CLASSIC!

yeah, total classic, for the world cup alone

Any year with JBR in it fucking rules!

and the winter olympics? who can forget the snowboarding chick who reminded us what hubris meant?

sorry to harsh the buzz, but dud.

“sorry to harsh the buzz, but dud.”

SOMEBODY couldn’t find any weed tonight. either that or the video store had rented out the last copy of The Descent.

GOD and i read so many good books this year! total classic—maybe better than 2005!

list of why 2006 was a dud:

1. mother has breast cancer surgery/chemo/radiation

2. girlfriend cheats on me with best friend

3. subsequent ugly break-up and the end of many friendships

4. moving home after being independent for 3 years

5. me being an academic fuck-up

2007 will be great, no joke

dud

it can only go up from here

okay, todd, you win. BUT YOU WILL GET THRU IT ALL CUZ YOU ARE AS STRONG AS A FUCKING BULL. right?

of course... also thx for the secret santa stuff! the chocolate is exceptional

kinda dud, but personally and not culturally

WORLD I STILL LOVE U AND 2007 WILL BE GREAT

awesome. no prob. some years are more memorable than others. for different reasons. i’m just glad if i can remember what happened.

x-post

1.) Sunny found out she’s expecting.

2.) Wasn’t half as stressful as 2005.

3.) First Christmas under the Equator.

4.) Managed to get through another year of work without loading up the shotgun.

5.) and this:

which pretty much tips ’06 into the CLASSIC category.

P.W. Botha and Pinochet both slipped off this mortal coil in 2006, which tends to tip the year towards classic for me.

2006 = zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (alas :/)

CLUD! Yin Yang!

2006 was a stablising year for me. HIgh and lows pretty equally distributed, with on balance more highs than lows. The most important thing is that the usual times that I fuck up (usually around March/April or Ovtober/November time) I managed to see where I was going wrong and pull up sharpish. I think of this year the same as Oxford utd are thinking of this year—a stabilising season in the congference before going back into the league next year to play with the big boys.

Quit my dead-end job of five years. Moved halfway across the country. Got new, better-paying, more exciting (for now) dead-end job. Grew a kick-ass beard. Shaved the beard. Found ONE song I really, really like. Met three times as many ILXors as I’d ever met before. Launched a media empire. Got a myspace page. CLEANED UP HUMAN POOP. Saw a member of the cast of Animal House on the street. Boiled water. Felt more adrift than ever before, but felt more at ease in my adriftness. I dunno, I’m too in the thick of whatever to look back right now and make any qualitative pronouncements.

Good:

Kid went on GF/CF diet, his constant stomach problems have gone, some of his ASD symptoms seem noticeably less overwhelming, though stil v v present.

I went on GF/CF diet, Arthritis basically stopped, specialist at hospital told me to stop taking arthritis meds. Result.

Doing well on electrician course. Some hope for future b/c of this.

Scummy neighbours have moved away.

Bad:

Business/trade has been TERRIBLE this year, really depressing. Small scale retail in UK is fucked as far as I can see.

’06 better than ’05 though, much better. I hope ’07 will be better still.

Classic: New work arrangement/duties, $12K raise.

Kid went off to college and is loving it/flourishing/finally in a situation where her intellectual peers are the same people as her social peers.

Dud: Judy in moderate depression for about 2 months now. Working on adjusting meds, but it’s slow going.

Total physical isolation from friends resulting in my own low level depression. I basically spent November sitting at my desk, refreshing the New Answers page.

I’m calling ’06 a wash. 2007 has promise, though, with Amsterdam trip coming in Sept. If the money’s there I’d like to go to Chicago or NYC sometime this year too. Kiddo is going to London for four weeks for school, and Judy may go to Seattle area to visit interweb friends. If finances allow, we may start some house repairs/renovations.

2006 kicked off with a big group of us raving on top of a warehouse roof and somehow managed to get better and better from there. Made a big group of cool new friends, got to know a lot of the old ones a lot better, went on some amazing nights out, one awesome long hot summer, met the cutest girl ever, two couples got married, another sprogged. Plus I got to spend a glorious two weeks with my family in Goa, seeing all the places where my dad’s family came from and trying loads of new things. Just so many really, really happy memories.

Work/financial situation has improved exponentially. At the start of the year I was exhausted, stressed and working long hours in a job I hated, and in a big financial hole at the same time. One quick change of career later I’ve found something I’m very good at, have paid off all my debts plus more. Plus my new boss asked me to manage his new business which is incredibly flattering if nothing else—if that goes well, 2007 and onward could be even better. If nothing else, I feel like I know where I’m going in life, maybe for the first time ever.

Apart from a few well-documented moments when my life unexpectedly turned into an embarrassing last scene from an episode of Peep Show, 2006 has been classic on almost every level. Best year of my life, no question.

Oh, and in retrospect, the World Cup didn’t entirely suck after all.

Reading FC style year of consolidation, February was great, so was April, November sucked, December has been good enough to make January great... 7/10

Sports-wise, for me at least this year couldn’t possibly have sucked harder...

In general, OK. Not much progress, not much lost. 2006 has been a holding-pattern of sorts. Next year and 2008 will be the deal-breakers.

(actually, what am I talking about, it was a fantastic season for my beloved Worcestershire CCC. not that anyone else here pays any attention whatsoever to county cricket.)

Up and down but way more up than down. Happy more often than not, learned a lot of things, writing again, living again. Yay 2006...

...but it was all largely a prelude to 2007, which — if all goes according to plan — will be the wildest year in my whole life. New job undoubtedly, new child hopefully (pray for no war on the Horn of Africa, so I can leave North America for the first time in my 40.5 years on the planet), new opportunities.

2005 was completely unbelievable for me so 2006 had heavy competition. ’06 was good too—professionally, personally—but it seemed like a lot more work: more obstacles, more toil. I try not to go into new years with any particular hopes or demands.

Concur that the Santorum resigning pic pretty much balances out any/all negatives.

Lotsa crap in the wide sense, as many here have noted. A couple of niggling personal issues and plans that went awry. But otherwise, a damn fine year all around — I have my health, my friends, a good life and many opportunities, and even the earthquake happening here in SF as I type this can’t change my mood.

I can’t help thinking in a national/international affairs sense that 2006 was pretty dud. Thanks Bush administration and all. But I started learning about types of small-scale activism that made my overall picture of the world, and any particular person’s place in it, look more hopeful.

Personally is always more fun though! 2006 started out with a breakup that was clearly inevitable on New Year’s Eve, continued to see all my friends pair up so I finally went “fuck y’all, I’m going to Siberia” in February (okay, I was going to anyway), wavered between homesick and drunk in the snow for two months, got in touch with my Armenian heritage, fell in love with Russia. Things went up from there. And at some point—I don’t know when—stopped thinking of myself as a wannabe-Christian-who-just-couldn’t-cut-it and started trying to be a real-Christian-with-serious-doubt-issues. Personally: less across-the-board wonderful than 2005, but way more exciting.

Refusing, for this particular night, to dwell mucho ‘pon the many mess-ups round our quasi-flat half-arsed globe, I am, with total serenity and lucidity of mind, ready to admit that teh year 2000&6 was, personally and professionally, really rather damn fine. And if teh 2000&7 will be remotely like that, I’m not the one to complain-ah o no!

(And to kool dudette Jody Bet’hoven: häid jõule ja ilusat uut aastat!)

classic:

- met an amazing girl at—of all things—a saint etienne show

- a new, steady job w/benefits and respect and cool co-workers

- a new car on the horizon

- my brother got engaged last week

- not as much debt as a year ago

- several new, great friends

Like us. Oh wait. (Come to a FAP sometime dammit!)

resolutions for 2007:

- actually get new car

- get raise

- clone girlfriend

- get steady dj gig

- attend FAP

RIP arthur lee, syd barrett, ahmet ertegun, ...

also györgy ligeti, stanislaw lem, anna politkovskaya, sven nykvist, james “belt” van allen, floyd patterson, can tiit confirm lennart meri was one of the good guys? if so, him etc etc.

2006 was decent. Learnt/managed not to get involved in more stuff than I could handle more or less comfortably; home & work life slid along ok; redecorated summer house kitchen and at the same time got promise that next summer be totally redecoration-free; did well internationally in hobby competitive pursuit; no mortal enemies as of the yet.

Fine resolutions all, Gear. (I agree on the second one particularly.)

can tiit confirm lennart meri was one of the good guys?

he truly was.

CLASSIC

Personal reasons:

- New job that doesn’t involve people asking me why I’m stealing their money

- EMP hijinx

- burgeoning movie geek interest via Netflix + new flatscreen HDTV (A Touch of Zen is the shit)

- Getting to see Rakim, the Hold Steady & Gogol Bordello live

- lots of good times with friends (concerts, Halloween, beer-tasting parties, etc.)

- more frequent + lucrative freelance writing work

- debt drastically reduced

Other reasons:

- lol @ Santorum

- Twins getting new stadium, also Mauer + Santana + Morneau pwning everyone

- The Departed

- Bully, Guitar Hero II, Gears of War

- Pinochet = dead

he truly was.

Thought so. :) :(

- Pinochet = dead

Btw in s-american dead ex-dictators subthread, I suppose Alfredo Stroessner should be mentioned as well.

new flatscreen HDTV

This might be my resolution for this upcoming year, but we’ll see. All I’ll say is that I just *love* seeing the prices continue to fall, and that my old large-size Trinitron is holding up still...

(Damme, where do I set display name to != full name again?)

also, RIP pluto’s planetary status!

- clone girlfriend
- attend FAP

gear, be careful wot you wish fo’ ;)

Clone FAP

Attend girlfriend

also, RIP pluto’s planetary status!

Best astronomy nerdy event this year: after the body provisionally known as Xena was renamed Eris, in compensation its moon was called Dysnomia, the Greek for “lawlessness”, as tribute to Xena actress Lucy Lawless. :D

that is nerdy.

nuts, too :)

C:

met wonderful $girl (x2)

got wonderful jobz (x2)

got wonderful new home (x1)

D:

ruined it with wonderful $girl (x2)

nights spent homeless (x46)

lost wonderful job (x1)

massive debt (x$70,000)

Time to rob a rich girl’s bank, is what you’re saying.

far better than 2005, personally and politically.

let’s see:

-got thru and over most of my anxiety

-got a much better job doing things I like and a v. supportive environment w/ a much better boss

-got rid of my leased middle-class sportsy sedan for a far more affordable grandpa car

-working on improved social bits

-found a very nearby gym where I work out regularly

-finally beginning to get the finances caught up

-found more folks in portland to do social things w/

-oh yeah, and as of three days ago, I am now an uncle.

Dud: The rise and rise of Catherine Tate :-(

there’s a band or something called gogol bordello? omg. must investigate.

motherfucking dud for me.

classic. got a great job, changed my major to something i actually like, and met the greatest girl ever. plus the dems took congress and dylan made an awesome album.

7/10

Classic for not being two-thousand-and-fucking-five.

5.7

P.W. Botha and Pinochet both slipped off this mortal coil in 2006, which tends to tip the year towards classic for me.
— Dalzinho (scotstv...), December 23rd, 2006.

Milosevic croaked, too.

zemjo?

met a great girl then absent mindedly almost became lawrance from felt. trying to rectify situatiom.

nah yr a prick

haha soryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.... on the riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice wine

i thought ile was the “nice” board...

na

It was kind of the same as the other years.

Became Lawrence? What does that mean?

pros: moved house; bought turntables; unexpected payrise at end of year.

cons: made dumb decisions at work; in debt; one friend killed in motorbike accident, two others left the country.

summary: more dud than classic.

Good parts about 2006:

(a.) Got major work promotion.

(b.) Purchased my first “I own this” home (I still can’t believe it).

(c.) Got to communicating with some of my favorite personalities.

(d.) Further established some friendships.

(e.) Actually liking my work colleagues now.

(f.) I gave up on compromising and started on being true to only myself.

Bad parts about 2006:

(a.) Now I have to wake up at 4 am to get to work on time.

(b.) Old house still not sold; market slowly getting colder.

(c.) Communicating with one’s heroes not completely all its cracked up to be.

(d.) Woke up to the fact that some of my “friends” weren’t.

(e.) Trying to fight some of my impulse to isolate myself from these lovely new work colleagues.

(f.) This uncompromised me has alienated some people.

Oh, but I only had one bout of bronchitis this year, and my early summer surgery was an inadvertent impetus for the change in my work situation, and now I know I can handle surgery with just a local, and I’ve got other health issues under control.

“it’s my belly button ring in a box”

― RJG (RJG), Wednesday, 27 December 2006 20:38 (7 years ago) Permalink