Chronic Negress

Some of you will be reading this because you got the URL for this blog in a holiday card from me. This is designed for people who haven’t been reading every post all year. For those of you who have been doing that, thanks. If you haven’t, it’s understandable. This has been quite a year in terms of changes good and bad big and small. I spent some portion of the beginning of the year putting the finishing touches on my recovery from the right knee replacement. It’s gone well except for the occasional outbreaks of tendonitis and plantar fasciitis. The Crohn’s is sleeping and I am happy. My Mom hangs in and doesn’t recognize me as far as I know but she seems happy to see me whenever I make it down to DC. She will be 84 exactly one month from Christmas Day. One of the highlights of the year was a gathering last Christmas at my cousin Leslie’s home of  various Whitt  (Mom’s maiden name) cousins and kids. With any luck we can repeat some variation of this for the impending Christmas. Here’s a photo:

All our Whitts about us

It was the best Christmas ever. As the year rolled on, I got serious about my wine studies and continued with classes at the Cervantes Institute and the French Institute Alliance Francaise. I also enrolled at the International Wine Center to study for my Level 3 Advanced Certificate, a major step on the road to sommelier work. The exam was held in August and I was mildly terrified of the outcome. We had to blind taste one wine and guess the price and the area of origin. Eight weeks later, I got my pin and my certificate in the mail. I passed with merit. I have also been participating in Wine Blogging Wednesday, a monthly Web-wide tasting with topics assigned by various bloggers. That’s been fun and has added to my education.

I think there’s no question that the biggest news of the year was my decision to accept a buyout after 11 years at the newspaper in Newark. The print news biz is a grim thing, and I knew for a while it was time to make a change. In the intervening months, I learned how to code HTML and the nuances of Cascading Style Sheets, InDesign and Photoshop. I study French and have applied for about 15  jobs with no feedback for the moment.

Anyway, with a half century on this earth looming, I’m headed to Antarctica since once I start working again, who knows when I will be able to afford a vacation of any length? I’ve also applied for a fellowship to the Wine Writers Symposium, an event I attended earlier this year that was quite enlightening.

My neighbors welcomed a baby in June and I spent a lot of the months since then knitting for the little cutie. I love to knit and spent much of the year plumping up my yarn stash and hanging with the Yarrrrn Pirates, my knitting posse.

Just in case you were worried, my rock ‘n’ roll self careened to prominence and as a result, I saw three different shows on the Nine Inch Nails “Lights Above the Sky” tour.  I also bought the new Metallica album and am contemplating if I can afford the new Calle 13 record. I am still on the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee, and that’s fun too.

Oh yeah, nice election, no? Best wishes to you all  and thanks for checking in. These entries have taken the place of the tree-killing holiday letter I used to put in the cards. Next year I will put up a Christmas tree.