2024 By The Numbers....

[captainsblog]

This might be as close to a year-in-review post as I get, with two mere days left after this one. In no particular order and with no operands to tell you whether to add, subtract, multiply or divide:

1038.5 and 260.0: the number of billable hours I signed up in my own self-employment gig and my W-2 side hustle, respectively.  They are not only way lower than the 2,000-plus annual billables that Big Law wage slaves are expected to produce every year, they are down from my own 2023 hours by a little and quite a lot, again respectively. Some of that is driven by one client on the side-gig side, which took a lot of time away from my personal practice in both years, but that client produced more time, much of it actually paid for, in 2024 than it did in 2023.  That "paid for" part is the most important, because despite the time being down, by early estimates the revenue on both sides was up. That's working smarter, not harder, or maybe just luckier. Several cases with long beards on them, dating to 2023 and even scragglier, finally produced final payments in 2024. The goal now will to be replace those time capsules of potential  in 2025 with either new ones or similar scraggles from 2024 and earlier.  Just last week, a potentially good pair, each involving an actually bad dude on the other side, came in the doors of the respective sides of practice.

$2,908.98: the final amount I paid out of pocket toward my $7,500 deductible on my final year of private health insurance. It was just a tad above what previous years had been under a lower "high deductible" amount that I also rarely came close to, and does not count the more than six grand I had deducted from my W-2 net pay for the privilege of only paying almost three grand for medical care.  Between Medicare Part B and D premiums and the Medigap coverage, my best-case number for 2025 won't be that much lower- probably just over 5K among all of them- but the worst case is not likely to go much higher than that at all, because the supplements do not have deductibles, stupid high co-pays or an evil CEO denying or delaying treatment.

226.2: the last semi-official Nekkid Sunday Morning Weigh-In to track how the diet modifications are going. It's down just under a pound from the first one three weeks ago, but that's not unexpected due to the month of holiday eating that I couldn't completely avoid. Instead, I tried to just limit the damage: one Christmas cookie instead of a handful, two slices of office party pizza and no seconds.  It's also the lowest I've likely been this century, and that's before the real measurements and possible trial medication get really going. 

881. The number of classes I've attended in my current gym's multi-city organization over the past almost  9½ years.Those have done a lot to get that weigh-in number way closer to 200 than 300. Next month begins a challenge over eight weeks to attend classes, watch nutrition and meet other goals. It's the one extended one I've never done before, and unless being on a supervised clinical trial excludes me from it (or it from the trial), I think I'm in.

13 and XIII. The same number, but one good, one bad. Roman-ically, the XIII refers to the recently and blessedly ended Sabres losing streak. They've now won two in a row, albeit against two pretty bad teams, but their captain has returned to the ice and they play much better with him than they did during the losing slide he missed almost the entirety of. Arabic-ally, it's the number of Bills victories after their home finale blowout win over the Jets. I was not there and kept my plan to nap through most of it; one feature of the occasion is that the team has officially sanctioned the stadium's first formal AA meeting of recovering Bills fans in the tailgate lot before the game.  And look! Here comes one now!




Zero point zero. The number of alcoholic drinks I've consumed in the last three years, one month and 29 days, and the number of meetings and chips I've attended and acquired to maintain that recovery. Not that I'm counting or anything.  Word must be getting out, because my co-workers only gifted me a single bottle of booze in the holiday week. As with my stash of them from the past two Christmases, it will sit atop my office bookcase and passed out for a co-worker emergency or very happy client occasion.

22 and 20. The Big Numbers of the Mets off-season so far: they snared the big fish of the free agent pool in Juan Soto, who will wear number 22. The MVPs of the team's only two World Series victories were Donn Clendenon in 1969 and Ray Knight in 1986, and they both wore that number. The 20 refers to our current beloved Polar Bear first baseman Pete Alonso, who opted for free agency himself after a relative down year and has yet to secure a big fish offer from anybody else. We end the year hoping he will be back for at least one more go.

17. The now-retired number of Ray's teammate Keith Hernandez, who I just became Facebook friends with, joining 1969 ringbearer Art Shamsky in that Stable of Social Instability.

Unknown, Captain. The number of concerts, from ampitheater size to intimate bar corner, I made it to. Bucket list newcomers included Indigo Girls and the annual local re-enactment of The Band's Last Waltz concert. The shows were as far flung as Chautauqua (my fourth 10,000 Maniacs show since 2018) and as close as the restaurant two miles from here (where I've seen our friend Maria a few times) and the slightly further local folk music guild's stage in our nearby village (several, most recently The Kennedys and a pair of the 10,000 headlining there two weekends from now). Keith Hernandez has been joined by close to a dozen of these performers as friends who I support and get personal messages of thanks from. Maria was scheduled to do her last show of the year Friday night at a newer Allentown establishment; she's had a number of health issues through the year but begged out this time just due to a cold. Buffalo native and Boston currenter Greg Klyma kindly filled in for her-





- and Maria even dropped in so I could pass her Christmas card and gift of recorded music to her.

41. Tom Seaver's number, first and foremost, of course, but also the number of albums I entered into iTunes in 2024. Some were to help Eleanor get things into her phone; others were long overdue drop-ins of older things from Indigo Girls, Nanci Griffith and the Boss; but most were online or in-person purchases from musicians I've met and gave personal thanks to (and sometimes got autographs from) at their shows.  Whenever available, these were CDs, or in a few cases purchases of the actual .mp3 files of the songs we then own and can store and reproduce on our phones. Spotify and its ilk are so shady and greedy relative to what their artists get from them, and I am always encouraging the n00bs to the business to get their music out there the old-fashioned way so both they and their listeners will benefit from actual ownership of, and commercial-free listening to, the hard work they put into writing and recording them.

Not nearly enough. One thing I've fallen short on in recent years is Books Read. As recently as 2014, I was tracking them and keeping above a book-a-week pace. The following year, I tracked fewer than half that many, and I know why: that new fitness experience that began that June ended my days of leisurely reads on an elliptical at a World or Crunch or Your Name Here gym. At OTF, we go all out and do not read while walking, jogging or running on a treadmill. So my reads are few and far between, mostly being recent releases by friends from online or earlier. A pair by Facebook pal Abbott Kahler, including her newest non-fiction one I'm reading now; and the latest by my high school alum friend Clea Simon. 

Way too many. None in the family or in the closest circle of friends, but DEATH has been a regular visitor to many homes and offices around us. The local music community lost a longtime friend I'd just made in John Brady; his celebration of life will take place in May at the area's beloved Sportsmen's Tavern. The venerable Rochester judge who, before that, was the Rochester lawyer representing the seller of our last home there. Last month, learning of one passing of a much younger Rochester lawyer, just a few years older than me, led to an obituary page containing two other people I knew.  Our home-based animal friends remain vibtant and healthy, but from the just-heard news next door about their just-passed Lab to dozens of other crossings of Rainbow Bridge by Companions to others we know, 2024 did way more than its share of Grim Reaping.

I may add more in this format, or a completely different one in the two days that remain. Just don't, um, count on it;)

Comments

Hahahaha

[dauntless_heart]

my co-workers only gifted me a single bottle of booze in the holiday week.

I know this feeling. Dave has always been a teetotaler. I joined him after knowing him a year or so. Clients sometimes give us alcohol, to which we always laugh and kindly say thank you--and then gift it out.