The Year in Review, or "And Where the Hell Was I?"

2006 is upon us, and like many people I like to take this time of year to reflect on the year gone by and look ahead to next year. 2005 was obviously a HUGE year for us. I left the company I spent 14 years at in January, Claud spent the spring with a 40 lb. medicine ball strapped to her belly, and we went through all the pain and joy of morphing from a couple of selfish thirtysomethings into a full-fledged family unit.  It was a year of many ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, and it went by so fast I think it's important to take stock of whole crazy thing.

In the interest of brevity, I’ve picked out some of the highlights for us, sparing many of the gory details (which are all in the blog archives anyway) and tossing in awards to celebrate some of the glorious and/or dubious achievements of the year for the world and for us.

The Peter Jackson Award for Best Revival of a Nerd Fantasy
Battlestar Galactica – so good it's scary

The Nigel Tufnel Award for Best Use of Satire
Kenny in a persistent vegetative state on South Park - "If ever I should be in a vegetative state and kept alive on life support," reads his will, "please for the love of God don't ever show me in that condition on national television."

The Corky St. Clair “Best Ending to a Movie that Technically Already Ended” Award
"Age of Aquarius" ending to 40-Year-Old Virgin

The Steven Spielberg “This Movie Would Have Been Perfect if You’d Ended it 10 Minutes Earlier” Award
After the Eastern Seaboard is virtually wiped out by aliens in War of the Worlds, Tom Cruise shows up in Boston to find his entire extended family is alive and well and living comfortably in a townhouse

The Sid Meier “Best Way to Blow a Weekend” Award
God of War on PS2 - it's like crack

The Mike Tyson “Please Make This Your Last Comeback Attempt” Award
The fugly remains of Loverboy on Hit Me Baby One More Time

The Richard Nixon Award for Best Guest Appearance on a TV show
Tie between Osama Bin Laden and Cookie Monster on Family Guy

The Jon Stewart “Stop Hurting America” Award for Honesty in Journalism
Anderson Cooper bitch-slaps Mary Landrieu, the senator from Louisiana, about the government response to Hurricane Katrina

The Kato Kaelin “STFU and Go Away” Award
Eva Longoria

The Joseph Heller “Why Didn’t I Read This Sooner” Award
Hyperion by Dan Simmons

The Little Steven Award for Most Disappointing Concert I Had the Misfortune of Attending
Former Jayhawks Gary Louris & Mark Olson at the Bowery Ballroom

The Debbie Benton Award for Best Sports Story
The Carolina Panther cheerleader's bathroom escapade, which may have brought down ESPN.com's servers from too much traffic

The Katherine Ortega Award for Chewiest Meal (Even if it turned out to be a big fat lie)
The Finger Chili at Wendy’s

The Burning Bush Award for Most Compelling Evidence that there is a God
Hearing whale songs while diving First Cathedral off Lanai in February

The Billy Bush Award for Most Compelling Evidence that God Likes to Torture Me
Tie – Gonzaga 69, Texas Tech 71 during March Madness, and the Video iPod launch mere days after receiving an new iPod for my birthday

The Menudo Award for Best Ensemble
All the guys & gals at DadCentric and the other blogs I frequent (see the “Spread the Love” blog roll to your right), who have been inspirational, supportive, and a genuine pleasure to get to know as this little hobby of mine has grown.

The Robert John “Mutt” Lange Producer of the Year Award
Claud, who hiked the Na Pali cost when five months pregnant, suffered through a broken rib at seven months, and gave birth to the most amazingly beautiful and well-behaved child on the planet.

The George Romero Award for Best Foreshadowing of Horrors to Come
November 13 – Cheeky rolls over for the first time

The Mt. St. Helens “Vancouver Base, Vancouver Base…This Is It!” Award
August 3, Cheeky takes a crap with such force and volume that it ricochets out the back of the diaper and coats her PJs

The Worst “Why Did We Do This Again?” Moment
90 way tie - every evening between Cheeky’s return from the hospital and October 13, when she slept through the night for the first time

The Best “Now I Get Why We Did This” Moment
Cheeky’s first smile, and every smile, giggle and hug since then

The Joe Namath Award for Boldest 2006 Prediction
Super Bowl XL – Seahawks 31, Bengals 17 (you saw it here first)

The Heidi Klum Award for Boldest 2006 Prediction Endorsed by my Wife
Claudia will return to her lucrative career as a swimwear model

I’m not much of a futurist, so I’m keeping my 2006 predictions to a minimum. I’d rather sit back and let the year unfold. There’s so much to look forward to—Cheeky’s first words, first steps, first teeth, first mosh pit—and I’m at a loss for words to describe how exciting and terrifying the whole thing is.  I can barely see past getting the tree down, to be honest.  But it's gonna be great.

Thanks to all of you who have shared in our lives so far!  We're looking forward to more mirth and merriment, thrills and spills, love and laughter, and other things which go together as either alliterations or rhymes in 2006!

Comments

[Susan]

You HAD to remind me about the Zags March Madness loss to Tech . . . thanks, dude. Fortunately, the whole point of March Madness is redemption. That, and beer.

Happy New Year to you and yours!

[Phat Daddy]

Dead on with some of those picks. I've become addicted to Battlestar Galactica. God of War was freaking awesome with its combination of storyline, platforming, fighting and digital boobs (might I suggest that you pick up Psychonauts?). Here's to a most excellent year ahead of us!

[Bengals destiny]

Super Bowl XL – Seahawks 31, Bengals 37

[kara]

very clever award names! and a happy o6 to you and yours. and my pats are going to the superbowl AGAIN this year!!

[Chris]

Dude. Hyperion (and the three books that follow including Fall of Hyperion which picks up exactly where the first left off) is an awesome book. And kudos for the two Christopher Guest references.

[MetroDad]

You, my friend, are a funny motherfucker. We need to grab that drink together soon. Maybe after my Giants whup your Seahawks.