Oh hey, it’s time for my annual tradition: a year-end summary blog post. Who even reads blogs anymore? Not me, that’s for sure.
Winston
Winston turns 18 months in a few days, leaps and bounds more mature than 6 months old. During 2025 he cruised straight through so, so many firsts.
Early fatherhood required a lot of chopping food; I was essentially chewing externally for Winston when he didn’t have the teeth or masticatory stamina. Even now he’s still particularly picky on texture. He loves braised pork belly but—unless it’s perfectly tender—he’ll scarf down the skin and fat but toss away the lean. Like all toddlers he loves fruit, especially kiwis, pomegranate, and blackberries. He adored abalone at Thanksgiving. This fancy boy!
Fatherhood also calls for so much laundry. He’s so tiny and wears such little yardage in fabric, yet his clothes comprise the majority of every load. That doesn’t even count all the handwashing for food stains and picking off wayward grains of rice. Somehow, 20 bandana bibs isn’t enough…
Winston’s such a stereotypical boyish boy. He has an instinct for wanton destruction. He runs about with reckless abandon. He splashes or dumps every puddle or vessel of water. He’s inexplicably fond of large vehicles, like trains (“tayn; chugga chugga choo choo”), ambulances (“am-bans; weeooh-weeooh”), and buses (“BUUUUUUUUUUUUss!!”). He drags his kitchen stoop between the sink and the window to alternate between splashing about and screaming at buses.
Winston is obsessed with books and hangs out at the library most every day. He hates getting into his stroller winter footmuff. He insists on near-daily video calls with his grandparents in California, but only for about 15 seconds at a time. He sleeps shockingly little, from 9p-5a for many months but thankfully until 6:30a now. Altogether Winston keeps Katie and me busy, tired, and full of amazement.
Radiology
I’m now proudly a board certified neuroradiologist.
I like my job, my practice and colleagues, and my ability to work frequently from home with shockingly flexible hours. Reviewing the goals I set in last year’s post, I have indeed progressed on every metric I set out for myself: handling technical snafus, offering better differentials, following search patterns, committing protocols to memory, and maturing template libraries.
Compared to the much more bloggable tribulations of medical school, medical practice is prosaic. It’s also necessarily private, and there’s very little I can or should write about online anymore.
Climbing
Bouldering is how I spent nearly all of my leisure time this year. My gym is a convenient 6-minute run away, so I tried for a 90-minute climbing session nearly every other day and some longer 4+ hour sessions too. Climbing has usurped running as my athletics of choice; this year I only logged 138 miles.
In Feb. 2024 I began at the level of barely V2s (novice, little more than tilted ladders). At the end of 2024, I climbed all V4s and some V5s (intermediate, needing decent power). Now at the end of 2025 I manage all V6s* and seven lifetime V7s (early advanced, needing versatile techniques). I’m proud of that progression in two years, especially given my relatively old age for starting climbing. Advantages I possess include my height and reach (6′ + 0″), my low weight, and Katie enabling me to climb often. Check out this montage of the most challenging moves for the V6s from December. Credit to my gym’s routesetters for such diverse challenges.
Climbing is an ideal mix of an athletic endeavor, puzzle solving, and alone time. The practical payoff is that my shoulders and biceps are far stronger for carrying Winston and his gear. An intermediate “perk” is ridiculous but otherwise useless finger flexor strength. But, to be honest, the best part is the sheer enjoyment of clamoring about on the wall in progressively wackier ways.
* “all V6s”? The grade labels are decided by the routesetters who imagine and establish the hold placements, and grades are notoriously subjective and inconsistent. I personally perceive that our gym is “soft,” or graded generously; say V6s here that might be downgraded to V5s if in other gyms. However, my personal perception might be skewed by personal familiarity with the climbing holds my gym reuses and the gym’s particular wall geometry (relatively short, no cave) and my own willingness to spend entire sessions slogging through routes.
Misc.
We traveled more during the first half of the year: train trips to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.; flights to California, Seattle, Yellowstone/Grand Tetons, and California again; and a driving trip to New Haven. We’ve been soooo busy for the back half of the year and mostly stayed put.
I exceeded 100k minutes listened on Spotify Wrapped for 2025, which is bonkers.
I started learning how to edit videos for climbing montages, using CapCut on my phone. It’s so different from photo editing on a computer with Lightroom. My discipline in photo management remains useful.
Happy New Year! Good tidings for 2026.