2006 Is Done

Its a wrap!

Done with 2006, on with 2007. Its been a weird year, all in all. Nothing went as planned for me (naturally) and very little was planned to begin with. Mostly it was spent on just planning to plan something fruitful and meaningful and so on...

Anyway... this is the first two straight hours that I've been by myself in about ten days, so I figured I would do a quick recap of how this years been. I'll try not to draw any inferences obvious or otherwise (that I am a loser seems to jump out immediately, for instance)... and I'll stick to reviewing the year on the basis of the contents of this here selfsame blog...

So let's see... to begin with, my frequency of blogging has gone down significantly in this calendar year - in 2006 I blogged 41.x% of what I had in 2005... thats 55 posts, or just over one a week. That either means I had work to do, had very little to say, or had a sense of disenchantment with the world in general. From June to October was the lean period, so the fact that I made a huge bunch of friends and concentrated on spending most idle time painting the town red may have something to do with it too!

I watched a HUGE number of movies this year - some real gems among them. A couple I forgot to mention in my "My Year in Movies" post were The Weatherman and V for Vendetta, both of which make my top 15 (er... 17 now).

I did quite a bit of writing too... not nearly enough of course. Started several abortive projects, wrote a bit of poetry, some experimental stuff. Nothing worth publishing as yet.

Took to photography in a really big way this year - aided in no small part by the purchase of the love of my life - my Canon Powershot S2 IS camera with a 1 GB Ultra II SD Card as 2005 rolled down.

The year started well - with a quick trip to India - and I'm hoping the same will go for 2007 as well. Within the US, I managed to make just two trips this year - both to Chicago - so that was a bit more relaxed than last year. I made up for it by really going all over Western New York... and there's more to see than I have time to around these parts.

In terms of reading, this was the year of high fantasy, no doubt about it. The year started with Stephen King's Dark Tower Septet, and the highlight was certainly catching up with Steven Erikson's wonderful Malazan Book of the Fallen (ordered Book 6 - The Bonehunters from amazon.ca - my first international shipment!). I read Earthsea (Ursula K Le Guin), and Artemis Fowl (until Book 4) by Eoin Colfer, "Eragon" and "Eldest" by Christopher Paolini, and of course, there was Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince as last year rolled to a close. (cannot wait for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows!)

A couple of really big "things I did" was to read/ watch almost the entire body of work by Neil Gaiman. Read the Sandman series from beginning to end - well, the original ten volumes anyway. Read Stardust, and American Gods, and watched MirrorMask. I have Anansi Boys waiting on the shelf as I speak. This was a real trip - "I'll send this guy some money on his birthday" good!

Got into comics in a big way - first of all, borrowed and read the ENTIRE Calvin and Hobbes. Cannot say "I love it" enough! Then got into Frank Miller's Batman in a big way - Year One, The Long Halloween, The Killing Joke, The Dark Knight Returns (the black sheep of the lot, I thought) - were a revelation to read on the heels of watching the Batman Begins Deluxe DVD.

It wasn't all fantasy though. Around April I read God's Debris by Scott Adams, and that set off a nice chain of thought that lasted and left a hangover. Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" was disturbing in many ways - read that on a recommendation from Sangram. Then there was stuff by Erich Fromm - got a nice dialogue going with Nirat about it.

I watched some excellent television - the West Wing series wrap up being one definite highlight. Took to watching the Sunday morning political shows in a big way... I actually understand US politics to some extent now. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip felt like a letdown in the making before it pulled itself up by its bootstraps in the last few episodes of the year.

Musically, this was the year I discovered hiphop and r&b. That made a radical change from the usual Country/ Rock/ Alternative Rock ensemble that comprised my musical taste. Felt good.

On the Xbox, this year was somewhat tame - I shudder to say I still haven't finished Halo on it, or The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind... but the games I did play/ finish (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2, Jade Empire, Tomb Raider: Legend) were good. Played (but didn't finish) Doom 3, Serious Sam II, Call of Duty 2, and Fable. So yeah - gaming wise, I'm a slow player. Don't need the Next Gen consoles just yet... mumble mumble Quake 4, grumble Gears of War... Wii!

I just read through all the stuff I've written already and maybe I should include a smallish paragraph on my professional life - that thing they call a career... but naaah. Thats just plain boring.

I should however mention that this was the year I set up a home all of my own, (almost) got a driver's license :D, and stayed by myself in the last four months or so. I also managed to learn to cook... and am just now breaking away from the mundane and entering the experimental arena of slightly less boring cuisine.

Ah well... that seems like a real lazy. relaxed year dunnit? And I seem like a freaking imaginutton (a portmanteau of 'imagination' and 'glutton'). Well yeah... but way I look at it, any trip of the imagination was an attempt at getting over reality - denying it, even - and so my epic battle with the desert of the real stands unresolved through another trip around the sun.

I thought I'd close this here post by picking one post from each year of the blog's existence which comes closest to indicating what frame of mind I'd been in during the course of that year... so here goes:

2004 - Truth, Bliss, and an Epicure
2005 - Age of Bittersweet
2006 - Afterglow

All written in the second halves of years... huh! how about that!? Bring on 2007!

Peace... Out!