2006

Some awful things happened this year, but I'm not going to write about them.

Good things in 2006:

• Becoming an aunt for the first time (no pictures, unfortunately)
• Getting a new cousin
• Going to Hungary
• The November elections and the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld
• A long, mild spring: many evenings perfect for drinking beer on the stoop
• Seeing my mom twice
• Finishing Gravity's Rainbow
• Eating at the Precinct, a Cincinnati steakhouse that is better than any I've yet been to in New York
• Watching the entire run of 24 in a month
• Discovering America's Next Top Model (all seven seasons of which are airing on VH1 this week, bee tee dubs)
• My friend George dealing with the Great and Wholly Disgusting Mass Mouse Murder of Much Death and Poop and Smell and also a garbage can we had to throw away
• Getting really into football
• Getting really, really, really into fantasy football
• Placing third in fantasy football
• Getting promoted

Best books I read in 2006: The Remains of the Day, The Hotel New Hampshire, Black Swan Green, Vanity Fair, A Long Long Way, The House of Mirth, and Gravity's Rainbow

Best movie I saw (in theaters) in 2006: Children of Men

Most entertaining TV show I saw (for the first time) in 2006: It's a three-way tie between 24, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Friday Night Lights.

Best meal I ate in 2006: Medium-rare porterhouse, oysters, blt-dressed salad and chocolate cake at The Precinct. Though I very much enjoyed BLT Steak and Locanda Vini e Olii.

Most disgusting mouse incident of 2006: the Great and Wholly Disgusting Mass Mouse Murder of Much Death and Poop and Smell and also a garbage can we had to throw away. Runner-up: the dead-mouse-somewhere-in-the-wall smell that lasted all of November.

And now, the resolution round-up.

Drink six times a week, and use the seventh day to trick yourself into thinking you don't have a problem

Achieved to the point of actually wanting to resolve to drink less. Less to the tune of, oh, four or five nights a week, but only one night of excess.

Drink coffee every day, but at different times of the day so it's not a "real habit"

Thanks to the belated realization that coffee makes me ill, this became irrelevant. Coffee is an extra-special treat now, not a habit.

When you go out, Go Out. None of this "home by midnight" BS

I think I actually did this for the first few months of the year. But not recently. Time to step up my party game.

Try something new with eye makeup

Did not happen. Unsurprisingly, I do not care.

Put five bucks on March Madness

Forgot! Did, however, fill out a bracket. Horribly. But how could anyone have predicted George Mason?

Don't poke yourself in the eye with your own finger (which I just did this very second)

I do not recall having poked myself in the eye in 2006. Success.

The new set:

• Visit my mother at least three times
• Go on dates with Conrad once a month
• Go on a beach vacation
• Learn more about football: the history of the game, stats back further than 2005 (when I started watching), play formations
• Work out twice a week
• Make after-work plans more often
• Keep in touch with my local relative
• Contact my dad at least once a month
• Visit my west coast family, meet the babies
• Read at least one "difficult" book
• Make my home homier
• Enroll in an MBA program