100 Things That Made My Year: 2025
A list, in no particular order and by no means comprehensive, of things that brought me joy this year.
- Monday night pizzas with Courtney
- The same two Love’s gas stations (Bloomsdale, MO, and Dyersburg, TN) for the leg-stretches and 10 cents off gas
- Daily NYT games — Wordle, Crossword, Connections
- Group FaceTime calls from my siblings
- Morning podcasts routine: Up First, The Daily, and What’s Next? plus a cup of coffee
- The simple anticipatory joy of Bookbub emails, like a trip to a pop-up used book store straight to my inbox every day
- Daily chats with my mom
- Unexpected videos of the monkeys that play in the yard from Courtney’s mom
- Random bursts of activity in the old group chat from the newspaper, especially when the guys shared stories they were proud of
- Jumping on a gymnastics studio’s trampoline at the cutest-ever 5th birthday party for my niece
- Maiden voyage on the tennis court with my new Yonex racquet
- Joe, my kindhearted therapist
- My seventh True/False Film Fest and each of the 12 films I saw there
- Courtney’s lemon-chicken orzo
- The continuation of a decades-long g-chat conversation with my bestie
- First round of golf with Scotty Cameron putter
- Seeing the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra live-scoring a screening of Casino Royale
- Getting hired — 6 months without a job was rough, y’all.
- A beautiful marble-top coffee table that Courtney found on Facebook Marketplace in Kansas City
- Carpooling to/from work with Courtney
- A small but powerful reed diffuser from Target that smells fantastic in my office and lasts forever
- Downtown coffee shops
- The routine of weekly appointment viewing with Courtney — Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Task, Landman, The White Lotus, Survivor, The Studio, Poker Face, to name a few
- The New Yorker’s 100th year issues
- Impromptu trip to St. Louis for Cardinals game with the fellas from work
- Creating a list of directors/films for Courtney and rewatching them as she experiences them for the first time
- Buying patio furniture
- Live taping of Science Friday podcast in Jesse Hall
- NPR’s Steve Inskeep in conversation about his newest book at the Missouri Theater and a nice dinner afterwards with Courtney’s dad
- A pair of Danner Mountain 600 boots and a Barbour coat ahead of the vacation
- Alaska. Alaska. ALASKA.
- The Volkswagen Atlas that would be our vacation vehicle
- Ace, the most delightful tour bus driver who showed us around Anchorage
- Our first hike in Anchorage getting derailed initially by a moose on the trail
- Denali National Park and all the hikes we did there
- Wool base layers and socks and the power of layering for all-day outdoor excursions
- The delightful White Moose Lodge in Healey and the most excellent 49th State Brewery, walking out of the meal at 10:30 p.m. to see the sun still shining and exploring the bus from Into the Wild
- Coldwater Alaska’s tour of Kachemak Bay (plus their awesome Yeti that’s become my daily coffee cup)
- The Homer Spit and its great shops — Brew Coffee, High Tide Art, The Nordic Home, and La Baleine Cafe
- The sweet cat we met at the Airbnb that we were scammed on (and the Airbnb hosts who found us another of their properties to rent when we were in a jam)
- The cute little ski town of Girdwood and The Bake Shop
- The ride from Anchorage to Whittier to board the cruise ship, especially the part where we went through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel — the longest highway tunnel in North America
- Holland America and the entire cruise team
- The Dive In — a little grill on the Lido (9th) Deck of the Nieuw Amsterdam ship that served up Nathan’s hot dogs and fries from which you could eat as much as you want, free of charge
- A 15 drinks-a-day package, which I never came close to maxing out but kept me pretty well intoxicated for a week
- Seeing a glacier for the first time
- The few, fleeting times we could see whales from the ships
- Skagway — White Pass and Yukon Route train ride into the Yukon Territory and Duff’s Sporting Goods
- Visiting the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau
- The Goldbelt Mount Roberts Tram and a long hike in the rain with Courtney
- A single day in Vancouver — Stanley Park and the Capilano Suspension Bridge
- Additional (unnecessary) mugs from Starbucks documenting places I’ve been
- A 50th anniversary viewing of Jaws on the big screen
- Petting the neighbors’ dogs through the fence
- Getting up close and personal with owls, hawks, eagles and more at the Raptor Rehab
- Finally giving in to all the fuss and watching all of F1: Drive to Survive on Netflix and actually getting into this season’s races
- Chris Stapleton live at an outdoor amphitheater on a perfect summer night — sounded exactly like an album recording
- New golf shoes and the first round in them with my brother and cousin
- The Criterion Collection sale and exchanging picks with my buddy Connor
- Getting dressed up for friends’ wedding and meeting some cool new people
- Getting to hear “I love you” one last time from my granny
- Seeing the cousins and extended family at the funeral
- A random summer Friday afternoon out of the office to play golf with a co-worker
- Meeting some incredible computer science students who were coding a humanoid robot to direct a marching band halftime show
- Long walks on Columbia’s trail system
- The blades of good grass peeking through the soil, evidence that the seed and fertilizer weren’t a total waste
- Finally coming around to Greek yogurt (with fruit and granola and honey, of course)
- Another awesome Facebook Marketplace find by Courtney: a beautiful desk
- Watching the U.S. Open at home while making Grey Goose Honey Deuce cocktails
- The surprising results of a simple UV lamp for indoor plants
- Moscow Mules in brand new copper mugs
- Volunteering at The Missouri Review
- Regular drinks get-togethers at a rotation of downtown locations with my dear Writing Center friends
- The time we were randomly eating in a KC pub and the actual Premier League trophy arrived on its tour of American cities
- Nate Bargatze live in Kansas City with Courtney — laughed until it hurt
- Discovering the pain in my lower back had an actual cause (i.e., two fractured vertebrae) and wasn’t just in my head
- The John Boos outlet in Farmington, IL
- Driving 5 hours to Indianapolis to see One Battle After Another in 70MM IMAX (one of only 10 cities in the country to screen it in that format)
- Using the Canon AE-1 for the first time to shoot regatta outside of the Indiana State Museum
- A delightful afternoon at Pride with Courtney
- Being asked to guest lecture for one of my favorite professors from my j-school days
- Being asked to lead a cover letter workshop for journalism students by one of my current students
- My first trip to Trader Joe’s
- Getting a watercolor painting of an elephant that my dad had painted
- The night Courtney admitted an internet outage was salvaged by my extensive physical media collection
- Making a gallery wall of Alaska images in the kitchen
- Learning that I used to correspond with Zohran Mamdani’s incoming chief of staff when she was an intern for a podcast I love
- Making homemade bagels
- The impulse purchase of a dart board
- Being treated to a very nice dinner by a former Ph.D. student (now a professor at Auburn) I worked with at the Writing Center
- My fall semester class of magazine students — they were simply fantastic
- The new St. Paul and the Broken Bones album
- Upgrading a couple of newsletter subscriptions from free to paid by taking advantage of Black Friday deals
- Discovering a new favorite local restaurant and going for numerous Saturday brunches in a row
- A new Hedley & Bennett apron
- Hosting a quiet Sunday afternoon Christmas lunch for two dear friends
- Earning my latest baker’s dozen (free 13th book) from Skylark Bookshop
- Christmas-gift trip to Nashville to see Nate Bargatze (again) with mom, sister, and brother
- A new yearlong membership to Ragtag Cinema, courtesy of Courtney
- More than twice last year’s web traffic to my website despite spotty posting
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