2012 in review

Obviously this is the point where you think, "holy cow, where has the year gone!" Well in my case, straight in the crapper*.  And yet, it ended on such a hopeful and uplifting note, it made everything else worthwhile.

Of course, if you're reading this on my blog you can already see what happened to me throughout the year, and so it hardly seems worthwhile to summarize it. However, I may be able to distill its effects on me.

The most painful event, of course, was losing my aunt and uncle in May and June respectively. I have not recovered from that, and find myself avoiding people as a way of avoiding dealing with that. However, as I'm going to be visiting my family in 3 weeks, I won't be able to avoid it much longer. I am hoping my cousin will get her act together and I can go back to spread their ashes soon.

Much of 2012 was spent making up for my lack of dating in my youth. I didn't find any lovers, but I did pick up 5 or 6 friends along the way.

Spiritually, I continued to be impressed by, and drawn further into, Judaism. After accidentally volunteering for security duty in March, I seem to spend more time outside the synagogue than in, but ironically this makes it easier to get to know other members, which in turn makes me feel more like part of the community. I've also read several books and went to a Jewish conference, which was brilliantly held over Christmas!

My job has roller-coastered between having very little to do and having an insane amount to do, but at least for most of it I could work from home, or very near to home. That ended last month when I was asked to work in Runcorn four days a week for the next 6-12 months! If you look up Runcorn on a map, you'll see it's halfway between Manchester and Liverpool. What the map won't show you is that there is *nothing* around it! A couple of chain hotels, a couple of dodgy restaurants, and at least 40 minutes in any direction to find anything interesting. When I get back from California I think there will be some negotiation on how many days I need to be up there, whether or not I can get a corporate apartment rather than stay at hotels, or whether I need to start looking for a new job.

So that's 2012 in a nutshell. I really don't know what to expect from 2013, but I can tell you what I'm hoping for. :-)
*For the record, early toilets were already referred to as "crappers" before the unfortunately-named Thomas Crapper began manufacturing them.