A day late, but w/e. I haven't posted in a long time, and I'm not sure how much I'll be posting going forward, but I thought I'd try to do a round-up of 2024 and see how it goes.
February: I traded my Ford F-150 for a Ford Maverick, which I've had for almost a year now, and I can say that I unequivocally love my Maverick! It drives like a dream, fits into parking lots, handles mud and snow with its AWD, carries whatever I need to carry in its tiny 4.5-foot bed, and it's red! Best purchase I made all year.
May: Went on my first trip in my new RV. Getting it ready was difficult and stressful -- not knowing at all how to take care of it over the winter, I found the truck battery and the lithium RV batteries all dead as doornails, the coolant reservoir empty, none of the electronics working. After a lot of researching online, a few visits to my local auto repair place, and advice from a couple of FB groups, I got the thing dewinterized and everything working and went camping in Pennsylvania with my brother and his wife at two different state parks, Shawnee and Bald Eagle.
June: Said goodbye to my cat, Mister, who'd been struggling with some sort of intestinal disease for over a year.
And went on another camping trip -- this time to Samson State Park at the Finger Lakes in NY. Felt like I was starting to get the hang of this camper van thing, and no longer thinking that buying the van had been a very expensive mistake. It was also much easier traveling with one healthy cat, rather than two cats with one being stressed out, anxious, and sick.
August: Suga's Scooter Incident.
I don't really know what to say about this. If you're not familiar with K-pop and the extreme standards idols are held to, it all seems fairly ridiculous. But the repercussions are still reverberating around the K-pop world.
What happened was, Suga, who was staying out of the public eye while performing his required public service, had gone out to dinner with friends, did some drinking and then rode less than 500 meters home on an electric scooter. He rode on the sidewalk, wearing a helmet, at barely more than walking speed, then took a sharp turn into his residence, hit a small curb, and fell. He was seen by some police who happened to be nearby and given a breath test and found to be over the legal limit for driving, had his license revoked and was investigated for drunk driving.
I found out, along with everyone else about it, when he posted an apology and explanation on Weverse, his first public post on any subject since he'd started his service. I had a bad feeling about it, knowing how harsh South Korea is on its idols. I'd already had the experience of DKZ's Kyoungyoon being hounded out of his band due to his parents' religion, but oh boy did Suga's incident blow up like a bomb. The media went crazy, posting hundreds of articles a day about it, including several that used CCTV footage purporting to be Suga driving a motorcycle in the opposite direction, claiming that it was "proof" that Suga had lied about the incident. Antis demanded Suga's removal from BTS (his agency said it was "ridiculous" to suggest that Suga would leave), sent wreaths and trucks to HYBE headquarters telling Suga to step down. People claiming to be ARMY started a "Suga challenge" on X, posting pictures of alcohol bottles in cars with messages pretending to support drinking and driving. These were later found to be fans of other groups trying to smear ARMY and BTS.
Real ARMY, of course, fought back. This was my first experience of the power of BTS ARMY from the inside -- it was amazing and inspiring. There were so many displays of support for Suga, from bus shelter signs to banner trucks to bus wraps to street signs. Fans from all over the world sent messages from their own countries -- Philippine ARMY held a "Purple Walk of Love" with hundreds of participants. Taipei ARMY lit up a stadium with messages of support. Brazilian ARMY posted bus ads. LA ARMY put up billboards. When the real CCTV footage of Suga's incident came out, proving that he hadn't lied about anything, ARMYs demanded, and got, an apology from the network that had posted the false footage. They reported defamatory social media posts and got them taken down.
And we went on a streaming/buying spree and charted a number of Suga's songs. Even
Forbes took notice and posted several articles about Suga's music dominating the charts, a feat especially noteworthy when he hadn't released any new music all year.
Eventually, he was given a fine and the case was closed. But it still crops up regularly. There are a lot of antis out there who are eager for any chance to tear BTS down, and Suga's incident is just too good to pass up. Most recently, someone sent funeral wreaths demanding Suga's removal from BTS to be set up along the sidewalks outside of HYBE. ARMY responded by sending trucks with messages of support to block the wreaths from the street, and lined up in the sidewalk in front of the wreaths. Someone also posted death threats to Suga online, and is being investigated by police and HYBE.
Anyway, that whole experience was very stressful and I spent most of August worrying about Suga. Especially considering that he has been very open in the past about his mental health struggles with depression and anxiety. He had finally seemed to overcome a lot of his troubles and was in a good place mentally when he went into the service, but it must have been a really difficult experience for him, and who knows what sort of relapse his mental state might have gone through. So I still worry about him and hope he's doing well and getting the support he needs. He's continued to stay offline and out of the public eye, and the public apologies he posted after the incident remain the only thing we've heard from him since he went into the service. So we can only wait and hope and wish him the best until he gets out.
September: Went on another camping trip, this time to Watkins Glen State Park, also in the Finger Lakes region of NY. Finger Lakes is a fun area, lots of pretty scenery and fun little shops. My brother and sister-in-law are big wine aficionados, and love to visit wineries and breweries to do tastings. I'm not a drinker, but the wineries are generally pretty scenic and often have chocolate or cheese or other goodies to sample as well.
My big project of the summer was to finally do something about my deck. It was in bad shape already when I bought the place -- paint all worn off, boards dry and split and coming up in places, slippery with moss and algae when wet. I'd had a contractor come out to fix my roof a year or so ago and asked him about it, but he said the boards needed to be replaced and it would cost $6000 - $7000 just for the lumber, which was beyond my means, so I wasn't sure what to do. The slippery algae was the worst issue -- you couldn't walk on it when it was wet without risking a fall, and I was worried about delivery people getting injured on it. So I researched and thought about it and finally decided to try cleaning it up myself. Maybe it wouldn't be a super good job, but I at least wanted it to be non-hazardous to walk on.
I have a pressure washer I bought ages ago, but thought it wasn't strong enough to clean the deck, until I tried holding the nozzle really close to the boards, and then it blasted the dirt and moss and algae right off. With the nozzle that close, it only cleaned a strip a few inches wide, so it took some time, but I got the entire deck cleaned, screwed down the loose boards, and painted it with special paint meant for old, worn decks -- it's thick and fills the cracks and protects the wood from further damage. It has made such a difference! My deck looks great and is no longer slippery. I only had time to do one coat of paint before the weather turned -- it got so windy that the deck was covered with leaves and hemlock needles faster than I could sweep them off -- so I called it good for the year. Once the winter's over and I can work outside again, I'll do a second coat.
October - November: Went on my longest camping trip yet, almost a month long. Every October, my brother and his wife take a trip down south, drop off their trailer in North Carolina (or is it South? I can't remember), then drive their van back home for the holidays. After New Year, they drive back down to pick up their trailer and start their winter travels. They do it that way so they don't have to worry about getting their trailer out and on the road if the weather is bad here in early January, as it often is. (We've got a couple of inches of snow right now, and they're leaving again soon.) I decided to follow them south on all their stops except the last one -- they generally do the drive home without the trailer in one long day, trading off driving and making the trip in around nine hours. I didn't want to do that, so I split from them after their second-to-last stop and headed home, making two stops along the way, intending to arrive home on the same day they did.
We camped at Stoever's Dam Park in Pennsylvania, a quick one-night stop at a county park to break up the drive to Cunningham Falls State Park in Maryland, then to Powhatan State Park and Chippokes State Park in Virginia, and finally to Oregon Inlet Campground in North Carolina. On my way back I stopped at Pocahontas State Park in Virginia and the Jonestown/Hershey KOA in Pennsylvania.
All went well and we had lots of good times, especially at Chippokes, which is right across the river from Jamestown with lots of interesting historical sites to visit, and Oregon Inlet on the Outer Banks, near Kitty Hawk and many fun shops and restaurants and other parks.
The trip home was fine, but since I was on my own I didn't do much except hang out at the campgrounds. It was late November and the weather was getting colder and I ended up staying two extra days at the Hershey KOA because of a big storm at home in New York -- my neighborhood was under 12 inches of snow, the power was out, and the local guy we pay to clear our private roads on the lake broke his plow on the heavy wet snow and the roads were impassible. So that was kind of exciting, but I was safe at the KOA. I was glad I'd decided to make my last stop a KOA instead of a state park or other campground -- it had its own little camp store and deli, propane on site, so I didn't have to worry about running out of anything, and they were very accommodating about extending my stay as long as necessary.
Late November and December: Thanksgiving was pretty low-key. We'd just gotten back from our trip a week before, neither of the nephews came, and my brother had cataract surgery the day before, so it was just the three of us and no one felt much like doing a lot of cooking or baking. So we kept it simple and easy.
For Christmas, my younger nephew and his girlfriend came. They had to go back on Christmas day, so we had Christmas dinner the day before. I brought my usual veggie enchiladas, green bean casserole, pecan pie and some vegan chocolate chip cookies I made because I couldn't remember if my nephew's girlfriend was vegetarian or vegan (turns out she's vegetarian and regular cookies would have been just fine, but the vegan cookies turned out really well and everyone liked them, vegan or not).
My biggest concern was getting presents for everyone. I'd sent for some stuff for my brother and his wife that I was satisfied with, but had no idea what to get for my nephew and his girlfriend. But as I was wrapping my brother and SIL's gifts, I ran across a pretty Waterford crystal ornament of my mom's tucked away in my box of Christmas stuff, and I thought maybe my nephew's girlfriend would like it. Then I thought, since I was giving her something old from the family, maybe I could find something for my nephew in my mom's stuff, too. I went through some bins and found an antique decanter that mom always used to keep in the china cabinet with her collection of porcelain cups and saucers. It was very pretty, with faceted edges and "Moonshine" etched in front. Don't know if it's crystal or just glass, but it's pretty old (at least 60 years) and kind of a family heirloom, so I wrapped that up for him. He seemed to appreciate it. All the presents seemed to go over well. My nephew's girlfriend was especially pleased with her ornament. It was from a collection of the Twelve Days of Christmas that Waterford put out one a year for 12 years, and the one I gave her just happened to be from the same year she was born.
And that's pretty much it for 2024.
I don't make New Year's resolutions because I never keep them anyway, but I have a few goals for the coming year. I'm most excited for BTS's reunion when they all finish their service in June. I'm determined to go and see them when/if they tour the US again if I can possibly manage it, no matter how far I have to travel or how much it costs.
As for the political situation, blah. I hate it but I'm just going to go on as best I can and try to help where possible and ignore it otherwise.
Wishing you all a Happy New Year and all the best for 2025!
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