{"id":9860,"date":"2025-12-31T03:48:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T02:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/?p=9860"},"modified":"2026-01-07T16:44:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T15:44:39","slug":"retrospective-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/12\/31\/retrospective-18\/","title":{"rendered":"RETROSPECTIVE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dailydropcap.com\/images\/H-5-cap.png\" title=\"Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische\" align=\"left\" alt=\"H\"\/>a! I remembered! I was afraid I would forget and not remember to write my year-end retrospective until I got home and that would mean it would actually have been written in the new year. I think it&#8217;s happened once or maybe twice before but I&#8217;d much rather have it be my last post of the year. <\/p>\n<p>We are at my sister&#8217;s place in North Carolina, spending the holidays with her and her family, and my mom. It&#8217;s 10 days total and we have 1.5 days left, as we fly home on January 1st. We will actually arrive back in Sweden (via Munich and Copenhagen) on January 2nd. It&#8217;s been a very busy holiday, with lots of shopping and fun stuff, and eating, and of course, the actual Christmas celebrations. <\/p>\n<p>Since Anders hasn&#8217;t been to the States since before the pandemic, and Martin came home at the very end of it (though he did have a quick trip to Detroit again at some point), we&#8217;ve taken every advantage to make the most of our short time here for everyone. That usually means shopping at specific places and eating at specific restaurants. We had Karin&#8217;s girlfriend Essie with us until a couple of days ago as well, and she also had wishes for the week she was here, which we managed to fulfill as well. <\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve even had a lot of hangout time with family, including several days when it was so warm and summery that we were able to sit out on the porch in the sunshine. I&#8217;m planning to come back for my annual visit in mid-March so I didn&#8217;t worry about what we didn&#8217;t have time for this trip, as I&#8217;ll be back soon.<\/p>\n<p>2025 was a pretty shitty year health-wise, and since 2024 wasn&#8217;t much better, I&#8217;m really hoping that next year will see some marked improvement, but since I have upcoming cataract surgery to schedule&#8230;we&#8217;ll see. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Family &#038; Personal Highlights of 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>getting my mom moved in to my sister&#8217;s house<\/li>\n<li>4 weeks in the States with my first family<\/li>\n<li>getting Ingvar&#8217;s house emptied and sold<\/li>\n<li>a knee operation to clean up the meniscus problem<\/li>\n<li>Karin running Broloppet<\/li>\n<li>Martin and Theo&#8217;s new apartment<\/li>\n<li>Karin getting accepted to college in Denmark<\/li>\n<li>Julie and family visiting Sweden<\/li>\n<li>great doctors and treatment in Malm\u00f6 after my colitis diagnosis<\/li>\n<li>taking off all the Fridays during the fall<\/li>\n<li>new fridge, freezer, and furnace<\/li>\n<li>spending the holidays in N. Carolina<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ve read 87 books so far this year, and there&#8217;s a good chance I&#8217;ll finish the one I&#8217;m reading now before we leave in 2 days, so that will be a grand total of 88 books for 2025, which is a little low, but still pretty decent. According to Goodreads, I read enough pages to walk around the Pyramid of Giza with pages to spare, which seems kind of random. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Best books of 2025<\/strong> (in no particular order and not including re-reads)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Humankind<\/em> by Rutger Bregman<\/li>\n<li><em>The Hymn to Dionysus<\/em> by Natasha Pulley<\/li>\n<li><em>The Summer War<\/em> by Naomi Novik<\/li>\n<li>a whole pile of books by T. Kingfisher including <em>Swordheart<\/em>, <em>Hemlock &#038; Silver<\/em>, the <em>Clocktaur<\/em> duology, <em>The Saint of Steel<\/em> series, and <em>Summer in Orcus<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Enlightenment<\/em> by Sarah Perry<\/li>\n<li><em>Ink Blood Sister Scribe<\/em> by Emma T\u00f6rzs<\/li>\n<li><em>The Ministry of Time<\/em> by Kaliane Bradley<\/li>\n<li><em>The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door<\/em> by H.G. Parry<\/li>\n<li><em>Migrations<\/em> by Charlotte McConaghy<\/li>\n<li><em>Replaceable You<\/em> by Mary Roach<\/li>\n<li><em>The Last Murder at the End of the World<\/em> by Stuart Turton<\/li>\n<li><em>The Husbands<\/em> by Holly Gramazio<\/li>\n<li><em>America Fantastica<\/em> by Tim O&#8217;Brien<\/li>\n<li><em>Black Woods Blue Sky<\/em> by Eowyn Ivey<\/li>\n<li><em>The Cautious Traveler&#8217;s Guide to the Wastelands<\/em> by Sarah Brooks<\/li>\n<li><em>The Incandescent<\/em> by Emily Tesh<\/li>\n<li><em>Booth<\/em> by Karen Joy Fowler<\/li>\n<li><em>The Frozen River<\/em> by Ariel Lawhon<\/li>\n<li>The <em>Emily Wilde<\/em> series by Heather Fawcett<\/li>\n<li><em>Mad Honey<\/em> by Jodi Picoult<\/li>\n<li><em>Memorial Days<\/em> by Geraldine Brooks<\/li>\n<li><em>Fractured Fables<\/em> #1 &#038; #2 by Alix E Harrow<\/li>\n<li><em>The Sword and the Sophomore<\/em> by B.P. Sweany<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Once again, lots of great new music this year, thanks to both Martin and Discover Weekly on Spotify. I listen to my awesome playlist every day, whenever I&#8217;m in the car, which is the best feature of the Tesla in my opinion. \ud83d\ude00 <\/p>\n<p><strong>Best new music artists of 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Trousdale<\/li>\n<li>mags<\/li>\n<li>The Aces<\/li>\n<li>Isabel Dumaa<\/li>\n<li>Leadley<\/li>\n<li>Babygirl<\/li>\n<li>Alisa Xayalith<\/li>\n<li>Nea<\/li>\n<li>Stevie Bill<\/li>\n<li>May<\/li>\n<li>Skyler Cocco<\/li>\n<li>Pippa Crossland<\/li>\n<li>Missy Higgins<\/li>\n<li>Aneiki<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This year was not a great year for movie or series watching. I only watched 39 movies this year and most of the series we only watched a few episodes of before giving up or were new seasons of shows we usually watch, so the only new ones I really enjoyed were <em>The Pitt<\/em> and <em>Hur fan hamnade vi h\u00e4r<\/em>. Of course, we watched <em>B\u00e4st i Test, Fr\u00e5ga Lund<\/em>, and <em>P\u00e5 Sp\u00e5ret<\/em> on Swedish television. As for movies, the best were<em> Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Clock &#8211; Socialist Burgers, Inc., The Wild Robot, The Fall Guy<\/em>, and <em>Flow<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Some manageable goals for 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Portion control and cut down on sugar<\/li>\n<li>Chair yoga or short walks<\/li>\n<li>Get through cataract surgery on both eyes<\/li>\n<li>Plant tree\/bush and move metal trellis around the swing patio<\/li>\n<li>USA trip in the spring<\/li>\n<li>Mont St Michel for our 30th wedding anniversary<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Since we are flying home on New Year&#8217;s Day, our New Year&#8217;s Eve this year will be pretty quiet and certifiably lame: we will hopefully have a delicious breakfast at Coney Island in the morning and then some are going ice skating while the rest of us relax. Then packing and a spaghetti and salad dinner. I expect we won&#8217;t even make it up for fireworks, since most of us aren&#8217;t sleeping super well, and Bryce has been sick nearly the whole visit, poor guy. I&#8217;m hoping for a smooth, easy flight home and am very much looking forward to another week off after we return before I go back to work. Happy New Year!<\/p>\n<p><em>mood: relaxed<br \/>\nmusic: some kind of jazz from the living room<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>a! I remembered! I was afraid I would forget and not remember to write my year-end retrospective until I got home and that would mean it would actually have been written in the new year. I think it&#8217;s happened once or maybe twice before but I&#8217;d much rather have it be my last post of the year. We are at my sister&#8217;s place in North Carolina, spending the holidays with her and her family, and my mom. It&#8217;s 10 days total and we have 1.5 days left, as we fly home on January 1st. We will actually arrive back in&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,31,14,27],"class_list":["post-9860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-beinglizardek","tag-famdamily","tag-goodthings","tag-holidaze"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9860","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=9860"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9908,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9860\/revisions\/9908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}