The year flew by. I tried and failed at many things this year, but this last day of the year, I’m going to share the positive things, and my favorites.
The photo above is a dish I made trying out roasted purple cauliflower. It’s hard to see but to the right of the salmon is purple cauliflower rice, which I made too. The fish is salmon sprinkled with fresh dill, paprika, garlic salt, black pepper, and topped with slices of limes. I’ve never cooked with cauliflower before but I think this will be my new favorite thing because I really like the flavor and how easy it is to cook cauliflower.
I’m very proud to say that I accomplished two of my five goals this year. One of them was to start school again…actually, to resume my master’s program from 2010. So far, I’ve completed three classes and have four to go. I’m going to try and load up on classes so that I finish by end of Spring 2018. The other goal was to read 12 books. I ended up reading 34 books. A lot of it was due to freelancing as a book reviewer. I was doing about three to four books a month starting in July. I still read for leisure and still enjoy it
Here are my favorite books of the year:
1. Caraval by Stephanie Garber. This was such a lovely and fun story with romance, magic, and suspense.
2. Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon. This was a beautiful story told through the eyes of a young boy growing up in the 60’s. The world building was fabulous. I felt like I was right there with the boy. The characters were well thought out and vivid. McCammon really knows how to tug at your heart.
3. My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier. This was a well written classic about a man upset about the way his cousin died. He was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery but somehow he becomes completely mesmerized by Rachel. I saw the movie after reading the book and didn’t think it was as good. If anything, read the book.
Can’t live without music. For a sci-fi story I’ve been writing, I’ve got a few songs that go along with certain scenes. Initially, I was going to submit the story to an anthology but I missed the deadline. Okay, I have to remember I’m not going to focus on my failures (lol).
If you want to know a little about the story (the background story), you can check out my writing blog at, The Writing Sparrow. It’s a new blog and I don’t have much there yet, but come 2018, there will be.
These are the songs that go with a few scenes in my story, but they are also favorites:
1. Immortal by Missing in Action
2. Last Hope by Antoine Heid (it’s just coincidence that my title has these two words in it).
3. Love on the Brain by Rhianna.
4. Elastic Heart by Sia
5. Wings (acoustic) by Birdy
I’ve been somewhat of a movie junkie this year. I could barely count how many movies I’ve watched at the theater and at home. It feels great to be able to watch all these movies. When I had my two kids, I went into a strange zone where I couldn’t watch movies or even TV shows and not think everyone was pretending. For some reason that bothered me to no ends. Now, I’m relieved to say that even if they were acting, it’s no problem. It doesn’t bother me one bit. My favorite movies this year are:
1. Passengers
2. King Arthur – Legend of the Sword
3. Blade Runner
4. Star Wars – The Last Jedi
I didn’t do as much drawing and painted as I had wanted. There’s just isn’t enough time to do everything so I’ve had to just focus on what mattered to me. And, what mattered this year was getting my stories out. I submitted a fantasy to an anthology earlier in the year but they are backed up so they haven’t gotten to telling the submitters who made it or not. I also sent the same fantasy story to my professor who enjoyed it and gave me an “A.”
Thanks for stopping by and see you in the new year!
From My Corner of the Universe 