{"id":2824,"date":"2021-12-31T14:32:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-31T20:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/12\/31\/retrospective-14\/"},"modified":"2022-12-30T11:43:41","modified_gmt":"2022-12-30T10:43:41","slug":"retrospective-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/12\/31\/retrospective-14\/","title":{"rendered":"RETROSPECTIVE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/I-8-cap.png\" title=\"Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische\" align=\"left\" alt=\"I\" \/>t&#8217;s been another crazy pandemic year and it&#8217;s still ongoing so I don&#8217;t expect a lot from 2022 at this point. We are all managing to stay healthy, even though as I write this Anders is coughing. Both he and Karin came down with colds over Christmas week, but have tested negative multiple times and he&#8217;s at the very tail end of his. I am back at work as of Monday but it&#8217;s another short week, only 3 days, so a nice soft start to the year. Martin and I just finished the super hard jigsaw puzzle of a map of Paris that my friend Camilla gave me, and we have 2 more 1000-piecers to do, so might get a start on one of them this afternoon.<\/p>\n<p><b>Family &#038; personal highlights of 2021<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Doing a 5K every month of the year<\/li>\n<li>Karin moving to a new apartment in Lund<\/li>\n<li>Karin and Anders spending a week skiing in northern Sweden<\/li>\n<li>The whole family getting vaccinated against COVID-19<\/li>\n<li>Anders and Liz celebrating 25 years of marriage<\/li>\n<li>An anniversary trip to Gotland<\/li>\n<li>Axis calling Karin for a new job<\/li>\n<li>Anders putting the final touches on the porch<\/li>\n<li>A new Tesla!<\/li>\n<li>Martin moving home to Sweden after 4 years in the US!<\/li>\n<li>Karin&#8217;s trip to Mallorca<\/li>\n<li>My mom moving into her new place in South Carolina<\/li>\n<li>Martin getting a job at TUGG in Lund<\/li>\n<li>Being able to celebrate our annual Friendsgiving again<\/li>\n<li>Having the 4 of us all together for the holidays<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I feel like a read a LOT of books this year, and just now when I checked my stats on Goodreads, I find that my feeling is correct! I read a whopping 101 books this year (really 101.5 since I&#8217;m in the middle of a huge book right now). That&#8217;s my third highest total since I started keeping track on Goodreads in 2011. It probably helped that I was able to read at lunch so much while working from home most of the year!<\/p>\n<p><b>Best books of 2021<\/b> (in no particular order and not including re-reads)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i>The Chronicles of St. Mary&#8217;s<\/i> by Jodi Taylor<\/li>\n<li><i>I&#8217;ll Give You the Sun<\/i> by Jandy Nelson<\/li>\n<li><i>Winterkeep<\/i> by Kristin Cashore<\/li>\n<li><i>The Map of Tiny Perfect Things<\/i> by Lev Grossman<\/li>\n<li><i>Mother May I<\/i> by Joshilyn Jackson<\/li>\n<li><i>The Galaxy and the Ground Within<\/i> by Becky Chambers<\/li>\n<li><i>Hail Mary<\/i> by Andy Weir<\/li>\n<li><i>Why Peacocks?<\/i> by Sean Flynn<\/li>\n<li><i>Smoke Gets in Your Eyes<\/i> by Caitlin Doughty<\/li>\n<li><i>Theory of Bastards<\/i> by Audrey Schulman<\/li>\n<li><i>Sourdough<\/i> by Robin Sloan<\/li>\n<li><i>The Souvenir Museum<\/i> by Elizabeth McCracken<\/li>\n<li><i>The Bomber Mafia<\/i> by Malcolm Gladwell<\/li>\n<li><i>A Psalm for the Wild-built<\/i> by Becky Chambers<\/li>\n<li><i>Fuzz<\/i> by Mary Roach<\/li>\n<li><i>Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family&#8217;s Feuds<\/i> by Lyndall Gordon<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Martin basically kept me supplied with new music this year, consistently adding songs and artists to my playlist.<\/p>\n<p><b>Best new music artists of 2021<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Julia Kwamya<\/li>\n<li>Mitski<\/li>\n<li>BENEE<\/li>\n<li>Mina Okabe<\/li>\n<li>Oslo Ibrahim<\/li>\n<li>Arlo Parks<\/li>\n<li>Remi Wolf<\/li>\n<li>Da\u00f0i Freyr<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In 2021, we watched a lot of series and movies again, though I watched fewer movies by far than the year before. I watched only 41 films this year, compared with 63 in 2020, but I watched more series, clocking in at 31 different ones for 2021. In no particular order:<\/p>\n<p>The movies I enjoyed the most in 2021 were: <i>The Half of It, The Dig, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, Birdman, Free Guy, Dune, Encanto<\/i>, and <i>Spiderman\u2014No Way Home<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>The new (to me) series I enjoyed the most and recommend were: <i>Barry, Dickinson, Fr\u00e5ga Lund, B\u00e4st i test, Lupin, Mare of Easttown, La Casa de Papel (Money Heist), Over the Garden Wall, Sex Education, Six Feet Under, Ted Lasso, The Last Man on Earth, The Mandalorian<\/i>, and <i>Welcome to Earth<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><b>Some manageable goals for 2022<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Visit my mom and sister in the US<\/li>\n<li>Visit my brother and meet my niece before she turns 2<\/li>\n<li>Anders&#8217; 60th birthday trip and party<\/li>\n<li>Renovate the kitchen<\/li>\n<li>Shed the pandemic pounds: WALK WALK WALK<\/li>\n<li>Continue to stay COVID-free<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s very weird to think that tomorrow starts 2022, which sounds like something out of one of my sci-fi books. We are spending the evening tonight with our good friends Mats and Annelott while the kids are out with a few of their respective friends (small circles due to the ongoing pandemic) and I expect tomorrow and the rest of the weekend before I have to start work again will be very quiet. Happy New Year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>t&#8217;s been another crazy pandemic year and it&#8217;s still ongoing so I don&#8217;t expect a lot from 2022 at this point. We are all managing to stay healthy, even though as I write this Anders is coughing. Both he and Karin came down with colds over Christmas week, but have tested negative multiple times and he&#8217;s at the very tail end of his. I am back at work as of Monday but it&#8217;s another short week, only 3 days, so a nice soft start to the year. Martin and I just finished the super hard jigsaw puzzle of a map&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,9,8,14],"class_list":["post-2824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-beinglizardek","tag-bibliophilia","tag-blogalicious","tag-goodthings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2824"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8289,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2824\/revisions\/8289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}