Obligatory Year-End Wrap Up Post, 2004 Version

Another year, down the drain. The hours of 2004 are drawing to a close, and I'm preparing to bid it a fond farewell. Well, perhaps not so fond. To paraphrase The Simpsons, this year both sucked and blew on many levels. There are more than a few parts of the last twelve months that I would like to erase from my life. (I will also spare my readers from having to listen to me whine about them.)

So what have we learned this year?

- Communication and honesty are the most important things in the world. In their absence, people start to assume. Assumptions are dangerous things, and can wreck months of your life that could have been saved if one person had just spoken up.
- If you poke fun at the Great White Death long enough, it will eventually show up and immobilize your city.
- People get way too freaked out over a bunch of mostly harmless insects just looking to get lucky.
- I had a novel in me after all. Too bad it's a crappy one.
- Safe Auto sucks. Their jingle sucks, their customer service sucks. Heck, one of the forms they sent me to sign even had a typo that read "suck." I kid you not.
- The entire country can be offended by a nipple that most of us didn't see until the news pointed it out and played in slow motion ad nauseum, and it's OK to sanitize the media in order to remove offensive language in the name of moral values, but it's still fine to show violence and gore. In the immortal words of Sheila Broflovski, "Remember what the MPAA says: Horrific, deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty words! That's what this war is all about!"
- Of course, moral values are subjective. Waging unnecessary wars, running up a huge deficit that future generations will have to deal with, screwing up the already faltering educational system, and destoying the environment in the name of big business are fine. Discriminating against two people who love each other is acceptable. After all, the Bible says so! (Of course, as the often forwarded letter to Dr. Laura/President Bush reminds us, so is eating shellfish and wearing poly-cotton blends. Enjoy your shrimp tray! Love your sweater! See you in hell!)
- I would be an awful music critic because I am entirely too concerned about whether the band was nice to me.
- I panic over everything, whether it be simple blood draws (no, I've not heard anything yet... no news is good news, I hope) or class reunions. My self esteem sucks, and I often don't handle it very well.
- It's OK to be intelligent again. (Or at least intelligent on quiz shows.) From the bottom of my useless pop culture trivia-filled heart, thanks, Ken Jennings!
- In the same way that I only seem to be allergic to kittens, I'm allergic to cheetah cubs. If I'm in the room with Bravo and Chance (the new 7 month old cheetahs from the Cat Ambassador Program), my throat closes up and I cough up a lung. However, I have no reaction at all to Sahara or Moya, the adult cheetahs in the program. I know, it's weird.
- I am Rhapsody's bitch. I will go into more detail about this a later date, but any service that allows me to come up with a five hour playlist comprised of nothing but songs used in commercials is OK with me.

I guess now would be as good a time as any to get those pesky resolutions out of the way. In the upcoming year, I resolve to:

- Read a "hard" book and a "fun" book every month. While I do spend a lot of time reading, a lot of it is flipping through the newest issue of Entertainment Weekly or re-reading Why Girls are Weird for the billionth time. I have a stack of unread books that I need to plow through, many of them from past Barrows Lecture Series speakers. So why am I rereading Memoirs of a Geisha?
- Learn to work my digital camera and find someplace to host my photos so I can torture everyone with tons of pictures of my cats. (Well, and other stuff too.) There are several things that I've needed to tweak on my site for a while now, but finding the time and motivation has been difficult.
- Do something cultural every month. I don't remember the last time I went to the Art Museum. I haven't been to a show at Playhouse in the Park since Roger Mexico moved. (I do miss those free tickets.... ) Although I've admired the architecture, I haven't been to the new location of the Contemporary Arts Center. I'm lucky enough to live in a city filled with great museums and arts programs, and I don't take advantage of it. As the song goes, "Culture is something good for you/Like liver, spinach and beets too." (I don't like those foods particularly, but I do like the symphony and the theater. I'll take a helping of the Cincinnati Opera, please, with a side of the Pops.)
- Go see local live music at least once a month. For a city that Forbes ridiculed for being "no fun," we have a vibrant local music scene. Attending the Midpoint Music Festival this past year reminded me how much I missed going out to see a band. MPMF gave me lots of new names to keep an eye out for when reading CityBeat, and hopefully along the way I'll discover more.
- Keep track of what goes on in my life. There are points where I can honestly say that I can't remember the last movie I saw or the last concert I've been to. (Case in point: the other night I rented a DVD from Blockbuster, and realized halfway through that I'd rented it before. No complaints - it was Eddie Izzard, after all - but I didn't remember watching it until I got a strange case of déjà vu about twenty minutes in.) As I get older, life seems to be moving faster. Maybe if I kept some sort of record, like a birder's life list, I would be able to retain some grasp on the universe as it whizzes past me. Hopefully this will help me with my next resolution...
- Post more often. Yeah, I say this every year and post less and less. I'm going with the "finding time and motivation" excuse again, but I hope to improve upon my past track record and write more.
- Exercise/lose weight. Yeah, almost everyone puts this on their list, don't they? But I'm getting old, and the metabolism is slowing down. While I'm comfortable (well, kind of) in my body, I would be a lot more comfortable if it were a little bit smaller. Besides, I have a reunion coming up this year. If I decide to go, I don't want to be in the "look how fat she got!" category.
- Relax. As I stated above, I tend to panic about everything in my life. I'm going to work on not being so high-strung about things. The blood tests will probably be fine. I probably won't wreck my car or get hit by a bus today. My car will probably not fall apart if I drive it outside of the city limits. My office will probably keep functioning if I take a vacation. (Granted, "functioning" is a nice way of saying "we'll pile up all of the work on your desk so you can do it when you get back.")
- Edit the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo so it's actually fit for human consumption. This is something to tackle later, since part of the editing process requires a trip to Hocking Hills State Park for research, and it's too cold to do that right now.
- Pick up the two half-finished manuscripts and try to get the first drafts done. I've proven that I can finish a novel. Now that I have that out of my system, I need to get Alison and Devin out of Nebraska. (Before I can do that, I need to make Alison into a sane and functioning person, since she was in bad shape when I stopped writing on the first novel. It probably would be a good idea to finish the first story before completing the sequel.)
- Wear pajama pants as much as humanly possible. I have a theory that the world would be a happier place if we could all wear pajama pants everywhere. I, for one, am much happier when I'm comfortable. I've also run this theory past JohnnyB, and he agrees wholeheartedly.

In fact, I will probably be ringing in the new year in my favorite blue plaid flannels. And my tiara. No one's going to see me but the cats and Zappagirl (she has no plans either, so she's coming over for my annual ritual of movies, wine, and food that's bad for you), and I doubt that they will mind all that much.