happy new year from mom and me, long beach airport, long beach, ca. december 08.
"I don't really know yet how I felt about 2008 in a grand sense."
I wrote an email to a friend last night and talked about my ambivalence about 2008. Sometimes, I have a clear picture of how I felt about a year. 2005 was great. 2006 was terrible. 2007 was better. 2008 was ... I don't know. And I guess it's not important to know. I am really looking forward to 2009 -- I know that for a fact.
As I have in the past three years, I posted my favorite tastes of the year on Bay Area Bites. I realized after posting yesterday that I missed one of my favorite bites: the roasted cauliflower dish at Ubuntu. I can't wait to return and have that again.
I wrote fewer posts to this blog in 2008 than ever -- a price that was paid as I turned my attention to writing for Serious Eats, posting on Twitter, taking 10,000 photographs, and continuing to write for Bay Area Bites.
I had some huge accomplishments in the eat local world, including writing for a national publication and being interviewed for an AP article that was published in about fifty publications this week. My excitement about the AP article had nothing to do with my quote in it, but was much more about the balance with which the story was written. Eating locally is becoming a part of the mainstream lexicon, and it is no longer a fringe movement. For my tiny contribution to that, I am proud.
The blog post series that I was most proud of writing this year is about Slow Food Nation and was written for Serious Eats. Writing about the event really forced me to evaluate the event in a (hopefully) coherent manner.
In 2008, I turned 35. I have often heard people talk about 35 being a transitional age, and I really feel it. I feel strangely more comfortable in my skin, and less apologetic about who I am.
I didn't travel a ton this year, but I did take a couple of trips along the west coast. A spontaneous trip to Portland (can you say 24 hours notice?) was a highlight, as it was spent with great friends and crawling the town for fantastic food.
In 2008, I gathered a group of friends who went to approximately 18 different drinking establishments to try the best cocktails in town. Dubbed "book club," we met on Wednesday nights throughout the summer and had so much fun that we extended the cocktail research through the fall. A complete report about our adventures is coming up on Serious Eats. My favorite cocktail of the year? The Sungold Zinger from Range.
In 2008, I worked on the flickr 365 project, with a goal of taking a photo every day for a year. I stopped at photo 279 because I lost track of my days. But the intent of the goal was achieved as I now carry my camera everywhere, and taking photos of everyday things is second nature. I truly think that my photography practice deepened with this project, and I really recommend it to anyone who would like to further their photography.
Come to think of it, 2008 was a pretty good year. I can't wait to see what 2009 brings. Safe and happy celebrations to you all. Thanks for your support and readership in the past year!
