Year in Review 2024
This was our second year living in Denver and we were restless. We don't expect to stay here another two years. We'll see.
We travelled several times, played a lot of pickleball, cooked so many dishes, and made some friends.
🔗Denver
We're pretty well disillusioned with Cherry Creek, Denver. It is clean and rich and pleasant, and is a decent home base for flying to other cities, but has little culture. People who drive to the mountains to hike and ski love Denver, but we don't do that.
There are so many chain furniture, jewelry, rug stores, fitness studios, salons in Cherry Creek; expensive restaurants that aren't very good; so many banks; two Starbucks, two identical 3rd-wave coffeeshops that serve light acidic roasts; no bakeries.
There is a great wine store, a few decent restaurants, the neighborhood is beautiful. The best thing here though is Gates Tennis Center, which is actually more of a pickleball center. Fun and social exercise. We'll never have another pickleball resource that is its equal.
Weather in Denver is top tier, maybe better than coastal California: there are seasons, and winter is actually great, with winter weather blowing in and out. The air is extremely dry though, which gets to be an annoyance.
🔗Travel
We travelled again this year. Our big trip was to Spain for a month, Barcelona and Madrid. Madrid is now near the top of our list of favorite cities. It is big and diverse and has history and culture. The neighborhoods are varied. La Latina had perhaps our favorite coffeeshop/bakery: Panadería Novo Mundo. Great coffee; great pastries. We hope it stays in business forever. Madrid's weather is super-mid though, and we there in spring, perhaps best time of the year for weather.
In Spain you can get Jamon Iberico of all varieties, the best ham there is, and surprisingly hard to get in quality outside of Spain. Jamon Iberico > Prosciutto.
In Barcelona we loved Guadi's La Sagrada Familia, the fabulous cathedral, and appreciated the orderly streets of L'Eixample, had some good coffee and food, but overall thought the vibe was too touristy.
We took day trips to Badalona, north of Barcelona, and Segovia, north of Madrid.
We also spent some time in Manhattan and Portland, OR. Aimee loves how vibrant and dense Manhattan is, and NYC is now near the top of our list. We will go back again and check out how we like the other boroughs, see if we could live there (probably can't live in Manhattan).
Portland was also lovely, and a good candidate, but with a very different vibe. There's still a lot of trepidation there about riots and homelessness, and downtown was sometimes eerily empty of people and business; but the city is still well planned and pleasant. Portland is about the same size as Denver, but there is more culture and the food is great. You can walk into the mountains, which you (surprisingly) can't really do from Denver.
Brian also took a business trip to Milan, which is now his favorite Italian city, and high on the list; will probably return and get a better feel for the vibe.
Brian also took a brief vacation to Puerto Rico; and Aimee to a mountain retreat in the SF bay area.
🔗Business, hacking and projects
Brian dropped his Solana contract, and picked up a contract with TigerBeetle, writing Zig code. We also continued working with Stellar, but that has slowed.
We started a new hacking project to create a SoundCloud-like application.
We ended Rust in Blockchain.
🔗Cooking
Our big recipe advance this year was making Chinese braised beef shank, Aimee's favorite food. Our local grocery butcher doesn't offer the appropriate cut of shank so we mostly actually used chuck. We're getting pretty good at it, but it isn't authentic level yet.
We were invited to a pot-luck dinner by some pickleball friends! Our first potluck, we went all-out, making braised beef shank, hummus, and scones, all by hand. For the hummus, Brian peeled every bean.
Everyone else brought store-bought food, so we hugely over-achieved. We thought the point of a pot-luck was to make the food and share your cooking! Oops.
We briefly experimented with making acai bowls, but found it wasn't worth the effort.
We grilled a lot, and our steak was better than most restaurant steaks.
We made our end-of-year lasagna.
We ordered two bottles of Olio Nuovo from the fall olive harvest, and now we are olive oil snobs in addition to our other snobbery.
🔗Music and streaming
Brian started streaming, mostly programming, for TigerBeetle. Those streams will be on TigerBeetle's YouTube channel soon. But the intent is to stream music performances and production eventually.
He released four tracks this year.
Brian started collecting cassette tapes, and has not decided if he regrets it yet - cassett tapes sound bad!
🔗Friends
We made a big number of friends last year, a surprising outcome in adulthood. This was almost entirely a result of all our pickleball activities. We went to a pot-luck dinner and Aimee had a few girls' nights.
🔗Next
We are still going to travel a lot, with an eye toward figuring out where to live next.
We are going to keep working on hacking projects, with the goal of releasing a product.
We have several idea for crafts we might sell as a side-business.
We would like to see some pro Denver sporting events.
Brian is learning guitar and Aimee is learning bass and we hope to make a song together eventually.
