2023
Ok, right, so, the year is over. Time to write one of those notes that I write each year.
This year, we drove down to Universal Studios for President’s Day. We’d never been before and hadn’t realised that the Super Mario Land was opening that weekend, so we were lucky to get to check it out. It was very cool. We also did as much as we could of the rest, and drove around Hollywood a bit.
In March we stayed at Safari West for a night. They have these amazing tents, which were absolutely freezing, but huge and with heated blankets. We did the Safari the next day in the pouring rain, which was an experience.
My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. We couldn’t be there for it, but we commissioned them a cartoon of the family which is now proudly hung on their wall. Commissioning art is amazing.
We planned to have a (possibly slightly ironic) coronation party but sadly we had COVID (our second time) and had to cancel. Now we just have these crowns and beefeater cutouts kicking around the house. A week after COVID the boys and I ran the Devil Mountain one-mile race. It was hard work - Jack and I started out too fast and struggled for the second half. Amusingly, I had expected it to be a general fun-run style event, but actually it was all proper athletics teams - and us. Nevertheless, we lost our races with dignity.
I ran Bay to Breakers a few weeks later, which is definitely more fun and relaxed, but somehow it’s always further than I remember. In 2024, I’ve signed up Jack too. It’ll be too far for him, but at least we won’t be the only non-finishers.
I took Jack to see the Book of Mormon, which I’d always wanted to see. It had some language that was definitely over the line, but also some great songs and laughs. Later in the year the rest of us went to see Aladdin and Lion King too.
We took a trip to England, and this time we decided to make plans. Instead of awkwardly hanging around in other people’s houses, we travelled. We took a couple of days in London to recover from jetlag, we flew in a very small plane to Alderney in the Channel Islands to see Peter & Helen, we took the train to Paris and went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, we went back to England and to Waldringfield, to camp with family. And, because it was a bit of a wet year for camping, we added a short stay at Legoland before we came home.
This year, Max had an unusual request when getting his hair cut. He has a natural swirl at the front of his hairline, and we left that bit to get longer. He called it his “floof”, and it got many looks and comments. It was lost to an idle trim in December, but I think he plans to grow it back. Personally, I grew a short goatee in October for my Dr Strange costume, which will not happen again.
In other news, Twitter rebranded itself to X, which gave me closure to the site that I felt a part of. Facebook launched Threads, which I now use more.
Frec launched! We’re focused on Direct Indexing, which is a fairly complicated concept that I’ll probably write about at some point. We have a very nice office on 2nd St.
AI became real this year. Github Copilot is a help, not a gimmick. ChatGPT is something I consult daily. We can generate any image we want, but suddenly we find ourselves short of ideas. We have also taken some self-driving taxi rides, to the delight of the boys (and myself).
Next year we plan to visit Hawaii again. We’ll fly to Texas for the solar eclipse. And …? I don’t know. I’d like to travel more. I’d like to do more.
Lots of people plan to spend more time with their family. I think I already do well on that front. Lots of people plan to be fitter, to drink less. Again, I think I’m doing ok on those scores. I was using Future fitness, but their prices doubled, so I’m now doing Apple Fitness classes, which are fine. I don’t drink much, but I don’t have many excuses to do so, and I’d like to find some meet-ups or something.
Thanks for reading! I guess you could now share this post on TikTok or something. That'd be cool.
Or if you had any comments, you could find me on Threads.
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