Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Normally, this would be a post from Morgan. He's actually mostly written one, but it's sitting in the queue waiting to be edited. He's been a little extra-busy recently with applying for jobs and his new class starting. He's teaching Linear Algebra and Differential Equations this semester. So I've decided to give him a break instead of harassing him to post and just go ahead and post another blog myself.

It was 66 degrees today in Denver. We get a lot of pretty mild days in the winter, but usually they're interspersed with cold and/or snow. This year it feels like we've had mild and milder days. Not much snow, not much really cold weather.

The post title means something along the lines of "congratulations and good fortune," and is referring to the arrival of the Year of the Dragon, which begins on Monday. We went out today to try to find some celebrations for the Chinese New Year, but I guess there's not enough of an Asian community to make it a really big thing. I miss the giant parades in the Bay Area. On the plus side, though, we found a good Asian bakery and picked up some cha siu bao (steamed pork buns), egg custard tarts, and something that only I like - sesame balls filled with red bean paste. There aren't any really good dim sum places, but at least we can get a few things at that bakery now.

We also went downtown to check out some new street art. The artist, David Choe, apparently recently did some art at the Facebook offices. This is one small section of one of the four pieces he did here.

Our evenings have been occupied by watching the Australian Open. I'm so glad that Morgan has learned to like tennis, or he'd be a tennis widower during the Grand Slams.

New Year, Less Neglected

The last half of 2011 got away from Morgan and me, I'd have to say. We both went to California for a few days in August, then Morgan went alone to Belgium in October for two weeks. After that, I don't even know, it just turned into the holidays and all of a sudden we're sitting here in 2012. I guess that's how it always goes at the end of the year, though.

I'm not much of a resolution-maker, particularly not at the beginning of the year. I tend to just decide that something needs to be done and start doing it. And I don't like to really make anything public until I've started to establish a habit. I've read things on both sides of the "making it public" debate - some that say having other people support you helps you achieve your goals and some that say the act of saying publicly that you're going to do something gives you a feeling of accomplishment and you tend to fall behind after that. I dunno, either way it's just not my thing.

But I would like to blog again. I've missed it, honestly. I don't use Facebook to give updates on my life, and I don't do longer-form writing on Google+, so it just doesn't go anywhere at the moment. I haven't talked to Morgan about it, but I'm hoping he'll be interested in picking it up again too because reading each other's writing has been a good experience.

I've been really busy recently and haven't had a lot of time for hobbies, but I'm trying to do a "creative-endeavor-a-day" project for the 366 days of 2012 (didn't I just say I don't do resolutions timed to the new year? Well, whatever.). I've tried one of these in the past and I don't think I made it very far, but this time I actually started taking daily photographs back at the end of November and have stuck with it since then (although I still need to do a photo for today).

Denver Capitol from Civic Center Park

So here we are in January. Soon it'll be my birthday, and then Morgan's, and in just a few months it'll be our first anniversary. Years seem so long until you're looking back on them.

Well, whatever resolutions you may have made or not made, I wish you all the best with them. Now I've got to go figure out something to take a picture of!