In no particular order, here's a 2016 retrospective:
Strangers with whom I Fell In Love:- The woman who makes the signboards for Embee Performance along the 55 freeway. I really hope you have a kind holiday season, too.
- The guy who keeps putting the "This is a stolen car" sign on all the annoying cars in my company parking lot. I get this act of rebellion on a deep level, kiddo.
- The man who saved the bees that decided to live in the bathroom vent. Thank you for seeing how beautiful they are.
Most Popular Rarasaur Posts (Based on an aggregate of views, like, comments, and offsite-retweets or shares):
Projects Started:
- Sack Nasty, a book of prison poetry - Published!
- A patreon account - started!
- Not-for-Children Children's book - started!
- Handwritten book of Rarasaur Blogs - started!
- Signboard Instagram Posts - started!
- YouTube channel - started!
- Audcast - started!
- Rarasaur-themed clothing at RedBubble - started!
- International Quilting Project - almost ready for announcements!
- Boys: "It's November. That means I take pictures with peppers and never sleep. I might not even make Thanksgiving, I certainly don't have time for a date."
- Uber drivers: "Stop the car, stop the car! There's a dinosaur. I have to take a selfie with it."
- Mail guy: "Yes, mail addressed to The Dinosaur is for me."
- Learning that, because of my case, I have a debt of nearly half a million dollars.
- Finding out that the post office basically melted a ton of signed copies of my book.
- Realizing that I am not considered a widow since the government sees being in prison as being separated from Dave.
- Crashing Dave's car on the 405N.
- Lin-Manual Miranda
- Chris Hardwick
- Dallas Clayton
- Lilly Singh
- Liz Climco
- Emily McDowell
- An eyeliner that suits my (new?) personality.
- A restaurant that I can go to all the time
- Instagram memes
- Spending individual or small group time with bloggers, whether it be through Skype, or Instagram direct message, or the Cheer Peppers Facebook group, or google hangouts, or phone calls, or texts, or facebook messaging, or ... in person.
- Seeing Pictures of Sack Nasty roll in from all over the world
- Getting letters and texts from then-strangers saying that they found my blog randomly and spent hours reading through it.
- Successfully implementing the new theme
- Learned how to say "I don't know how to do this." without turning it into a self-hate rant.
- Learned how to explain to people that there are certain things I cannot do for them, because I am still healing, and my trying would eventually hurt us both.
- Learned how to unplug, regularly.
- Got glasses, all by myself.
- The one where Dave gave me post critiques and then turned into a llama and bounced away.
- The one where I could see all the strings connecting all my friends together, and it looked like a CSI crime board, with faces and names and red strings thumbtacked everywhere.
- Watching the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in theaters.
- Reading the announcement of Muhammad Ali's death.
- Blog post titles. Seriously. Next year may be the year of very clear blogging titles, instead of vague single word thoughts. I keep having to click my own posts to see if it's the right one.
- Contact. I always say that I'm bad at reaching out, but if you reach out, I will reach back. This year, that's been true only 60% of the time.
- Diet. I've eaten very poorly this year. A lot of it has been in the name of figuring out what I like, but it still needs to calm down a bit.
- Schedule. I've done a lot this year, but my schedule has been inconsistent. Everything has been inconsistent. Time to organize!
- Trying new things, like clothing choices and foods.
- Going back to old things, like my hairstyles.
- A local best friend with a love of a diet sodas and space sagas.
- This cloth.
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It was good to share a year with you, Best Beloved. Let's all make good wishes for 2017, just in case it's one of those seconds where anything you wish for comes true...
