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end-of-year summary late addendums
Jan. 7th, 2016 09:23 am1. What did you do in 2015 that you'd never done before?
I started tying my shoelaces with a surgeon's knot; up to this point, I've used granny knots and double knots, and they came untied at least once an hour. I knew there had to be a better way, but since I mostly wear slip-on or buckle shoes, I wasn't highly motivated to learn it. However, I finally sat down with a video and practiced, and now my shoes stay sorted. Like magic.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
More notable is who/what fell off the hate list: IKEA. It's still not my favorite place in the world, but I don't mind it any more. I'm even a bit fond. It's probably a combination of exposure (I have by now been to enough IKEAs in enough places that I find them easy to navigate) and my preference for Italian crowds instead of American crowds. Italians are better at sharing communal space than Americans, but more importantly, they're physically smaller. In the U.S., I fall smack in the middle of the height distribution, which means half of the people around me are taller than I am. In Abruzzo, I'm as tall or taller than at least 80% of the people I run across. When a crowd doesn't block your sightlines at all, it's much less intimidating.
I still find the commissary mostly unpalatable. But I like the broad selection of LED lights, a technology I find wondrous.
I started tying my shoelaces with a surgeon's knot; up to this point, I've used granny knots and double knots, and they came untied at least once an hour. I knew there had to be a better way, but since I mostly wear slip-on or buckle shoes, I wasn't highly motivated to learn it. However, I finally sat down with a video and practiced, and now my shoes stay sorted. Like magic.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
More notable is who/what fell off the hate list: IKEA. It's still not my favorite place in the world, but I don't mind it any more. I'm even a bit fond. It's probably a combination of exposure (I have by now been to enough IKEAs in enough places that I find them easy to navigate) and my preference for Italian crowds instead of American crowds. Italians are better at sharing communal space than Americans, but more importantly, they're physically smaller. In the U.S., I fall smack in the middle of the height distribution, which means half of the people around me are taller than I am. In Abruzzo, I'm as tall or taller than at least 80% of the people I run across. When a crowd doesn't block your sightlines at all, it's much less intimidating.
I still find the commissary mostly unpalatable. But I like the broad selection of LED lights, a technology I find wondrous.
