Friday, December 29, 2017

2017 Year in Review, Part 1

20 Questions About My Year

1. What did you do this year that you'd never done before?
Sued someone (successfully) in small claims court.  Took my Kitten to see Big Bad Voodoo Daddy in concert.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
“I want to try this project whereby, in 2017, I revisit some of my favorite/most influential books and documentaries more or less in order of how I encountered them from roughly 1993 to 2003.”  Largely successful! 
Resolution for 2018:  This year I slightly took-up meditating again.  I’d like to keep that up and also get back in the habit of doing yoga once a week.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Bishop and Gwynn.  Plus, Oberon was born at the beginning of the year, and, at the end of the year, my German friend is having a daughter any day now!

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My Uncle Joe

5. Did anyone close to you get married?
No, but R.M. got engaged.

6. What places did you visit?
We didn’t go to many places this year, but we went to Brookgreen Gardens, the Knoxville Zoo, and the Asheville Nature Center.

7. What would you like to have next year that you lacked this year?
I need new latex and zentai suits

8. What day from this year will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Kitten’s pain ritual.  Also: Spending the day in Asheville with my Alpha this summer – I really enjoyed that – and going hiking with him in the mountains with him.  (Technically that’s two days w/ Hunter.)

9. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
We won the “Most Spirited” float award in Charlotte Pride, and I think I had something to do with that.

10. What was your biggest failure?
It wasn’t exactly a failure, but CAPEX did a puppy workshop and mosh w/ an internationally known guest, and I tried to help promote that…but none of the local pups or Handlers came out for it.  That kind of sucked.

11. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nope.

12. What was the best thing you bought?
Oberon

13. Whose behavior merited a celebration?
Every woman who was a silence breaker and #MeToo – and everyone who participated in the Women’s March on Washington

14. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Easily Donald Fucking Trump.  I don’t even know where to start…
Also: the arborist we hired to take down a dead tree, took our money but wouldn’t do the job, and we had to sue him in small claims to get our money back.  He was such a chauvinistic, immature, vulgar, lying jackass!  (Basically: Donald Fucking Trump on a smaller scale.)

15. Where did most of your money go?
Oberon.

16. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Oberon…  Frolicon…  The Pup event we had at CAPEX…

17. What song will always remind you of this year?
Brand New’s “Play Crack the Sky.”

18. Compared to this time last year, you are:
Beta to a wonderful pair of omega-pups (which is exactly what I wrote in 2015, funny enough)

19. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Quality time with Hunter.  A lot of our scheduled time together this year got cancelled for one reason or another, so he missed the CAPEX camp-out, pup class, the Halloween party, Treehouse Christmas…  None of it was his fault; it was just that kind of year.

20. What do you wish you'd done less of?
House painting.  Actually, it wasn’t too bad.  We did a lot of repainting at both my mom’s old house and the newly acquired South Tower.