<p>I can&#39;t believe how fast we&#39;ve gotten through the first half of 2021. It feels like despite the slow start, the year has just flown by. I figured I&#39;d take a look back and see how I&#39;m doing with what I&#39;ve been doing this year, and how I&#39;ve been faring with what I was hoping to focus on this year.</p>
<h2>What I&#39;ve Been Up To</h2>
<h3>Playing Hockey Again</h3>
<p>Until May, I wasn&#39;t fully vaccinated, so I opted to play it safe and limit my excursions outside the house. Now that I&#39;m fully vaccinated, I&#39;ve started to go back out into the world. This includes playing hockey again.</p>
<p>I&#39;m back to playing on the team I&#39;m captain of. And I&#39;m playing in the lower league as well. Sadly, I ended up losing my goalie spot as there are only 8 teams, so only 8 goalie positions. I am able to skate out with a good group of guys and girls so I&#39;m still able to get more time on the ice. I&#39;m on the sub list so I&#39;m still able to play in net now and again. I&#39;m hoping a spot will open up in the fall season so that I can start playing goalie again full time. I played in a tournament this past weekend as the netminder and had a lot of fun. Four games in three days made my legs a little unhappy...followed by a fifth game the next day, but it was totally worth it. I&#39;m now playing hockey one or two times a week, and I&#39;m happy to be back on the ice.</p>
<h3>House Projects</h3>
<p>The biggest project on my house was re-doing the kitchen cabinets. Our kitchen cabinets&#39; paint was looking a little run down, and in some cases peeling, so we opted to sand them all down, re-paint them, and install new hardware. It was a lot of hard work, a bunch of cursing at various things, but the end result turned out great. The cabinets aren&#39;t anything to ooooh and ahhhh over, but they look a lot nicer and will hold off a needed kitchen remodel for the time being.</p>
<p><PostImage
    src="/images/posts/2021-07-24-halfway-through-2021/kitchen.jpg"
    alt="The end result of the kitchen cabinets refinishing"
    width={1920}
    height={1440}
    centered
    shadowed={false}
/></p>
<p>I also ended up putting in a raised flower bed around one of our street lights. Again, nothing huge, but I liked how it turned out. Now all I need to do is get some new lights for the outside of the house.</p>
<p><PostImage
    src="/images/posts/2021-07-24-halfway-through-2021/streetlight.jpg"
    alt="Adding a raised flower bed around a street light"
    width={1080}
    height={1440}
    centered
    shadowed={false}
/></p>
<p>There have been a few other small projects here and there...there always are! (The joys of home ownership)</p>
<h2>Looking at My Focus Points</h2>
<h3>Staying Active</h3>
<p>I&#39;ve been pretty good with this one. I haven&#39;t been running nearly as much as I was planning, but I&#39;m back to playing hockey and am continuing to strength train, so all&#39;s well on the active front. Diet needs work, but that&#39;s always the case. I&#39;ll get there I hope.</p>
<h3>Improving My Development Skills</h3>
<p>I feel like this one is going really well. Between work and my side project, I&#39;m learning new ways of doing things and becoming more proficient in React &amp; TypeScript. Outside of the <a href="/2021/06/02/refactoring-loops.html">refactoring loops</a>, I like where I am at with my never-ending coding journey. I&#39;m trying to strike a balanace between also continuing forward with my <a href="/2021/04/27/switching-platforms.html">blog rewrite</a>. I&#39;m also going back and forth with how much I want to redesign my blog while rewriting it.</p>
<h3>Reading More</h3>
<p>I could be doing better here. Between late nights with hockey, video games, and other things, I haven&#39;t spent as much time reading as I would like.</p>
<h3>Writing More</h3>
<p>I&#39;m not unhappy with where I am, but I could definitely be writing more. I have some ideas for some posts, so I suppose I should buckle down and start writing them.</p>
<hr>
<p>Let&#39;s finish out 2021 strong.</p>


RSS Feeds

Everything

Blog Posts

Reading Logs

Book Notes

Choose Color

Posts in July 2021

Halfway Through 2021