I made bagels, and cream cheese
A few months ago right as I joined my new job I also had my birthday! My job ended up sending me a link to snappy , and the option to select a gift for myself. Initially I postponed buying anything. Then I showed my girlfriend and she suggested I buy a cooking based gift, because I would probably enjoy that, so I bought Everything Bagels.
The kit that I got this from is here. The recipes are public so you can see what was included. Basically though I needed to provide my own egg, water, and milk / cream for the cream cheese. I put off making the bagels for quite some time because I was busy, and because the cream cheese seemed pretty involved. I've yet to make cheese successfully, and the cream cheese was no exception. I think the flavor is okay, but what was left after straining in a cheese cloth was very liquidy, so the cream cheese never became a hard enough consistency.
The bagels were quite good, and I think I'd be able to make them again without buying a kit. The main ingredient for the bagels that was provided was malt, and I am sure I could find that / make that somewhere.
I tried to invite a few friends to share bagels with my girlfriend and I, but since it's New Year's day a lot of people were tired from being up the night before. I think if I asked enough people I eventually could have found someone to come over and have bagels, but I was also tired of asking people.
It's nice to start the new year off with a good breakfast even though the breakfast wasn't eaten until 1pm. It's also all we were eating for the remainder of the day. I went to the food coop to buy some lox, and more cream cheese. At the coop I learned that I didn't actually know what lox is. It's salmon. I was wondering if it was herring, because my parents often eat bagels with herring as well. Turns out lox is just the Yiddish word for smoked salmon.
The night before I celebrated the New Year's with my girlfriend and a few friends. We had dinner and went to Burp Castle, a whispering only bar. It's surprisingly fun to have to whisper, and to have the opportunity to shh people if they are being too loud. Yesterday we were laughing a good deal, but trying to keep quiet so the environment reminded me a bit of Silent Library. One friend was wondering how in a whispering bar you would possibly pick up women. However, he enjoyed the place enough that he asked them about hosting other events there.
The New Year is a great time to reflect both on what happened in the past year, and what you want to accomplish in the new year. This year I wrote a lot more than I expected. I finally got into the food coop. I kept traveling, with my main trips being going to Iceland and Japan! I went back to more formally playing music through the Klezmer class. I expanded my dance repertoire with Tango. I dove in to poetry, and even attended a poetry camp. I got injured climbing, but went to occupational therapy and recovered. I took an EDM music production class, and a climbing class.
I had a birthday celebration without feeling too attached with who shows up and who doesn't and what that means about our friendship. I attended a board game convention, and dove into Blood On the Clocktower more. I attended my friends residency graduation in Boston, and my brother's wedding in San Francisco. I continued dating, and I found a girlfriend!
I kept up with improv, but then dropped off from it when I felt that the school cared more about selling classes than teaching us. I got sick a lot of times in ways that interrupted a lot of things. I was sick before my improv show that my brother came to visit for, so I ultimately didn't perform. I got sick when I was hosting a get together so I had to cancel on everyone. I was sick on Halloween so I didn't go to a LARP that I was excited about, and later missed a day of the dead party. Towards the end of the year I also got sick, and missed a holiday party. I am sure I missed a few other things along the way. Although I did miss a lot of events I think I also attend so many events that naturally I'm bound to miss some since it's hard to avoid getting sick a few times a year.
This coming year I am excited to continue trying to balance all my hobbies, cycling, climbing, tap dancing, tango, klezmer, and this blog. I look forward to having more of an impact at my new job! I want to explore making personal projects coding wise particularly in the art realm, because I feel like artificial intelligence has made it a lot easier to create things, and it seems fun to explore this. I'm hoping to make my apartment more organized, and I may continue to nudge friends, family and even strangers to subscribe to my blog!