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January 2, 2007 | permalink

Happy New Year, Gentle Readers. I hope that this turn of the calendar finds you happy and healthy, and not too terribly hung over from any New Year's Eve libations you may have enjoyed. Furthermore, I hope that 2006 was a success for you, and at its closing you are filled with hope and excitement for the coming year.

Here, mostly for my amusement and because I like lists, is a brief, by the numbers recap of my year, as near as I can recall. Something light and fun to start the year with. Perhaps you will also find it amusing, or barring that, at least mildly interesting. Or at least not so boring that you leave before you even finish the post.

I wrote 86 posts in this venue last year, and published 84 of them for your perusal. Well, 85 but one I later took down. I'll buy a beer for anyone that knows which one!

I added 908 songs to my music library, from the 5, 6, 7, 8's to the Yeah Yeah Yeah's. According to iTunes, the ten artists I most listened to this past year are, in no particular order: Bob Dylan, The White Stripes, Johnny Cash, Gang of Four, Gym Class Heroes, Michael Penn, Rhinocerose, The Gorillaz, and LL Cool J.

I don't watch too much television, and there are only a couple of shows that I really care if I see or not. This year, for whatever reason, I was unlucky enough to get hooked on shows that air on channels I don't even get! (I don't have cable- I came across them while out of town on gigs, while I was in hotels, if you were wondering how that happened...) Battlestar Galactica and Robot Chicken have claimed little pieces of me for their very own, and I just. can't. get. enough. It's torture.

I saw 21 movies in the theatre last year, near as I can recall: King Kong, Munich, Brokeback Mountain, Underworld: Evolution, The Hills Have Eyes, V for Vendetta, Thank You for Smoking, Silent Hill, The Sentinel, Over the Hedge, X-Men: The Last Stand, Prairie Home Companion, Nacho Libre, Superman Returns, Miami Vice, Snakes on a Plane, Saw III, Borat, Casino Royale, For Your Consideration, and Pan's Labyrinth. I think the best of the bunch was Pan's Labyrinth.

I acquired somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 new books, though I confess I have only managed to read about half of them. I don't feel the need to list them all here, but the highlights were Fledgling by Octavia Butler, His Excellency by Joseph Ellis, a collection of Robert E. Howard's Conan short stories and novellas, Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers, Bear by Robert Bieder, and the Gastronomique, by Larousse.

I took 884 photographs.

I saw several dance pieces at the Ailey School, the Dada Exhibit at the Whitney, the Russian Portraiture and Spanish Paining exhibits at the Guggenheim, and The Magic Flute at the Met.

I drank a lot less alcohol than I did the year before, in general, and I stopped smoking cigarettes altogether. Not that I smoked a ton, but still...

I ate a lot of good food with Turtalia, and a lot of good chocolate. Max Brenner's, especially, was a big hit. I cooked a lot, and a year ago this week is when I started making my own bread instead of buying it from the store.

I was less social last year than I should have been, or wanted to be, for a whole slew of reasons that I won't lay out here. It's the one thing I want most to be better at in the coming year. That said, I did have the honor and pleasure of meeting three of my fellow bloggers last year: Jess at Blindcavefish, A Lover and a Fighter at Hobocamp, and Curly McDimple at Ham and Cheese on Wry. They are every bit as charming and delightful in person as they are on the page.

I was trying to avoid work talk, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I ended eleven years of freelancing this year, and took a full time job, the second officially full time gig that I have ever had. (There was one that wasn't technically full time, but might has well have been).

And that, Gentle Readers, is my overview of the past year as I recollect it, standing here at its end.

Posted in Holidays & Musings & Random
Pan's Labrynth was the last entry.
Somebody Told Me is the next entry.