Reflecting on last year’s resolutions

It’s that time of the year, with various “best of” lists and reviews. Since we’re hosting a small party in a couple of days, I’m going to be busy organizing and having friends over, so I need to start early

I only had a few simple resolutions for this year, and I think I made OK progress. It’s been a great and eventful year.

I resolved to be happy at work, to keep pushing my comfort zones, to stay challenged, and to not just stay with something comfortable or familiar. I think I did that pretty well: CarGurus was certainly fun and challenging, and HubSpot has a bunch of things outside my comfort zones and areas of expertise. So that’s good.

I resolved to lose some weight, and I did lose a few pounds, but not enough. Despite increasing my exercise, I didn’t meet this resolution. I need to do better next year, improving my eating habits, continuing to exercise, and paying more attention to this topic. If you see me in person during the year, please ask me how I’m doing in my resolution to lose weight. It will help keep me motivated.

I resolved to be more patient and nicer in general. I think I’ve been doing decently at that, though not perfect of course. I’m still a perfectionist in many areas, so when things aren’t up to my standards, sometimes I get pissed. I get pissed at myself as much as I do at anyone else. I think I control it better now, and I don’t know of anyone that I *really* pissed off or offended this year. But I did, let me know, I’ll continue working on it.

I wanted to learn more about Buddhism this year, and I have. I read a couple of books, a lot of online materials, and reflected on my religious views a bit. I like what I’ve seen so far. I’m not a Buddhist by any stretch of the imagination, or even a JewBu But I find a lot of the tenets of this religion intuitive, useful, and logical. More on that in the future, maybe.

I wanted to stay involved with my graduate school program at MIT as an alumnus, and I think I did a good job at that. I went to a bunch of information sessions, served on alumni discussion panels, helped judge this year’s thesis award candidates, went to the annual conference, presented the thesis award, and organized a few dinners for alumni and current students. I’ll pat myself on the back for this one I hope to do the same next year.

I wanted to clean house at home, getting rid of old and/or unused stuff. I also wanted to donate more to charity. These two goals go together nicely, and I’m glad we did well on both of them. We held a yard sale, and even after that sale we donated dozens of bags of goods to the Salvation Army. I hope some people benefit from these goods. Note to Hadassah thrift store dropoff locations: you gotta open on the weekend.

All in all, not bad. I feel pretty good about working on these resolutions and doing all of them to some extent. Plenty of work remains, but at least I didn’t slack or pull back on any of these.

Congratulations to Jim on O’Neill 2.1 ;)

Congrats and mazal tov to my friend and colleague, Jim O’Neill, who just had a second child! A son, George. I also want to have two kids down the road, but not quite yet Mazal tov to the O’Neill family!

Dinner with the neighbors

We moved into our current place a few months ago. It’s a condo building, one apartment per floor, and we live on the top floor. We’ve recently become better friends with the downstairs neighbors, Dave and Danielle. They’re really nice, and it turns out we’re socially connected in at least a couple of unexpected ways.

They’re also about our age, only a little older, so it feels natural to be friends. In the past we’ve had nice neighbors but they were way older, so the friendship never took off.

A couple of nights ago we had Dave and Danielle over for dinner, and we had a great time. Alli made some tasty Creole chicken, some rotini with mushrooms and onions, and tasty olive-themed appetizers. Everything was delicious.

I picked a 2004 Stolpman syrah to go along with the food, and it was a good match. A little under-powered for the Creole chicken, but you can’t nail them all I suppose Or at least I’m not good enough to nail them all yet. The wine did get 95 points from the Wine Advocate, so it was worth a shot.

Back to Rise (the club)

Rise is an after-hours dance club in Boston. A lot of people still have the perception that the whole city of Boston closes at 2am. That view is as obsolete as the Patriots being a bad football team

Rise is a dance club that opens around 1:30am in the morning and goes past sunrise, exactly what we need in this town. Especially now that there are some decent food options open 24 hours a day.

It’s also a members-only club, but becoming a member is not particularly hard if you’re just a little social in the club scene. Alli and I became members just about when the club started, and we enjoyed it.

But we hadn’t been in a really long time, until my friend Dan told me he was the DJ there last night. We wanted to go lend some support to him, and also check out the club again. We had a blast! He goes by the stage name DJ Daniel David, and his music was awesome. Upstairs they had another DJ, who was also excellent. It’s always a good crowd and a fun atmosphere.

We didn’t end up going to sleep until past 5am, so we just woke up a little while ago I feel like a college student again, and I love it!