2005 in Review

Hmm, I've been meaning to do this and not getting around to it, so let's be really brief:

My paternal grandmother died in February; my father received a kidney transplant in June. We went on a Caribbean cruise, visited Quebec City, and went to Boskone and Readercon (though I barely was at the latter). A girlfriend from high school got married in August, and one of Chad's college friends got engaged. I was hired for a new job, though I haven't started yet.

We replaced the transmission in Chad's car, the tires on my car, the lower portions of our house's roof, my laptop, and my iPod. As the year waned, I bought an entry-level PDA as an experiment (Palm Z22). I relaunched the booklog in Movable Type.

This was the year I started reading manga and watching anime—and, not unrelatedly, making icons. I acquired three new fandoms (Firefly, Saiyuki, and Fullmetal Alchemist), and mostly fell out of a fourth (Harry Potter; I read the new book, but find myself disinclined to read fanfic, or at least seventh-year fic). Thanks to a gift NetFlix subscription, I've become fond of Homicide: Life on the Streets. I also started reading The Tale of Genji, and finished the Dark Tower series. All of this, except for Homicide and the Dark Tower, is LiveJournal's fault.

I finally admitted that I don't have time for Usenet, read many fewer books than I would have liked, and am still behind on booklogging (though not as badly as I was this time last year). I think that ambient stress about the state of the world contributed to my general feeling that 2005 was frantic. Here's hoping for a better, calmer, and more balanced 2006.

Genji chapter 12

Chapter 12, "Suma": In which G=P in exile.