family in Toronto and it was super fun.

I also learned how to crochet. I’m still just doing the basics, but I feel like it’s a good idea to do lots of practice of some basic stuff to really get the hang out of before I start branching out to newer/more challenging things. I do want to try crocheting a stuffed animal though, so I think that will be a goal for the new year!

Travel

I did a fair bit of travelling, most of it in the last two months of the year. I actually didn’t go anywhere until my annual Wine Bitches trip to the Okanagan in May:

In June I went to Quebec City for a conference.

And then I hopped over to Toronto to visit my family.

In November I got to go to Ottawa for some board meetings, and I tagged on a couple of vacation days beforehand so I could go hang out with Sarah and her family. I hadn’t been to her house since the Before Times, so her kids were so much bigger than the last time I saw them. And I got to meet her new kitties!

I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to go to a conference in Manila, Philippines in December. I’ve never been to the Philippines before and I haven’t been on a flight nearly that long since I went to Australia in 2016. I could have gotten a direct flight from Vancouver to Manila, but it was $800 more than flying to San Francisco and then going to Manila, and since I was flying on behalf of a non-profit professional organization, I took the latter option.

And a week later, I flew to Toronto to spend Christmas with my family!

Health

Because I’m old, I seem to always need a “Health” category in my year-in-review posting. This year I managed to amputate part of my finger and get elbow bursitis (both of which I actualy blogged about) and catch COVID-19 ((This was my first time with COVID where I had a positive COVID test. I’m reasonably sure I had it in Feb 2020 in NYC, but that was so early in the pandemic, there were no tests available yet.)). I also got my laser eye surgery done in September.

Other Stuff

Other than that, it was all the usual things this year: work, teaching, weightlifting, hockey. My summer hockey team won our division, so that was cool:

And the kitties continue to be adorable.

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