Dejame

I stole the following survey from Clarity before Christmas but never got around to completing it.

1. What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before?
Went to another state for a wedding (twice), went curling, learned to drive a manual transmission, went to a Milwaukee Brewers game in Milwaukee

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I generally don't make resolutions.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Two friends had babies this year. One a beautiful daughter to go with her beautiful son and another couple had their first baby, a boy.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Hattie from church. I still miss her, especially how she'd attack Lee (4 years old) during the Kiss of Peace and make him giggle and she was as deaf as a post, so she had no idea how loud she was. She was great.

5. What cities/countries did you visit?
Chicago; Milwaukee; Cleveland; Ludington, MI; Edmonton; Road America at Elkhart Lake, WI; Vegas; Grand Canyon

6. What would you like to have in 2007 which you lacked in 2006?
Weight loss

7. What date from 2006 will remain etched in your memory, and why?
No date in particular will stand out.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Sadly, learning how to drive a manual transmission and it's not like I do it all that well.

9. What was your biggest failure?
My relationship with the YS which suffered hugely this year.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Usual bronchitis

11. What was the best thing you bought?
This!

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Al Gore for taking on the idiots who don't believe in global warming.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
That moron in the Oval Office. He makes me physically ill.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Racing weekends, of course.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The Tigers run to the World Series, particularly beating the hated Yankees.

16. What song will always remind you of 2006?
Anything by Delerium as that was the first time I had ever heard them.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: Happier or sadder? Thinner or fatter? Richer or poorer?
The potential for poorer is there since my company is once again laying off, although it's not being called that. And it'll probably be March before I know anything. I'm neither thinner nor fatter, exactly the same once again after exercising like a madwoman. It's a tad frustrating. I'm a fairly even-keel type person, and I'm generally content with my life, so while I'll have highs and lows, they're fairly irregular and mostly, I'm fine.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Keeping in touch with friends around the world.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Less hanging out all alone at home knitting and watching TV.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent Christmas sitting home alone until it was time to head to my older sister's house. There we exchanged gifts, I knitted and we ate and watched Cars.

21. What was your favourite TV program?
What Not To Wear or How Do I Look?

22. What was the best book you read?
I read a lot of really good books. I loved Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis by Jimmy Carter, Alex Zanardi: My Sweetest Victory: A Memoir of Racing Success, Adversity & Courage by Alex Zanardi, and The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury.

23. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Delerium

24. What did you want and get?
iPod Nano (for Christmas)

25. What did you want and NOT get?
Grand Prix on DVD

26. What was your favorite film of this year?
I watch a lot of movies but rarely in the same year they came out. Of the movies I saw in the movie theatre (Brokeback Mountain, Good Night and Good Luck, The Proposition, The Muppet Movie (), and Talladega Nights), I'd say Good Night & Good Luck, but for the movies that were nominated for Oscars of any sort last year (Crash, Syriana, North Country, Capote, The Constant Gardener, Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride, Munich), I would have to go with Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride.

27. What did you do on your birthday?
My b-day was a Saturday this year, so on Friday I went to the bar with some friends from work. Saturday my friend HRH came into town and we went to the Henry Ford Museum and then I had a group of about 40 friends and relative at the Tigers game (they lost, dammit). Sunday I went for breakfast with my friend Suzy who had come in for the baseball game. Then we went to Greenfield Village and topped off the day with dinner at the Traffic Jam & Snug.

28. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Not wasting my vacation time on visiting my younger sister when she didn't want me to but didn't tell me because she didn't expect me to show up because the ONE other time I made plans to visit her, I didn't go (the fact that I had shingles was apparently not a sufficient reason).

29. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?
Comfort with the occasional foray into cute.

30. What kept you sane?
That's quite an assumption. However, I'd say knitting and Netflix.

31. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Richard Dean Anderson

32. What political issue stirred you the most?
Anything that dumbass does "stirs" me with "stir" equaling "pissing me off."

33. Whom did you miss?
Spending time with Sal in SF.

34. Who was the best new person you met?
Chan & Cam, new racing buddies

35. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006:
Don't do something just to appease somebody else because it won't work. And no matter what they say and how much they insist they do, people do NOT want to know what you think about their new boyfriend, unless you absolutely thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, because they're lying and don’t want to hear it.

36. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

Born from some mother's womb - just like any other room
Made a promise for a new life - made a victim out of your life
When your time's on the door and it drips to the floor
And you feel you can touch - all the noise is too much
And the seeds that are sown are no longer your own

Just a minor operation - to force a final ultimatum
A thousand words are spoken loud - reach the dumb to fool the crowd
When you walk down the street and the sound's not so sweet
And you wish you could hide - maybe go for a ride
To some picture arcade where the future's not made

A nightmare situation - infiltrate imagination
Smacks of past holy wars - by the wall with broken laws

The leaders of men - born out of your frustration
The leaders of men - just a strange infatuation
The leaders of men - made a promise for a new life

No saviour for our sakes - to crush the internees of hate
Self-induced manipulation - to crush all thoughts of mass salvation