Weekly Update-Slow Stitch Week

I'm not sure if I just wasn't feeling it, or because I was setting up for the new starts, but I had very little stitch progress this week, really only stitching on Saturday and Sunday, and even Sunday was a bit of a bust. I didn't touch Everest at all. I'm not sure why. But I did move on to Happy Haunts by Neni Designs (and I'm not that's still even her store name anymore, she changes it like every five minutes). This has always been one of my least favorites and now, I'm not sure why. I did OK on it this weekend, all things considered. I did have to reload it in Markup-RXP, again, not sure why I didn't do it right the first time, but a lot of symbols and colors were missing. Then, I had to remark off all the progress so far.

This was a project I haven't touched since 12-31-2023, again, probably because I hated it. The colored patterns are just too hard to work from and I really don't like 18ct Aida anymore. I really should have done this on 28ct, but I think my logic was the design is a bit pixelated, it needed to stay that way, so it was better on a bigger fabric (or at least that's all I can come up with for my 2017 brain). I had previously stopped at 28,862/62775 stitches which was 45.98% and 165.03 hrs.

This weekend, I made it up to 30,813/62775 (another 1951 stitches) or 49.08% and 177.83 hrs (another 12.8 hrs, most of which was Saturday). The Hatbox Ghost and the head of the Opera Singer is really starting to pop. I also changed out the needle minder from one of my new ones from MadForMinders. It is more of a Disneyland Haunted Mansion pattern rather than Disney World (the Haunted Mansion store at Disney World is named Memento Mori), but I'm OK with it.

I have gotten most of the new projects put on their respective scroll rods. I'm still waiting on two more scroll rods (for A Discovery of Witches and Hook, part deux) as well as the modification hardware to my stand. All the fabric is gridded up though (I still have to draw grid marks on gridded fabric to make sure I hit the lines the same since the pre-grids actually cover an entire row and column of blocks, but the pregridding saves me all the counting). I'm also having issues with storage (shock...lack of room in my house for more "stuff"). In this pic I have the Aimee Stewart Bookshelf just hanging from the wall, but I have since taken the big projects and put them in another gray bucket in the floor. But here is what the situation looked like at least until Thursday:

Speaking of Aimee Stewart, I finally broke down and emailed Michele at HAED about seeing if Rio could be charted up completely. I have the one that HAED released already even though it's not typically my type of chart:

But what most people don't know is that the full image also has Duran Duran in it! It was something Aimee did for a contest or something. Even finding images of the full image on the internet is hard and, although I have it in a file somewhere, I don't feel comfortable posting it here because I'm not sure about copyright issues. I planned on just charting it myself (as long as I don't sell or share it, that's OK, right?), but if I could get HAED to do it, all the better. Michele also said that, if Aimee agrees to having it licensed, it would be the full cost of a custom chart (which is $125), but I'm cool with that considering the subject matter. If I could get it in a max color chart (not sure if I want it super-sized, have to consider that), it would totally be worth it to have a professionally charted Duran Duran pic! We're still waiting to hear back from Aimee, so I'll either be starting another project soon, or I'll chart it up myself at some point in the future (when I rebuy some charting software...plus, I won't have to worry about dithering if I do it myself, although I'm now wondering if I can request a non-dithered pattern from HAED with the custom stuff). I'm probably getting ahead of myself on this idea, but whatever. I did not, however, ask Michele about Tudor Rose by Jasmine Becket Griffith. I still think it will appear eventually.

I also cleaned out more stuff from the Duckroom. My therapy Zoom session last week was me walking her through my house, and I'm still not "calmed down" from the process. I don't like being judged for my stuff (although the judgement is probably all in my head). Like I always say, there is a thin line between OCD and hoarding. So, since I've been so anxious about it, Friday night I got rid of all my Magic Band boxes (yes, I even keep empty boxes, so sad!). I tried to get rid of the external boxes for the Funko Marvel sets that togther make a display (the cardboard boxes, not the actual Funko boxes, those I'll keep forever), but I couldn't do it. My logic is that the cardboard is protecting the empty Funko boxes (flimsy, but it's the way my brain works). I found some old Christmas bags and, since I don't participate in Christmas anymore, I was able to get rid of quite a bit of them, well, the ones that weren't Disney. I even had an empty box from a Blu-Ray player two Blu-Ray players ago! Needless to say, it was still enough stuff to fill a giantic-sized garbage bag. Now, I just have to actually take the bag outside and put it in the can. I might be better bringing it to work and putting it in the dumpster. Work trash gets picked up every day. Knowing that stuff is sitting in my can till Friday might mean I dig it all back out again.

I've put The Bride Dollmaker in my stand to jump back into tonight. I barely touched this when I started stitching again, so let's see if I can do a bit better. But then again, I'm starting to think I might start one of the smaller new starts. We'll see when I get home. So, until next week, that's this update!

An Actual Stitch Year In Review (I'm so proud)!

I can't believe I've started stitching again! It's very surreal. Stitching used to be therapy for me, my mind dealing with various issues, but now I can't let my mind go there because my headspace doesn't work that way anymore. Now I try to just keep my head clear and work on the project at hand. But sometimes I catch myself wondering why I'm stitching in the first place. Once I'm dead, what will it have been for? I stopped stitching for other people because they didn't seem to care. And now, my life is pretty void of humans in general and I'm very happy with that decision. But I can't help but dwell on all my stitching and my collections getting scooped into a dumpster by whoever trashes spinster old lady's stuff when I turn into worm food. I've considered selling some of my more valuable Disney items, but the thought just makes me sick. Some of my biggest regrets in life are things I've gotten rid of for one reason or another or lost (or got taken away). It's just the Asper in me, I need my stuff. I keep telling myself it won't matter when I'm dead, but it does matter to me now, oh well, can't cry over milk that's not only not spilt, but not even from a birthed cow, so moving on.

For the first time in quite a few years, I have made some New Years resolutions...the typical "stick to the diet" one (that's going pretty well, although it's more eating healthy than a diet, per se), but I'm also going to try to keep a positive attitude about as much of everything as I can (despite the above paragraph, which might have sounded negative, but I prefer to think of it as "realistic"). I'm going to try my darnedest to make 2024 better than the past several years and despite whatever bad things might happen, I'm going to smile my way through them, one issue at a time. I'm also going to make a pledge to pay down as much of my debt as I can (but the HVAC...that one is just too big for one year). I'm pretty sure I can do it (or at least come pretty close, excluding some other financial nightmare that might arise). It's time to start preparing for my future.

So, with talk of paying down debt, wanna see what $700 worth of stitch thread and fabric look like? It came in a very small and very light box, but here it is, and there is another batch coming, but it will be much smaller.

It's also ORT jar report card time. Up until October, it was completely empty, so I'm happy to report this year's "bagging":

Especially compared to the past two years:

Of course nothing beats where I started keeping them up to 2017 (the GLORY that was 2017 in general, the year that shall not be named, so to speak), but I'm still keeping them all for some reason (cough, hoarder, cough):

All my full progress on all that I worked on will be at the end of this post including Maleficent. She's still hanging up in my spare bathroom on the shower curtain where I hung her to dry over a week ago after her bath. I took last week as a home-cation week, so I decided to spend the entire time on Happy Haunts. This was a test for more than one reason. I wanted to see if I could finish the row (I failed), but I also wanted to see how I felt about 2x1 (for tent stitch practice for the Aimee Stewart bookshelf), which Happy Haunts is (although the context is different, it's 2x1 full on 18ct Aida). I very quickly remembered how much I absolutely HATE working 2x1, so I'm pretty sure I'd rather do 1x1 full crosses on the bookshelf than 2x1 tent stitch. It also solves the issue with tent itself. I just can't break my head from thinking that tent is like cross stitch cheating! I don't know why, it's absolutely ridiculous! I tried to convince myself it's just another type of stitch, but my brain rejected it absolutely, so problem solved, hate 2x1, hate the idea of cheating stitching, so full 1x1 on 28ct. Anyway, I left off on Happy Haunts in April of 2020 here:

And there were days I had to take breaks, but the days I did work, I worked over 8 hours per day, so I should have finished the row...I didn't. I hated every second of this. The Haunted Mansion wallpaper to the left was a nightmare and I even fudged a lot of the colors simply because I wanted at least one page finish. I could not get those colors filled in to save my life! By Sunday, I got it done, but barely and I literally had to force myself to stitch some days just to get it all in. It's going to be adorbs when it's finished, but heaven knows when that will be.

So come Monday, instead of continuing on, I was ready to move on, New Year and all, so back to Alice and the B's I went! Alice and the B's is in the scroll frame built for my old lap stand that doesn't need the clamp:

And I was excited to go back to the old stand again just to compare it to the new one, but I very quickly realized that, at least in the recliner (where I stitched for dozens of years), Alice and the B's was just too long (or I'm not as wide as I once was, take your pick) and it was very uncomfortable stitching in that far left side, because it hung too far to the left and I was reaching at odd angles, speaking of, guess I should show where I was back in December of 2020 when I left off on them:

And I started with a new approach, filling in the missing areas of the first couple of pages first, instead of whatever weird method I was trying to do back in 2020 (and that's the shadow of the clamp of my new frame to the left):

I got quite a bit of Cinderella's left arm and chest done. A couple more days should do it. I don't know if I'm going to finish the entire row before moving on to the next project, but I might get a good chunk. I sure enjoy 1x1 on 28ct...that's my jam, I guess.

Speaking of "moving on", the new starts...when will I be starting them? Right now, I'm not sure. I have the stuff, I'm just in no hurry to start kitting them up, I have the stuff to make the scroll rods, but again, I'm in no hurry to do that either. It might be March or so. I think my brain thinks I need to get my tax money in and pay off the debt before I can feel "comfortable" with actually stitching them, but we'll see. I might get a wild hair one weekend and kit one or two of them up. Right now, those bags of thread and fabric are just sitting on my living room table and the bobbin boxes are also just sitting around, waiting. I think there's a bit of guilt in there right now.

I worked on The Bride Dollmaking from a clean row to just a bit (dipping my toes back in the water so to speak), but she got me thinking about a new stand and getting my rear off the couch for the first time since 2017:

I went back to Snow White, who's fabric I thought I hated, but turns out, she's not so back after all. I still may have to do something with that weird patch in her cheek (it's driving me nuts), but we'll see later). I went from a partial row finish, to a full row finish, but got more determined to get a new stand:

And after one night with Night Wish, a project I hadn't touched since 2020, I knew I couldn't work with my current stand anymore, although I'm gonna visit her again pretty soon. She deserves some love!

And during transition between moving back to the recliner and getting a new stand, I worked on Maleficent. I left off on her in September 2022, and I finished the page row I had been working on and then the final page row (which was one ten block row from a full page row), for a full finish! Quite proud of her! Still need to get her framed though.

And that's 2023 in review, I'm pretty proud of myself for the amount of work I got done considering I only stitched from October thru December! I got quite a bit done stitch-wise all things considered and, if I can keep it up, 2024 is looking good for a couple of finishes hopefully!

Aftermath and Stitching Catchup

Things have been quiet this week. The town is still in COVID mode, so everything is empty (but we are still at work), but at least the roads around me are open. I've been careful to avoid the tornado damaged areas, just out of helpfulness of the cleanup crews and out of considerations of the homeowners, but I did circle around the backside of the trailer park Tuesday morning as I went to drop off my lot rent. I was surprised to see a lot of the trailers in the back had tarps on their roofs, so there was some damage, but I was even more surprised to see the field behind the trailer park.

I knew the airport behind us was destroyed, as was the subdivisions all around. As I sat in the tub, basically waiting to die, I distinctly remember hearing the roaring & sounds of destruction it made as it approached, the sound of a train (and I told my Sister "it does sound like a train!" because that's the way they always describe it on TV...it was an actual train I heard, because the train itself got flipped, half on one side of the tracks, half on the other). Then all got quiet for about a minute before the sounds of destruction of roaring started again. I just figured that "quiet" sound was the field behind the trailer park. It was actually the airfield. What I heard the second time was this...the field directly behind the trailer park:

And a zoomed in view of the destruction in that area, although they had been cleaning it up, you can still see some of one house is still in the yard of the other house, but the pile of tree limbs was removed from the train tracks:

That, my friends, is how close it got to us! I knew it was close, but not THAT close! I'm not so sure I will be the "steady" one the next time a storm comes rolling through. But, just for fun, here are some shots of my house with the power out. Typically, I've always been a candle queen, but since the invention of Scentsy's (and the fact that Yankee Candle has significantly gone downhill in quality), I couldn't find but two candles in my house and two oil lamps! I did eventually find a gallon-sized ziplock bag of tealights though, so my obsession with Moroccan lights finally served a purpose! So for several hours, this is the view I saw:






Creepy, but cool, right? One thing about oil lamps though, for asthmatics, they put off a horrible smell! It may have been because they are old, but UGH! I couldn't open the windows or front door because the factory that burned down was putting off toxic chemical smells (ironically, they made air purifiers and green products, so I'm not sure why the air was so toxic), so it got pretty hot...up to 85 degrees! Eventually though, it started raining and dissipated the toxicity of the outside air and I was able to open what few windows I can open and it eventually got better (I have huge furniture in front of most all my windows due to a break-in attempt about 20 years ago), until after they put us on a city-wide curfew and then everyone seemed to come out of their houses for some reason and was standing on the street! Curfew means off the streets and stay in your houses, not stand in the streets, congregating and drinking! Social distancing people! If there wasn't so much alcohol involved, I probably would have yelled out the door "SOCIAL DISTANCING!". Eventually, I just got too freaked out and was afraid everyone would get too riled up and start looting or something and closed the door for the night.

But, by Sunday, everything had calmed down, so the door and window got opened again (and it was a much cooler day anyway). I made a HUGE pot of chili and froze it. I baked a ham, made a red velvet cake (although I should have cleaned up the stand before taking a picture apparently...it looks sloppy!):


I was stitching the day of the tornado and stitched a bit the day after. I switched from Alice and the B's to Happy Haunts (which I haven't stitched on since April 29, 2019) on March 22nd, but have only stitched on it the 3 days since. My heart hasn't been in it lately. But I left off here back last year:

And didn't make it very far in the three days I did stitch on it thanks to all the "action":

Now, since I have to start cataloging my collection (Disney and otherwise), I'm not sure how much stitching I'll be doing at all, unless I keep weekends for stitching (since, at least for now, I'm not working on the weekends) and do the cataloging during the weeknights. We'll see. Or maybe I'll stitch at night and catalog on the weekends? Again, I'll have to see how it goes. I've ordered a photography light box to help take pictures of everything, so I have to wait for that to come in first.

As extra precautions, I've ordered a little lamp that is supposed to last pretty long during a power outage (instead of the oil lamps) and I got it in today...it's pretty bright at it's highest setting! I'm going to get a couple more. I also ordered a phone case that has a built-in battery (so I don't have to go to the car to charge my phone...or in case next time my car gets crushed like most of the ones at the mall). I need to get more candles too, but that's for the next time I can get up the courage to go to the store (if the stores stay open...Target is in the mall, so it is definitely closed!).

But I'm also going to start focusing on getting my credit cards paid off so I can get a "real" house (not that having a "real" house helped some of these people, but still). Granted, I just spent a crap-ton of money to prepare for the next storm and to have stuff to catalog my current stuff with, but does that count? I've settled on a house plan and I will no longer fight my Sister and Brother-in-Law with whatever financial assistance they want to give. It was mentioned once that my Brother-in-Law was just going to give me the lot and I got very upset about that because I wanted to pay for it all myself...now? I'll take it bro! Anything to get me out the trailer park quicker! Unfortunately, the town I'm moving to isn't any safer, tornado-wise, than the one I live in now, and neither can have basements because the water-table is too high (we live in the Mississippi River flood plain), but I will either have a safe room or a storm cellar, that's for sure! Wonder how much it would cost to get the ENTIRE duck room turned into a safe room? Probably more than the entire house cost! Might be cheaper than a lifetime of insurance on the collection though, right?

Thanks for everyone's well wishes, and keep up the wishes because storm season has just begun!

Weekly Stitching (still trying!)

Well, I won't spoil anything, but I am happy with the ending I got with Avengers Endgame. It is the absolute best movie I've ever seen in my entire life and totally worth the 11 years investment! So much happened in that 3 hours and 3 minutes and it was amazing how every previous 21 movies played into this epic saga, even the most minute detail you didn't even think was important in some of the lesser movies. I laughed, I bawled (a lot), I yelled, I did cuss out loud, and I cheered, but like I guessed, I certainly was not alone! There was a big guy sitting next to me that pretty much cried every single time I did! I just need the Blu-Ray to come out soon so I can analyze every second of the movie frame by frame and then watch them all in chronological order!

But enough about that for now. I went back to working on a smaller stitch project, but I also didn't even stitch anything until Saturday night, so I'm going to start my two weeks rotation this week. I left off on Happy Haunts at the row finish back in December of 2017 (seriously, 2018 must have REALLY sucked for me stitch-wise!):

and I barely did anything Saturday and some Sunday, so there isn't much to show, but here you go:

When I wound it up, it was amazing to me how dirty the scroll row was! I guess that's what happens when a project sits around for over a year!

One more Avengers comment, I did buy another pattern last week, one for Endgame, I just couldn't help myself:

At first, I really was debating hard about buying this pattern because, although Cap is in the foreground, he's kind of overpowered by several other characters, but knowing what I do now (and that's not a spoiler, just an observation about how my opinions about other characters have changed now for various reasons), I'm really glad I got it! But, before I start on the Endgame one, I want to do this one for Cap first (unless I find a better one between now and then):

And I plan to start it soon, but I think the Endgame one will be right afterwards (again, unless I find a better one for that one too).

End of year stitch summary and 2018 not-really goals

Sorry I've been MIA for a couple of weeks, I've been on vacation and have been on computer strike...happens to those of us in the IT biz when we get time off. Just needed some good 'ole decompression time sans what I deal with 60 hours per week with at work. So I've spent the week at home, in my nightgown, eating like a pig, binge watching TV and stitching like crazy with as little human contact as possible. I did get my haircut and colored this week...the purple is gone and I already miss it. It will be a while before I can go back blonde because of the purple residue, but maybe by summer.

It may have been a rough year personally (maybe my roughest ever), but it was a pretty good stitch year, at least towards the end of it. This might be a long one, so sit back and get ready for it!

I left off on Maleficent in Feburary 2016 at the end of row 3:

And I completed my goal of a row finish on June 11th, putting in 116.56 hrs in 2017 for a total of 504.63 hrs overall:

For Alice and the B's, I left off at the beginning of row 3 on December 30th, 2016:

And left off at the end of row 4 on November 8th, putting in 276.15 hrs for 2017 (98.28 hrs in October alone), for a total of 697.92 hrs, also with a completed goal for the year:

For Snow White, I left off in June of last year with a goal of the current row and possibly one or two more rows:

And I did manage to finish the current row on November 12th, putting in 58.03 hrs, for a total of 115.67 hrs:

Oh Night Wish, the all purple project that should be a joy because, well, it's purple, but it's been a bit of a pain because of the combination of the confetti and the mind-numbing white moon. I left off here back in May of 2016:

My goal was just to finish the current row, which I did on November 24th, 80.48 hrs in, for a total of 131.2 hrs:

When it comes to the proverbial thorn in my side, Suteki, I gave myself no goal because I wasn't sure whether or not I was even gonna continue on her. As of now, I'm still not sure, but I keep going on her for some reason. I left off here back in May of 2016:

I managed to finish the current row in March of this year:

And made it almost halfway into the second row by the end of November, putting in a total of 79.74 hrs for 2017, for a grand total of 168.82 hrs:

The last official goal was also a maybe finish - Tartan B. I left off on it way back in Jan of 2016:

And I put in a whole two days this year, the last of which was just December 23rd. I don't keep time on this since it's older than before I kept time, but I don't work on it for very long because I can't focus on it for more than an hour or so at a time for some odd reason. But anyway, here's the progress:

I didn't touch the other two pains in the tush...A Summer Ball and Disney's 35th Anniversary Celebration (which is funny considering 2017 was Disney World's 45th Anniversary). I hate both of those projects and it might take an act of the heavens to make me finish either one of them.

The first of the official new starts of 2017 was Happy Haunts and I didn't have a goal for it. It became my New Stitchy Start Blog subject, but since I stopped working on it faithfully pretty early on, I can't say I was too successful on that front. The total project will look like this when finished:

I put in 90.77 hrs for 2017, finishing the first row on December 5th. It's a lot harder than it looks! Lots of confetti!

The other new start for 2017 was Sleepy Hollow Mural. I've had it kitted up for years, but decided it was finally time and I decided to test out Q-snaps for the first time. I'm not enjoying the Q-snaps at all, but I'm doing fairly well on it. Here's the project in its whole:

Before I moved the Q-snaps over, I was here, tossing between pages 6 and 7:

And I barely made much more progress once I moved the snaps, putting in a total of 117.57 hrs for 2017 and last stitched on December 20th, about one-third of the way through the row, although it was nice to see a purple bat appear in the muted forest:

I ended up buying a surprise kit, The Bride Dollmaker by GeckoRouge (although there is some confusion to the name...some of the documentation says The Bride Doll Making, but it's just semantics):

I started her July 16th and stopped just tonight in the middle of page 4, 71.08 hrs in:

Her face is just absolutely gorgeous close up! It was touch and go there for a while because I couldn't even see it until I was almost finished with the page. I also lost a color...either I lost it or a dog stole it. I'm hoping a dog didn't eat it because that means a very expensive trip to the vet, but I would think if that was the case, then there would have be thread shavings around, so I'm not too worried about that (at least not yet, but I'm still on poo patrol just in case). It had to either be me, or maybe it was the chair...again, either is completely possible. I keep looking for it, but I've already got the conversion specks from GeckoRouge and replaced it. I've actually never lost a bobbin before, at least not for longer than 10 minutes.

I'm going to continue on her until I finish the row and I really only have about a page and a half to go. After that, I'm not sure where I'm heading back to. Maybe Maleficent since its been so long? Or maybe back to Happy Haunts...maybe row 2 will be easier than row 1. I want to finish at least one of these puppies by the end of next year and Happy Haunts would be my best choice. Tartan B is a lost cause I think. Besides, I want to finish it into a pillow and I still don't know how to do that. I don't want to start anything new until I finish at least one of my current projects. I have so many going now, it's just too much. There is no way to make any real progress with so many projects in tow. I often wonder how stitchers with dozens of WIPs ever finish anything.

I did have one finish this year, but I'm not sure it counts because it only took me two days and 9.02 hrs. I wanted to have at least one finish for the year so I picked a small one...Supernatural Exorcism:

I still don't have it framed, but once I do, you'll be the second to know! It was a nice distraction to stitch a project while you are binge-watching the show. It makes it more personal.

And that's it! All my stitching for 2017. It's roughly about 899.40 hrs for the year (still can't count in the Tartan B totals, so it's hard for accuracy). I might be down from previous years, but in my defense, it was a rough year, a REALLY rough year. I'm not going to set any goals for next year because I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants right now and I'm just not sure where life is gonna take me. I don't think I'm gonna have any new starts, if I'm going to join any new stitchy groups or if I'm going to continue on with my current ones, or where next year is gonna lead me stitchy-wise at all. It's obvious that the New Stitchy Start Blog isn't keeping me in check, even on one project, so I guess I'm definitely dropping it next year.

I am still keeping up with my orts though, even if I'm not posting it. Here is the jar for the year, in villains world:

I'm down from previous years, so either I'm getting better about frogging (doubt it), or I did stitch less this year:

2014 and 2015 are still my top years since I've been keeping up with orts. I still contest that OCD is nothing but organized hoarding.

I will say that my stash is through the roof from last year. If I had the money to kit them all up, I could probably easily do a year or two of starts, but I can't imagine how much it would cost to do that, let alone how I would store them in my tiny little house overrun with Disney crap.

I'm probably 60 to 70 lbs up from last year, I didn't read one single book this year (although I probably binge-watched numerous shows a multiple of times a piece), I'm still just as much in debt this year as last (if not more due to all these hospital bills), I'm isolated from just about everyone and everything, but hey, at least I have my stitching and my pups, right? So this year wasn't a total bust! Got to remain optimistic or I'll just crash.

What I can say is that for 2018 I'm gonna TRY to loose some weight, I'm gonna TRY to read more, I'm gonna TRY to pay off some bills, I'm gonna TRY to better myself, no matter the outcome for me or my family...that's all I can promise for next year. I think, after the year I've had, I'm through promising myself or anyone else anything (at least for the moment). I can probably say with certainly (although no promises) that I probably WON'T be going back to any therapist or shrink, I probably WON'T be going to my 30th high school reunion, I probably WON'T be going to Disney anywhere, and I probably WON'T be building a new house in 2018.

So here's to a MUCH better 2018 for not just me, but to all you guys, who have stuck with me through thick and thin, although I'm not sure why! A lot of my bloggy besties have some exciting things in store for 2018, so if I can't have a good year, maybe I can live vicariously through you guys!

And since I mentioned it in the intro and it's been ringing in my head through this entire post, let's ring in 2018 with a little Take That, a few years old and the video doesn't jibe at all since it goes with the first Kingsman soundtrack (but seriously, how hot does Mark look?), but it's how I'd like best to enter the new year, on a positive note looking toward the future one day at a time:

Gotta go now, time for Disney fireworks!