Skip to main content

Happy New Year!

I love New Year's Day. For me, it has always been about the Rose Parade, and college football bowl games. We would get up early and watch the parade, then spend the rest of the day watching all the games, and finishing off all the Holiday snacks.

Yesterday was a really good day, even by my usual New Year's standards. I started it out by getting up early and watching the Parade. I'm a parade geek/junkie and have to watch it every year. I also called and talked with my grandmother for a few minutes. Not only did she remember who I was, but she was pretty clear mentally for the entire conversation. She suffered a stroke last spring and has been having memory issues ever since. She was watching the parade as well, so we visited about the different bands and floats. That side of the family lived for years in Southern California, and going to the parade was a tradition for them.

After the parade was over, I watched the rest of the Outback Bowl, where my beloved Iowa Hawkeyes totally creamed South Carolina. I think they were only the team from the Big 10 to win a bowl game. After the game was over, I could hear the band playing "In Heaven There Is No Beer", which is an Iowa band tradition. I'm a non-drinker, but I really do have an affection for that particular drinking song.

While the game was finishing up, I started making my traditional New Year's dinner of black-eye peas and corn bread. I served my mission in Mississippi, and that is traditional New Year's Day fare in the South. It is said to bring good fortune and good luck throughout the coming year.

My friend Alex called in the afternoon. She was recently diagnosed with cancer, but she'd been told this week that it was only stage 1. While she will still have to undergo treatment, it was really the best possible scenario for the particular type. So that was good news.

After the peas and corn bread were ready, I packed it in the car and drove down to spend the evening with my brother's family. We had dinner (my sister-in-law contributed fabulous homemade taquitos), watched football, and played with the kids. I took some left-over noisemakers from the night before with me, and the kids had fun playing with them. My nephew played with his new blocks and wrestled with his Dad, and my niece would come and sit on my lap and cuddle with me and read stories. It was a great evening.

Later when I got home, I finished off the evening by watching a brand-new episode of Iron Chef America. So it ended up being a really great day, and hopefully an auspicious beginning to 2009.

Comments

Happy New Year Tracie! Glad you had such a fun day. I'm sure you are going to have a wonderful year! Love you!

Popular posts from this blog

Tracie's Food Philosophy

I don't know that I've ever talked about it, but for the last 3 or 4 years, I've followed a diet all my own that I call "Mostly Vegetarian" or "Flexitarian". The idea is that for the most part, I follow a vegetarian lifestyle, with the occasional serving or two of meat when I feel like I need it. A few years ago, I was going through a rough patch. I had gained a few pounds, and my only vegetable intake was in the form of salsa or V8. So one January as I was trying to identify some goals for the year, I decided to eat 2-3 servings of vegetables a day, and I would start strength training. I started working on those two things, and an unanticipated result was that weight started to come off. I ended up losing about 15 pounds, and I found that I enjoyed vegetables so much (who knew?) that I started eating more of them. And the more vegetables I ate, the less meat I ate. Over the years, I've felt so good for the most part that I've stuck with it.

Tidying Up

If you've been watching Netflix much lately, you've probably seen the new series "Tidying Up", with Marie Kondo. She's an expert in cleaning, tidying, and storing stuff, and her method is quite inspiring. I enjoyed the show so much that I ordered her book "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up", and spent several days trying to get my house more in order. Not that I'm a hoarder - I have a basically tidy home. But the Kon-mari method teaches you to look at your belongings and ask yourself if each particular belonging brings you joy. If it doesn't, it's time for it to move on. I went through all my clothes first, followed by my books and DVD's, followed by the office, followed by the kitchen and laundry room. Whatever didn't bring me joy or a happy memory went into the pile. And when all was said and done, I ended up taking an entire car full of stuff to the local Deseret Industries, to hopefully be re-purposed for someone else to find

2018 Year in Review

Whew! The last quarter of 2018 was a whirlwind! But I hung on, and am back for more in 2019. So to catch you up, here's a quick update: I completed the capstone project for my master's degree. It was a major challenge, and I admit I was at times fearful that I wouldn't be able to do it. But do it I did, and I was thrilled to come out of it with a solid grade. I was given some new opportunities at work. I was handed the company's most critical technology project, and tasked with getting it back on track, and delivered on time. While we did miss our deadline by a couple of weeks, the business signed off on the project and it is ready to go live. BA World Chicago. Our team went on a quick trip to a conference in Chicago, where we got some great information from some prominent business analysts. We also had some Giordano's pizza, got to visit the 96th floor of the Hancock Building, and attended the musical "Hamilton". Nephew #2 received hi