In September 2016, I reluctantly gave up my 20 year old Ford station wagon. I didn’t want to get rid of my car, but after years of reliability (I was the third in my family to drive it), it had suddenly decided to need repairs almost every single month. We were coming to a crossroads where the station wagon was coming up on its biennial inspection, and it needed a costly repair that wasn’t life threatening, but which caused the “check engine” light to be constantly on. This little light will cause you to instantly fail inspection. So after some consideration of all my various options, I decided to go in on a car lease, and my 2016 Nissan Rogue came into my life. It was a big adjustment (being high off the ground being one of them!), but I’ve come to love it dearly.
Recently my Rogue and I drove our 10,000th mile together, a landmark crossed while I was looking for parking at my friends’ apartment complex. (It somehow feels appropriate, lol.) I thought it might be nice to look back at some of the places my car took me in our first 1.25 years together, which also kind of serves as a 2017 retrospective as well! So without further ado:
This is from Halloween at Target. I’m at Target at least once a week, usually popping over during my lunch.
In October ’16 I housesat for my Aunt, looking after this big boy named Romeo.
Work. Every fall the people who run my office building put one of these outside both buildings in the complex. I call it the Sacrificial Altar.
These weird mosaics are in the lobby of the school where the community center housed guitar lessons.
I was only gonna include one picture from each place, but this bizarre painting in the music room at the school was too good to pass up, lol.
My favorite locally-owned burrito place!
This isn’t a place I went, per se, but I this spring I discovered the quiet joy of spending my lunch reading in my car.
The field that I park in when I want to run away from home, but don’t have the time. I remember I texted this picture to someone and they said, “Don’t get lost.”
A sad day at the beach, when I really just needed to run away from home and actually did it. Perhaps someday I’ll blog about it.
Jury duty! Which I actually weirdly enjoyed, probably because I mostly just got to sit in a corner and devour a book all day.
A happy day at the beach! There were a few of these in this particular town.
In September 2017 I took a vacation alone for the first time — two nights in one of my favorite faraway shore towns!
A trip so good it deserves two pictures in this little retrospective. I’ll try to remember to blog this trip soon!
Spent one Friday night on emergency trip to Ikea to replace my beloved lamp, which I smashed in a stupidly clumsy accident.
Countless visits to my friend’s apartment to visit them, and their two lovely little bean boys. So precious. ❤
This is from my office’s Christmas party last week! The fancy restaurant we were at had this massive, beautiful tree in the foyer, so you know I had to strike a pose.
As human beings, we mostly tend to take pictures of good moments, so this photo set doesn’t really betray how hard 2017 was for me. But the fact that I was able to revisit all of these good moments when I looked back for these pictures gives me a little hope that next year could have even more positivity in it.
–Krys
This is Krys 