Tag: 30×30

Updates

December (And Year!) 2014 Recap

Geoff W

2014 12-08 Washington MonumentWhat a busy and exhausting month December was! It’s been almost a full week into the new year and I’m struggling to get a recap together so it’s going to be pretty basic. I did a lot of traveling from a birthday trip to DC (right) to my annual winter trek down to NC, with a side trip to Virginia where I completed my 30×30 list with a literary inspired tattoo, and topped off the month and kicked off the new year with friends in Charlotte, NC and a wedding in Omaha, Nebraska! I’ll do a separate December/January Culture Corner to do a recap on my traveling to DC and Omaha as I went to so many museums and traveling in itself is a type of culture!

I’m going to do a quick monthly recap in the next paragraph and then after that will be my yearly recap and a couple of small changes you’ll notice in the new year.

Click here to continue reading.

30x30, Personal Project

30 x 30: #29 – Get a tattoo

Geoff W

2014 12-21 Harry Potter TattooI did it. I’m done. I completed all 30 items to the best I could (two are sort-of freebies/to-be-continued), but I’m counting them. If there was one I thought I might back out on it was getting a tattoo, but I knew three options I wanted: one was a quote, the second is what I got and the third was a back up in case they couldn’t do the one I got small enough. My sister and I are driving home for the holidays and we took a minor detour to stop over and visit my oldest friend and I decided that was when I was getting my tattoo and I did. That’s a photo of it and it’s on my chest – kind of where your fingers are when you pledge allegiance in the US.

Click here to continue reading.

30x30, Personal Project

30 x 30: #6 – Freebie

Geoff W

2014 12-19 Sad Geoffrey, Happy GeoffreyWhat I learned with this item, and really what I’ve learned in 30 years, is that not everything is perfect and sometimes you just have a bad year or a bad time. So rather than stressing over the fact that this changed three different times and I didn’t technically complete it, I’m focusing on the fact that I finished 29 items and had one freebie that just didn’t work out. I mean I know I had more than one year in the past 30 that wasn’t great so I’m just going to accept it and be happy I did everything else to the best I could.

Click here to continue reading.

30x30, Personal Project

30 x 30: #15 Finish reading Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal

Geoff W

2014 08-27 Harry Potter en Español!I did it! And now there are only two items left on my list, both of which will end/happen on my birthday! I bought this book when I was still taking Spanish classes regularly and was like oh what a great way to test myself. (I think I have a copy of Roald Dahl’s Matilda floating around in Spanish too somewhere.) And I’ve finally read it.

I’ve tried multiple times in the past to read it and gave up within the first few chapters and I almost did this time too. I started it back in August read two chapters and promptly stopped again. I was trying to look up every single word I didn’t know or recognize and took me a couple of hours for the first chapter (less than 15 pages) and I got super discouraged. So I let the book sit on my bedside table for almost four months and when I got to the final five items on my list I knew I needed to seriously get to it, especially as I’d completed my re-read of the Lord of the Rings.

Click here to continue reading.

30x30, Books

Book 320: Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal – J.K. Rowling

Geoff W

[Check out my more recent re-read of the first Harry Potter book from July 2018.]

I’ve had a copy of this book on my bookshelf since undergrad. I bought it when I was still taking Spanish classes and could probably have read it a hell-of-a-lot easier back then that now, but I never made it past the first few chapters no matter how many times I tried. This time, with my 30th birthday looming and it being one of the final three items on my 30×30 list I pushed through and finished it!

I’ll talk more about reading it in Spanish in my 30×30 item post, this is just a recap of the story. This is the second time I’ve read the first Harry Potter book while blogging, the first was back in July 2012. And as with every time I re-read the first novel in the series I’m amazed at how much world-building (adapting) Rowling does in such a short novel. Sure she spreads it out over the first few, but introducing so may ideas and people within such a short span AND telling a story wow.

Click here to continue reading.