So without further ado: 2017 - a year.
JANUARY
- Celebrations: Kicked off the new year with Rogue One & hot butterbeer at Wizarding World. We celebrated Founding Daddy, Gennia's upcoming bb with a pinterest worthy baby shower. Unicorn birthday treats. Lunar New Year.
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- Resistance: the first annual Women's March - 750K showed up in Los Angeles, and I couldn't have felt more inspired and hopeful. Getting a crash course on active democracy & calling my reps all the damn time. Protesting travel bans at LAX.
FEBRUARY
- Author friends: Saw so many of my favorite writer people this month & met a few others. Worked on writing with the LA YA crew. Received a lovely pre-order gift from Julie. Finally met my writer-crush poet-sister Roshani.
- G's baby arrived in the world!
MARCH
- Iceland: I could write a million blog posts about it, but it was one week in the most magical place on earth. I could myself supremely privileged to have seen some gorgeous places in the world, but Iceland takes the cake. It is evocative, awe-inspiring, untouched, and straight up poetic. I danced on a frozen lake, floated in a hot spring under the dancing Northern lights, rode fluffy horses, hid behind waterfalls, and slept under the stars.
- Writing / Books: I wrote a lot of poems in Feb & March - quite a few fueled by rage. I don't want to hype it up too much because you might hate it, but I also finally finished a poem that had dogged me for a year! It'll be out in April! Also, SKIN was nominated for a Rhysling. Oh and I finally met Lori, who I've known online FOREVER, and Garth Nix, author of one of my all-time favorite books SABRIEL! EEEEEEEE!!!
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- Girl-time: Spent time exploring LA with the Daddies and ConSquad, celebrating birthdays and women's history.
APRIL
- YALLWEST: Maybe the most fun YALLWEST I've ever experienced. I was adopted by a group of sweet book bloggers, who helped me get in lines for signings and ARCs. I also got to hang out with and/or meet up with all of my favorite YA author people.
- Poppy super bloom: We didn't make it out there last time, but the Sis and I played hooky and drove out the Antelope Valley to catch a little of the California Poppy super bloom. It was windy and glorious.
- Bodhi Brigade: some of us met up to see the Swet Shop Boys and our space bae Riz Ahmed perform at the Echo.
MAY
- Benvenut Wedding: my dear college roommate Shelly got married! It was nice to be back in NorCal, and it was so fun getting together with all my old apartment mates again. Benvenut love!
- San Francisco: While we were in the Bay Area, the Sis and I finally did some tourist-y things like see the Golden Gate Bridge, visit the Yoda Fountain, go to Pixar! Oh and we saw the touring cast of Hamilton, too - 3rd row seats right before the wedding, lol.
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- Book releases: So many book releases from my writer friends, but I was especially excited about Maurene's I BELIEVE IN A THING CALLED LOVE. Such a delightful, funny book!
- Misc: Celebrated Mother's Day with my mom & also G's first Mother's Day. Commissioned my first icon portrait from the superbly talented Kate Trish & I'm in love with it still. Received my comp copy of the Rhysling poetry anthology. Museum of Ice Cream!! (It needed more ice cream)
JUNE
- Disneyland: First Disney trip of the year was courtesy of a friend. Thanks to her we got to try the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride, which replaced The Tower of Terror.
- NIGHT SWIM was published in Liminality's SUMMER ISSUE.
- Geekery: Wonder Woman happened, and it was actually mostly good, and I was definitely all kinds of emotional about the Amazons and Diana. It was so wonderful to see. My dear friend Jordan sent me a bunch of Jordandene shirts and I ended up briefly as a model on her page!
- Founding Daddies Las Vegas trip: Middle school dreams come true - we went to see BSB, and it was the best night ever. It was so. much. fun. The rest of our time in Vegas included a visit to the small but lovely Neon Museum, the Beatles Cirque du Soleil show LOVE, and food (best lasagna ever). Oh, and after the trip, our Mr. Burr-lesque, Eva, got engaged!
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JULY
- Convention season: kicked off the summer with Spider-Man: Homecoming with our line-friends turned real friends Esther and Laura. We also just resolved to see more of each other since we live in the same area.
- D23: our first time at this Disney convention! We went for 1 day, and though we didn't make any panels, the show floor was fun to explore. The random parade down the center was weird, but brought me weirdly close to a handsome pirate (Colin O'Donoghue), and we got to jump into Scrooge's money bin.
- SDCC: my worst Comic Con ever in that nearly everything that could go wrong did the first day we were there. However, the best part of SDCC is always meeting up with friends and dressing up and all the photo ops. Most of the Bodhi Brigade assembled (and we were acknowledged by Riz Ahmed weeks later online, like OMG), and I met so many of my geek fashion gal pals - like Jordan, finally!
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AUGUST
- Game of Thrones: For the first time, I watched this show at a weekly watch party with a few of the ConSquad girls. Such a fun time! We ended the season with a game of epic pies.
- Disneyland again: Thanks to Jenn, we did an all-day trip where we were Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. It was fun having people recognize our Ducktales Disneybound. Got to see the new Fantasmic, which is always wonderful, though I do think some of the sequences in the older version were still better.
- Birthday: I went lighter with my hair, turned 31, and Hamilton opened in Los Angeles on the day of my actual birthday. I went out to the Pantages to enter the lottery and be part of the live Ham4Ham crowd. It was lovely.
- Misc: There was a solar eclipse! I fell in love with porgs and Rose Tico. A Star Wars heroine played by an Asian American actress?! FUCK YES. My overseas lipstick gal Rebecca Barrow had her book debut: You Don't Know Me but I Know You.
SEPTEMBER
- Force Friday: I only mention this because I was so excited to buy Star Wars Action Figures of not one, but TWO Asian women characters, and they're sisters!! *weeps*
- Sriracha: We joined Esther and Laura on a trip to Huy Fong Foods for their seasonal open house for sriracha sauce's chili grinding. We met the founder and had spicy ice cream!
- Disney Halloween time: the Sister's favorite holiday is Halloween, and September is her bday month. So we went to Disney to enjoy all the fall and spooky decor. I took my first pair of hand-made ears from @twodapperdames for their park debut and did an appropriate Disneybound. We also found out later that night our space bae Riz Ahmed won an Emmy.
- Level-up adulting: we closed escrow on our first home!
OCTOBER
- Book releases: My two amazing friends Julie (Forest of a Thousand Lanterns) and Tracey (Gray Wolf Island) had their book debuts!! I adore these ladies and their words so, so much. Highly recommend both their books!
- Apple-picking: we missed New England fall, and especially the apple cider donuts. So we found out where there was apple picking out here and went with ConSquad to pick apples and eat donuts and BBQ. It was way too warm for Fall but a lovely time.
- Geek fashion: I joined a geek fashion group - the Geek Fashion Blogger Alliance. We do style challenges every month, and I've loved the challenge. (January's theme is Disney!) The first challenge was, appropriately, Stranger Things, which also gave me my Halloween costume.
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- Halloween: Esther and Laura invited us a Yelp event, and the Sister super last minute DIYed a brilliant costume to go with my Eleven; she was an Eggo waffle. I wore the same thing to work, and we made Loki into a demogorgon. We hadn't watched Season 2 yet, so we didn't know then how on-the-nose that costume would be, lol.
- New neighborhood: started doing house stuff - fixes, furniture, checking out the neighborhood. It's how we discovered one house nearby builds a pirate ship every year for Halloween. We visited on the 31st, and it was incredible.
- Geekery: I also went to Stan Lee's Comic-Con, my hometown convention, for the first time thanks to Danielle of Little Petal! It was great meeting her IRL and seeing her incredible convertible dresses in person. Also got to say hi to Tony at Hero Within and Katie at Elhoffer Design - all wonderful geek fashion small businesses doing awesome things!
NOVEMBER
- Ragnarok: My most anticipated Marvel flick and it was amazing. Taika gave us so much. We went to see it opening night at the El Capitan. It also gave me an excuse to wear my ElhofferDesign Loki dress. Thor was also the style challenge for the month, so 2 birds.
- Hamilton: 5th time at the show, 1st time in my town. How lucky we are to be alive right now.
- Thanksgiving: I celebrated a lot of birthdays in November, and I celebrated Thanksgiving. November was a month of reflecting on 1 year since the election and a month of joy for my friends. I changed up my traditional hedgehog potato dish for Porg-potatoes.
- Infinity Rooms: reunited with the Mischief Managers to stand in mirrored rooms and look at polka dots at the whimsical Yayoi Kusama exhibit at the Broad.
- Taika Waititi: I was going to put this as part of the Ragnarok bullet point, but OMG I MET TAIKA WAITITI AND IT WAS AWESOME. So it's here by itself. He is hilarious and charming, and 3 times over, Ragnarok was still so freaking funny. Thanks IMAX and Collider for the screening.
DECEMBER
- Puppy party: Diana's birthday was in November, but we threw her a surprise puppy party / tea party in the first weekend of December. Definitely one of the most successful parties ever.
- Hamilton again: Hamilton for the 6th and final-planned time. Who knows what 2018 will bring, but 2017 is the year I saw it 3 times, and I'm still not over it. I will never be satisfied.
- 29 Rooms: this was mostly an Instagrammer's heaven, but it definitely had cool installations - like the Dreamer's Den and Make Yourself the Masterpiece.
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- Christmas: Long-awaited catch-up and farewell with Maurene before her temporary move. Caught-up with another friend and saw her new house. Annual Founding Daddies holiday brunch and gift exchange. Family Xmas potluck. Work gift exchange, which resulted in the face-off of BB-8 and BB-9E at my cubicle.
- STAR WARS THE LAST JEDI WORLD PREMIERE: I blogged about the experience at Girl on the Roam (In a galaxy far, far away post), and it is still the most ridiculously epic thing that has ever happened to us. Red carpet. Early screening. After party. WHAT.
- Geek Blessings: Other geek blessings included going to Wizarding World for hot butterbeer and seeing the new light show (super cool!). When we were there, we were chosen for the wand ceremony!! At the end of the year, the Sister won the lottery for the Broadway show SOMETHING ROTTEN, which I'd been wanting to see. So we got to see that from like 4th row center. It was SO FUNNY.
So yeah, it was a WHIRLWIND end to 2017. I'm still catching my breath from it, and to be honest, the beginning of 2018 has been nothing short of non-stop. So it's appropriate that my newest jacket arrived just in time for the New Year.
Because that is exactly how I feel. But I'm grateful!
Head over to Girl on the Roam next week to see what my One Word Resolution for 2018 is!
Q4U: How was YOUR 2017? What do you hope for in 2018?
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1 comment:
What an amazing year!!! I hope 2018 is just as fantastic!
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