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2024: The Year In Travel

As we ring in the new year, it’s time to take a look back at the trips out of Illinois that I took last year.  Things got off to a fast start, as I traveled down to West Lafayette the first weekend of the year with Danny to see Purdue take on Illinois at Mackey Arena.  Since they were still on break, Danny was able to play with the basketball band as Purdue topped their conference rival 83-78.

I returned to campus mere days later, as the Iowa women’s basketball team, featuring star attraction Caitlin Clark, invaded Mackey Arena.  Danny was once again playing with the band, so I watched the game, which Iowa won easily, solo before heading back to my hotel.

Later in January, I made my final trip to Mackey Arena of the year as the Purdue women’s basketball team battled IU.  While the game did not go well for the Boilers, Danny did get to spend some time with his Nana for her birthday the following day.

After a quiet February, basketball again was the reason for my next trip at the end of March.  Purdue’s men’s team was in Detroit for the Sweet Sixteen.  They won Friday night against Gonzaga to advance to the Elite Eight.  Saturday night, we headed across to border to Windsor to have dinner at Caesar’s Palace.  Danny drove up on Sunday for the return trip to Little Caesars Arena, where Purdue earned its first Final Four appearance in 44 years.

We returned to West Lafayette in late April for Danny’s last band concert.  Atter lunch with him and his friends, we headed to the Elliot Hall of Music and settled in for an afternoon of music.  Thankfully, his section was first, so we were able to take our leave early and head back home.

A few weeks later, we returned to Indiana for Danny’s graduation.  First, we all met up at Fair Oaks Farms in Fair Oaks, Indiana for an early dinner and pictures before making the remainder of the journey to West Lafayette.  After the ceremony, we were allowed time to take a picture or two before Danny went off to celebrate with his friends and we headed home.

A week later, it was time for another graduation, this time in Boston.  We arrived in town on Saturday, hunkering down in a hotel just off the North End.  We eventually met up with the graduate-to-be at a local favorite called The Yardhouse, where we enjoyed a traditional Massachusetts dinner.  After a quick breakfast the following morning, we headed to Agganis Arena on the BU campus for the graduation ceremony.  After a quick lunch, we decamped to the hotel for gifts before a nice dinner in the North End.  Monday we were able to meet up with Angelina for lunch before an afternoon flight home.

With all of that out of the way, I had my first international trip since COVID in July, when I went to Amsterdam for a week to visit Val, leaving on a Tuesday afternoon and landing in Amsterdam on Wednesday morning.  After a day of rest to recover from the overnight travel, I set out to visit the local sights, including the Rijksmuseum, the national museum of the Netherlands, before dinner out with my hosts.  On Friday, I headed out to see some working windmills.  The next night, we headed out to the former Heineken brewery to see the Heineken Experience.  After a day of rest on Sunday, I spent Monday bumming around the museum campus before dinner and a tour of the Red Light District.  The next morning, I set out to the airport for the long flight home.

My final trip of the year was a return to Boston in November to celebrate birthdays with Angelina.  I arrived in town on Friday night, getting to the hotel late.  Saturday, we went to see Heretic before going out to dinner.  Sunday morning, I Ubered around Boston to see Angelina at various points of the Boston Half marathon.  Once she finished the race, we had lunch and then I headed to the airport to return home.

 

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2024: The Year In Movies

The return of my annual long December vacation helped push up a weak first eleven months of the year, giving me my lowest total since 2021.  I managed to watch 52 movies last year, my fourth consecutive year under 100, despite being home all day and not needing to bother with pesky things like a commute.  Or exercise.  Reading 62 books and watching game shows all day probably didn’t help either.

Here’s a look back at the first 50 movies I watched last year and what recollection, if any, I have of them. The films are listed in the order I saw them.

The Assistant (2019)
A day in the life of an assistant to a film producer, who quickly realizes that abuse is all around her.

The Holdovers (2023)
A tight-assed teacher and a troublesome student bond when they are left alone at their boarding school over winter break.

May December (2023)
An actress starts to come between a couple who, twenty years ago, had a notorious tabloid relationship.

The Equalizer 3 (2023)
The latest entry in the Denzel Washington series.

Wrong Turn (2021)
A group of friends hiking the Appalachian Trail come across a community none too happy to see them.

The Equalizer (2014)
When a young girl is kidnapped by Russian pimps, a former commando comes out of retirement to rescue her.

Plus One (2019)
Longtime friends agree to be each other’s plus one at the various weddings they get invited to.

Pearl (2022)
A young woman tries to become a star to escape from her overbearing parents and living on an isolated farm.

Thanksgiving (2023)
A killer attacks on Thanksgiving.

Upgraded (2024)
An intern at an auction house misrepresents herself to impress a man.

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Fifty Years Of Music – 2023

Fifty years ago, I made my first appeared on the Earth.  In celebration, we are going to take a look at the year-end Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for each year of my life and see what songs resonated with me at the time and if they continue to do so to this day.

We conclude our look back at the music of my lifetime with 2023, the 50th incarnation of the chart during my lifetime.  Being an old, I have little knowledge of nearly all of the songs, as I am not really the target demographic, of pop music today, with only Taylor Swift and the handful of Christmas classics which have made the list breaking through.  Only 17 of the Hot 100 are familiar to me now, with only seven of them appearing in my collection in one way or another.

#84: Wham! – Last Christmas
iTunes stats: N/A

Originally released in the UK in 1984, the duo’s Christmas classic was finally released in the US in 2014 and has charted regularly every December since.

#71: Burl Ives – A Holly Jolly Christmas
iTunes stats: 0 plays

The holiday classic, featured in the 1964 Rankin-Bass special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, makes the year end chart for the second consecutive year.

#68: Bobby Helms – Jingle Bell Rock
iTunes stats: 0 plays

Arguably the best-known version of the song, it has now charted in twelve different years since 1958

#60: Brenda Lee – Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
iTunes stats: 0 plays

The song was first recorded by Lee when she was 13 years old.

#55: Mariah Carey – All I Want for Christmas Is You
iTunes stats: 0 plays

One of the few modern additions to the holiday canon, it has placed on the year-end chart for five years running.

#32: Taylor Swift – Lavendar Haze
iTunes stats: 4 plays

The second single from Swift’s tenth studio album, it debuted and peaked at #2, giving Swift sole possession of the top ten

#27: Taylor Swift – Karma
iTunes stats: 2 plays

It reached #2 on the Hot 100 and became Swift’s record-tying 10th and 11th number-one singles on the Adult Top 40 and Pop Airplay charts, respectively.

#18: Taylor Swift – Cruel Summer
iTunes stats: 6 plays

Despite being from Swift’s seventh studio album, released in 2019, it was first released as a single in 2023 after going viral in conjunction with the Era’s Tour.  It spent four non-consecutive weeks at #1, becoming her tenth chart-topping single.

#4: Taylor Swift – Anti-Hero
iTunes stats: 14 plays

Spending eight weeks at the top of the Hot 100, it helped push Swift past Madonna for the most top ten hits by a female artist.

#2: Miley Cyrus – Flowers
iTunes stats: N/A

The second #1 hit for Cyrus, it spent eight non-consecutive weeks atop the Hot 100.

 

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Book 1 (of 52) – In A Strange City

In A Strange City – Laura Lippman

When an eccentric antiques dealer tries to hire Tess Monaghan to find out the identity of the Poe Toaster, a local Baltimore legend who visits Edgar Alllan Poe’s grave every year on the anniversary of his death, he starts in motion a bizarre series of events that puts Tess in the middle of another murder investigation.  With the Poe angle bringing in media attention from around the world and a possible tie-in to an earlier beating making the murder a potential hate crime, Tess has to dig through all of the players and the false leads to find the true motive, and culprit, for the crimes.

The sixth entry in Laura Lippman’s Tess Monaghan series, In a Strange City, revolves around the mysteries surrounding one of Baltimore’s most famous residents.  The Poe Visitor was a real thing, an unknown man, or men, who visited Poe’s original grave annually in the early hours of January 19, leaving three roses and an unfinished bottle of liquor behind.  It certainly makes a good backdrop for a mystery, as it is a mystery in and of itself.  I’ve got six more Tess novels to go, not to mention any other works in Lippman’s oeuvre.

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Ballpark Tour: Mariners

As the calendar turns to 2025, we continue our tour of all of the different baseball stadiums I’ve been to over the years. This week, we head to the Pacific Northwest for a look at the Seattle Mariners. So, without further ado, let’s take a deeper look at my history with T-Mobile Park.

Stadium Name: T-Mobile Park

Years in Service: 1999 – Present

Visits: 2

After 22 plus seasons of indoor baseball at the Kingdome, the Mariners moved partially outside midway through the 1999 season, when the stadium then known as Safeco Field, with a retractable roof, opened in 1999 following the All-Star break.  The Mariners dropped that first game 3-2 to the visiting Padres.  The name changed to T-Mobile Park prior to the 2019 season.  The park has seen two perfect games, both in 2012.  The first, by Phillip Humber of the White Sox, came in April and was followed four months later by the Mariners’ own Felix Hernandez.  The park has hosted two All Star games, first in 2001 and again in 2023.

My first and only trip west to Seattle came in the summer of 2023, when Danny finally cashed in his high school graduation trip.  We arrived in town on a Friday afternoon and, following a trip to Pike Place Market for lunch, we headed over to the stadium, where the Mariners bested the White Sox.  Having upgraded to the special all-inclusive section behind home plate, we returned on Saturday with better results, as Zach Remillard made his major league debut and led to the White Sox to an extra-inning victory.

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FB10: Week 49

The second full week of my year-end vacation helped keep me above the elusive 30,000 step plateau.  Sunday got the week off to a decent start, finishing just 6 steps shy of 4800 steps.  Things took a bit of a tumble on Monday, dropping to 3600 steps.  A trip out to Christmas Eve dinner on Tuesday left me with 4500 steps.  Christmas activities on Wednesday kept me 3 steps shy of 3600.  A nighttime trip to the movie theater to see Wicked on Thursday helped push me up to 5400 steps exactly, my best day of the week.  Friday scored another 5000 step day.  A dip on Saturday left me 23 steps away from 4300.

Total steps: 31,268

Daily average: 4466.9

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52 Books in 52 Weeks – 2025 Edition

A new year is upon us, and it is time to once again set a goal of reading a book a week for the entire year, totaling 52 books in 52 weeks.

Last year, for the fourth straight year, I completed my goal, finishing the year with 61 books read.  Prior to that, I’d had a low point of 8 books back in 2010 and a high point of 59 books.

Since I have nothing but time again this year and am still a remote worker, I’m going to give it another go.  I’ve got plenty of new books stocked up, both in the Kindle app on my iPad and actual physical books, not to mention my handy dandy library card, so I’ve got a good pile to start with.  As a reminder, the rules I am using are:

  • You can count a book as read as long as you have completed the book in 2025 and at least 50% of that reading takes place in 2025.
  • Any book counts as long as you’re not embarrassed to count it.
  • Poetry collections do indeed count.
  • Re-reading a book is okay as long as it isn’t done this year. (Reading Twilight twice in 2025 only counts as 1 read).
  • Audiobooks also count.

My first book of the year looks like it will be In a Strange City by Laura Lippman, the sixth entry in her Tess Monaghan series.  Here’s hoping 2024 is another good year when it comes to books.

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2024: The Year In Books

As 2024 comes to a close, my fourth full year of remote working, I managed to once again surpass my previous records by completing a whopping 61 books, two books more than my previous high set last year and my fourth consecutive year completing the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.  I completed the challenge in mid-November and surpassed last year’s total in mid-December.  I read 22,622 pages, by far my highest total of all time and just the second time I’ve managed to surpass 20.000 pages.

Of those books, only five were non-fiction and, of the remaining 56 novels, only five were tied to a TV show, either as the source material or as a tie-in.  None of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, with two hard covers, two paperbacks, 53 e-books and no audiobooks.  I continued to take advantage of my library card, which helped me procure 46 of the books I consumed throughout the year.

Over 69% of the books I read this year were by authors I had read before. The 19 authors that I read for the first this year were:

Jessica Knoll Isabella Maldonado Kathleen McGurl Lisa Taddeo
Lisa Jewell Millie Bobby Brown J.M. Dillard Lee Goldberg
Avery Cunningham Margot Douaihy R.F. Kuang Jessica Simpson
Jeffrey Lang Dayton Ward Holly Wilson Karin Smirnoff
Walter Beede Michael Connelly Rob Harvilla

Karin Slaughter, Jeffery Deaver, Laura Lippman, Elin Hilderbrand, Jessica Knoll, Michael Connelly, Minka Kent, Lee Goldberg, Rebecca Forster, Stephen King, and Sarah Pekkanen were the authors that I read multiple titles from during 2024.

17 of the books I read were released this year, while only three of them were released last century, with the oldest first published in 1997.

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Fifty Years Of Music – 2022

Fifty years ago, I made my first appeared on the Earth.  In celebration, we are going to take a look at the year-end Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for each year of my life and see what songs resonated with me at the time and if they continue to do so to this day.

We have reached our penultimate entry, looking back at the music of my lifetime with 2022, the year I turned 48.  Only seven of the Hot 100 are familiar to me, with five of them appearing in my collection in one way or another.

#89: Burl Ives – A Holly Jolly Christmas
iTunes stats: 0 plays

Released in 1964, it charted for the first time in 2017 and continues to appear every December.

#86: Bobby Helms – Jingle Bell Rock
iTunes stats: 0 plays

Peaking at #3 in 2022, it was first released in 1957 and charted for the first time in 1958.

#80: Brenda Lee – Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
iTunes stats: 0 plays

Originally released in 1958, it reached #2 in late November of 2022.

#76: Taylor Swift – All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)
iTunes stats: 2 plays

The longest #1 song in Hot 100 history, it was her 30th top ten hit, making her just the sixth artist to achieve that feat.

#65: Mariah Carey – All I Want for Christmas Is You
iTunes stats: 0 plays

Reached the top of the charts for the fourth consecutive year.

#23: Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill
iTunes stats: N/A

Originally released in 1985, its use in the fourth season of Stranger Things returned it to the charts where it reached #3, bettering its earlier chart position of #30.

#17: Gayle – ABCDEFU
iTunes stats: N/A

The singer’s major label debut, it peaked at #3 and was nominated for a Grammy.