Not the End of the Year Show
I don't particularly feel like doing a huge end-of-year report to review 2004. Any year in which I know Meg is an excellent year; any year in which my mother dies is a terrible year. High points and low points, certainly, but there has been so much sadness this year that I'm putting 2005 down as being closer to the bottom five than the top five. So many on my Friends list seem to have had sadness to report this year, and I know Meg has been far from happy for large parts of it. Perhaps my perception of sadness is just more acute at the moment - partly due to Mum, and partly due to just following more people's lives.
On the other hand, there's a lot to look forward to in 2006, probably more than any other year that I can recall:
Meg:
January: going to visit her on the 28th!
February: sadly, coming home a couple of days before Valentine's Day.
March: I'll miss our anniversary too.
March-April: there are lots of good reasons for her to come to the UK rather than for me to go to the US, for a change. Not sure whether she'll be in the UK for her birthday or not - my gut feeling is that there will be plenty of birthdays to celebrate in the UK in the future, so one more in the US may be wise.
June: possibly moving flat if we turn out not to like this flat or if I cannot persuade the owner to let us keep kittens there.
June-July: visiting the US, applying for a fiancée visa for Meg.
August-September: visiting the US and bringing Meg back with me. I can't remember looking forward to anything as hard as I am looking forward to this, though "Christmas when I was 8" (when I was hoping for, and received, a ZX Spectrum) probably comes close. It's all relative.
November: not sure what I'll do with my 18 days off once Meg comes to live with me!
January-February 2007: wedding. :-)
Sport:
February: Winter Olympics. Curling!
March: Commonwealth Games. England winning medals!
June and July: Football World Cup.
June: Athletics European Cup. Britain cheating relegation again and the ladies getting promoted back to the top group.
Late June to Early August: World Series of Poker.
Autumn: World Puzzle Championships. I'd like to go to Bulgaria and blog live from there, but I'm not confident that I'll be able to make this work for several reasons.
Autumn: baseball playoffs, with Meg.
Winter: College Football season, with Meg.
Games:
Friday 13th to approx. Sunday 15th January: MIT Mystery Hunt. Am off on Friday and Saturday.
Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd January: OxCon. Am off for all three days, but would have to spend Sunday travelling home.
April: Melbourne University Puzzle Hunt. I'm looking forward to this one too - should be good for remote participation and last year's format looks like a cracker.
April: BayCon - the games BayCon - to which I have never been and could go, but probably won't.
May: MSO Cambridge, if it happens.
21st to 24th July: ManorCon. I'm very likely indeed to miss this. Poop. (jvvw et al, we must talk.)
18th to 28th August: MSO. I'll probably go to the very start of this (probably late Thursday to early Sunday), work my last set of shifts at work and then go off to see Meg.
October: PsychoCon, possibly.
November: MidCon, possibly.
Work:
Annual bonus in January, probably. (Hopefully.)
Cost-of-living increase in Feburary, probably. Maybe March.
Finishing module three hopefully by May or so.
Playing around with the salary sacrifice scheme in May.
Team-building exercise in the summer. They'll probably race cars again and I should be able to join in this year.
Game shows:
It was a real stretch to think of something that I hope gets to come back for another series in 2006, but I've finally thought of something: Late Night Poker Ace. Other than that, the only thing I've got is the Eurovision Song Contest.
Harry Potter:
Er... well, I'm not going to Lumos, it's most unlikely that there'll be a book and people are talking about June 2007 for the fifth movie. (By the way, I had to turn round and look at my bookshelf to remember what book five was called. That's a sign, isn't it?) What is there to look forward to this year? We shall all have to have a big gathering - nay, a full-scale one-off t00bage revival! - most likely of people who once liked Harry Potter and now just like chatting to each other over LiveJournal.
Politics:
Local government elections in May 2006, with Tim Vine's brother (Jeremy) in charge of the slightly redundant swingometer. I think we re-elect in 2007.
That's all I've got, but it's still quite a lot to look forward to! Should definitely be a good year, especially the Meggie-related parts. :-)
(Talking of Tim Vine, I note with sadness that he was only sixth on the bill in Cinderella in Wimbledon. OK, Tim's no actor, other than in The Sketch Show, but I was disappointed to see that only the top five on the bill appeared on the poster and the fifth person to make it was Peter Duncan. Peter Duncan ahead of Tim Vine on the bill? Surely not! What has Peter Duncan done since his days on Blue Peter over twenty years ago, and subsequent turns losing game after game with messy consequences on Crackerjack? Then I found out what he's been doing: he's started directing pantomimes, like Cinderella in Wimbledon this year...)
Lastly, a bit of LiveJournal nostalgia. Back in mid-July 2002, I used a utility to produce a chart of who on my Friends list at the time linked to whom. I've sometimes wished that LJ made it easy to track when you added or removed people as Friends in a sort of reverse Joule, but this gives a good indication of who I've been following since virtually the start, mostly game show folk and HP fans.
It's interesting to see the categories of people in which my Friends fall. Noting that many of you are multitalented and fall into more than one category, there are also:
On the other hand, there's a lot to look forward to in 2006, probably more than any other year that I can recall:
Meg:
January: going to visit her on the 28th!
February: sadly, coming home a couple of days before Valentine's Day.
March: I'll miss our anniversary too.
March-April: there are lots of good reasons for her to come to the UK rather than for me to go to the US, for a change. Not sure whether she'll be in the UK for her birthday or not - my gut feeling is that there will be plenty of birthdays to celebrate in the UK in the future, so one more in the US may be wise.
June: possibly moving flat if we turn out not to like this flat or if I cannot persuade the owner to let us keep kittens there.
June-July: visiting the US, applying for a fiancée visa for Meg.
August-September: visiting the US and bringing Meg back with me. I can't remember looking forward to anything as hard as I am looking forward to this, though "Christmas when I was 8" (when I was hoping for, and received, a ZX Spectrum) probably comes close. It's all relative.
November: not sure what I'll do with my 18 days off once Meg comes to live with me!
January-February 2007: wedding. :-)
Sport:
February: Winter Olympics. Curling!
March: Commonwealth Games. England winning medals!
June and July: Football World Cup.
June: Athletics European Cup. Britain cheating relegation again and the ladies getting promoted back to the top group.
Late June to Early August: World Series of Poker.
Autumn: World Puzzle Championships. I'd like to go to Bulgaria and blog live from there, but I'm not confident that I'll be able to make this work for several reasons.
Autumn: baseball playoffs, with Meg.
Winter: College Football season, with Meg.
Games:
Friday 13th to approx. Sunday 15th January: MIT Mystery Hunt. Am off on Friday and Saturday.
Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd January: OxCon. Am off for all three days, but would have to spend Sunday travelling home.
April: Melbourne University Puzzle Hunt. I'm looking forward to this one too - should be good for remote participation and last year's format looks like a cracker.
April: BayCon - the games BayCon - to which I have never been and could go, but probably won't.
May: MSO Cambridge, if it happens.
21st to 24th July: ManorCon. I'm very likely indeed to miss this. Poop. (jvvw et al, we must talk.)
18th to 28th August: MSO. I'll probably go to the very start of this (probably late Thursday to early Sunday), work my last set of shifts at work and then go off to see Meg.
October: PsychoCon, possibly.
November: MidCon, possibly.
Work:
Annual bonus in January, probably. (Hopefully.)
Cost-of-living increase in Feburary, probably. Maybe March.
Finishing module three hopefully by May or so.
Playing around with the salary sacrifice scheme in May.
Team-building exercise in the summer. They'll probably race cars again and I should be able to join in this year.
Game shows:
It was a real stretch to think of something that I hope gets to come back for another series in 2006, but I've finally thought of something: Late Night Poker Ace. Other than that, the only thing I've got is the Eurovision Song Contest.
Harry Potter:
Er... well, I'm not going to Lumos, it's most unlikely that there'll be a book and people are talking about June 2007 for the fifth movie. (By the way, I had to turn round and look at my bookshelf to remember what book five was called. That's a sign, isn't it?) What is there to look forward to this year? We shall all have to have a big gathering - nay, a full-scale one-off t00bage revival! - most likely of people who once liked Harry Potter and now just like chatting to each other over LiveJournal.
Politics:
Local government elections in May 2006, with Tim Vine's brother (Jeremy) in charge of the slightly redundant swingometer. I think we re-elect in 2007.
That's all I've got, but it's still quite a lot to look forward to! Should definitely be a good year, especially the Meggie-related parts. :-)
(Talking of Tim Vine, I note with sadness that he was only sixth on the bill in Cinderella in Wimbledon. OK, Tim's no actor, other than in The Sketch Show, but I was disappointed to see that only the top five on the bill appeared on the poster and the fifth person to make it was Peter Duncan. Peter Duncan ahead of Tim Vine on the bill? Surely not! What has Peter Duncan done since his days on Blue Peter over twenty years ago, and subsequent turns losing game after game with messy consequences on Crackerjack? Then I found out what he's been doing: he's started directing pantomimes, like Cinderella in Wimbledon this year...)
Lastly, a bit of LiveJournal nostalgia. Back in mid-July 2002, I used a utility to produce a chart of who on my Friends list at the time linked to whom. I've sometimes wished that LJ made it easy to track when you added or removed people as Friends in a sort of reverse Joule, but this gives a good indication of who I've been following since virtually the start, mostly game show folk and HP fans.
It's interesting to see the categories of people in which my Friends fall. Noting that many of you are multitalented and fall into more than one category, there are also:
- the UK game show people, including the brigbother fandom
- lots of other Stateside game show people
- the Oxford people, specifically the Invariants
- the Oxford people, specifically the RPGSoc folk
- the Oxford people, specifically ox.* folk
- the Oxford people, specifically the Keble College folk
- the Oxford people, specifically the DipSoc folk - all two of them, but I'm working on it, dammit
- Harry Potter people, specifically the t00bs
- Harry Potter people, specifically the Nimbus folks
- Harry Potter people, specifically the Accio folks
- Harry Potter people, specifically the The Witching Hour folks
- Harry Potter people, specifically the men
- Harry Potter people, specifically the crowd of sex-positive folk who mostly write slash
- Harry Potter people, specifically the Boston posse (and related non-Harry-Potter Boston people)
- Harry Potter people, specifically the Georgia posse (and related non-Harry-Potter Georgia people)
- puzzle people
- poker people and their Friends
- traditional fanzine-type fandom fan folk and their Friends
- people I am stalking because they have lots of useful advice
- local people
- random people from my past who have surfaced on LJ unexpectedly
- people who I got to know through the "Most Similar Users" list and their Friends
- a small number of unhandled exceptions (there's one board gamer who doesn't fall into the above categories, one person who beat me on a quiz despite being painfully younger than me, someone who I added years ago because I liked their usericon and their posts to sextips, at least one sock-puppet and wardytron)