![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneThis was interesting and surprisingly cathartic to write.
1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
a) Kept an actually-daily diary of pertinent mental and physical health stuff; b) broke a bone; and c) built a PC from components.
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I made two last year, and I sort of did one (to finish WIPs) and simply agonized over the other (to learn to work on more than one fic at a time). I haven't come up with any yet, but I may.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My childhood "best cousin", Aubry, had her first child, a girl named Avery who looks exactly like a tiny Patrick Stump. We aren't very close any more, though. Cue bittersweet nostalgia.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, but I did attend a family memorial in June for my paternal grandfather, who died close to the end of 2010.
5. What countries did you visit?
Sweden (Stockholm, January, "Japanese spa" weekend commanded by in-laws, eugh) and the US (my childhood home in Alabama, June, the aforementioned family memorial, 1 week, overall a nice visit).
6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
A job, or failing that, an income and some other progress towards feeling like a member of society such as learning Finnish.
7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I don't remember calendar dates, as a rule. However:
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Six weeks of work practice training as a classroom assistant for 1st and 2nd graders in the local elementary school rectored by Wax's sister-in-law's mom's best friend. Introductions were made which meant I didn't have to come up with impossible amounts of bravery to make a phone call out of nowhere, but I still had to have interviews and things. It was fun and increased my confidence a lot.
9. What was your biggest failure?
My 3-year residence permit expired and I applied for a renewal 1 week too late. As a result, instead of getting a permanent automatically-renewing permit like I was scheduled to do, I had to start over the qualifying "4 years' uninterrupted residence" period with another expensive permit and I also had to go to a billion government offices with papers and lost my eligibility for social services like help from the employment office just when I needed it, consequently losing eligibility for the next round of intensive Finnish courses that I wanted to take.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I slipped and fell, fracturing part of my elbow in June (I think?) in what the ER doctors told me was the "best possible place" to get an elbow fracture. I gathered eventually that what they meant by this was the place most favorable for healing without too much assistance or pain, which it eventually did. My first broken bone.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
That would be Russel Crowe aka Rusty aka Mr Snugglepants aka Squishy aka Snookums aka Fatty. We were worried that Arwen aka the BB aka the Perfect Being aka Rusty's Tiny Sadist Girlfriend was lonely/bored because our other pets, Perry the Beagle and the Crazy, are geriatric while she's a tiny badass ninja cat who doesn't give a fuck. So we basically just wanted a second young cat to provide her some friendship and companionship, but Snookums was the best possible purchase. He's the world's most hilarious, loveable, snuggly, fat-assed, rubberband-chewing, fetch-the-shoestring-playing Cornish Rex. He's also a handsome lanky (strawberry) blond with killer cheekbones and enormous slightly clumsy feet, sort of like a porkier feline Laurence Fox, only with a very groovy congenitally deformed iris that gives him David Bowie eyes. He and the BB have a kinda kinky sadomasochistic romance which is rather odd since they are both neutered.
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
My baby sis. She was stuck in a bad relationship and despite being depressed, living alone for the first time, and in a tough spot of self-esteem, she broke up with the bad boyfriend eventually and handled the whole thing really well, alleviating a huge amount of worry that I was feeling for her over the summer.
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Flaky, the sis's ex. He started off just a flaky pothead, but progressed to apparently compulsive lying and repeatedly doing coke, then transparent attempts to emotionally manipulate her. And he capped it all off by hitting her right before she broke it off.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent and bills bills bills. And it would have gone to emergency vet expenses but it was already all gone, so my parents had to step in and pay for it. Perry was diagnosed with Cushing's, a chronic hormone imbalance, and it costs about €74 a month for meds plus vet and blood testing costs.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
American food when I visited home in June.
16. What song will always remind you of 2011?
Probably Kent's "Sjukhus" because I had one of those periods of listening to nothing else at all early in the year.
17. Compared to this time last year, you are:
Happier or sadder? Sadder or at least more ennui-filled.
Thinner or fatter? Not sure (haven't been weighing myself) but think it's the same.
Richer or poorer? Richer.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Writing.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Feeling guilty.
20. How did you spend Christmas?
Alone on the sofa with Wax and our knitting projects watching NCIS, which was great. We forgot to buy sufficient groceries before the holidays and ended up reduced to oatmeal before the store opened up again, though, which was not so great.
21. What was the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in 2011?
Probably when I dropped my phone at a bus stop and the headphone cord came out, blasting Hilary Duff all over the other occupants including a little old lady and a teenaged girl.
22. Did you fall in love in 2011? Only with Russel Crowe.
23. How many one-night stands? Haha no.
24. What was your favourite TV program?
Criminal Minds due to overwhelming love for the whole cast even if the writing can be lame. Unless old shows count, in which case it's Star Trek: The Next Generation.
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Probably, if I consulted my file of people to remember that I hate, but no one who really stands out by name.
26. What was the best book you read?
New to me: I've been enjoying Jack McDevitt's Engines of God series. Newly purchased rereads: Nina Kiriki Hoffman, A Red Heart of Memories.
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I didn't make any. :(
28. What did you want and get?
To dye my hair rainbow colors! Also a lovely birthday present of chocolates that came as a big and really touching surprise. ♥
29. What did you want and not get?
A job. And more pedestrianly, a pair of 8-hole Dr Martens and a computer drawing tablet.
30. Was missing inisilya's survey but I conjecture it would be something like "What did you not want and get anyway", in which case I would have to answer THE FLU, or "What did you not know that you wanted and get anyway", in which case I'm kind of stumped... maybe fluffy chenille socks?
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was 29! And like a grownup, I held a dinner party with three whole guests. We had a delicious meal andpierydys even came all the way from Rauma by bus and baked me a pecan pie, which I haven't had in ages. I hadn't actually started cooking the main dish when the guests got there, and they had to watch me move the furniture and vacuum, so that part was not so much like a grownup.
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
A job!
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
"I like this" / "Does this look reasonably respectable without resorting to wearing something other than jeans, even though my jeans have holes in them?"
34. What kept you sane?
Dr. Petit-Chou the therapist, my confidantperhael, and my baby sister (who is now 20 and old enough to talk to like an adult sometimes!). Honorable mention to Venlafaxin (generic Effexor).
35. Which celebrity / public figure did you fancy the most?
In BSOs, Tom Hiddleston the most, and then to lesser degrees, James McAvoy and Chris Evans. In actual staring at (and putting them on my computer desktop), Scarlett Johansson.
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Occupy.
37. Who did you miss?
Parents.
38. Who was the best new person you met?
In June I meteffex in person for the first time! I have known her a pretty long time though. For actual first time introductions, there were a couple of cool co-bridesmaids at pierydys's wedding in October.
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.
You can go for years thinking the reason you can't talk about something with someone is that they're irrational about it when the whole time you were the one with the problem. I'm still not sure how the penny dropped - it seemed really random at the time. It's just that the inversion is mind-boggling...
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I really don't seem to be able to do this. Sorry. I don't tend to like song lyrics because they apply to me, but because they apply to fictional characters, so all the ones I've thought a lot about have been because they seem like Loki, and they really don't fit me.
1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
a) Kept an actually-daily diary of pertinent mental and physical health stuff; b) broke a bone; and c) built a PC from components.
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I made two last year, and I sort of did one (to finish WIPs) and simply agonized over the other (to learn to work on more than one fic at a time). I haven't come up with any yet, but I may.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My childhood "best cousin", Aubry, had her first child, a girl named Avery who looks exactly like a tiny Patrick Stump. We aren't very close any more, though. Cue bittersweet nostalgia.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, but I did attend a family memorial in June for my paternal grandfather, who died close to the end of 2010.
5. What countries did you visit?
Sweden (Stockholm, January, "Japanese spa" weekend commanded by in-laws, eugh) and the US (my childhood home in Alabama, June, the aforementioned family memorial, 1 week, overall a nice visit).
6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
A job, or failing that, an income and some other progress towards feeling like a member of society such as learning Finnish.
7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I don't remember calendar dates, as a rule. However:
- January's spa weekend from hell and the most irritating trip across ice-covered nighttime Stockholm under time crunch with luggage and in-laws EVER
- Volunteering as a 1st/2nd grade classroom assistant right at Easter, I had the experience of being an inadvertently closeted Jew and treated to the most horrifically offensive anti-Semitic bible lessons about the holiday culminating in an "Easter tour" arranged for school children by volunteers from the local bit of the Finnish state church, also horrifically anti-Semitic but not as bad as the state-sanctioned textbook
- April visit to the House of Cat Lady Horrors just to check out whether we wanted to adopt her spare neutered Cornish Rex as a friend for the BB, which turned into a nightmarish Halloween adventure when we discovered this crazy lady living in the furnitureless gutted, shredded, cat-piss-miasmaed remains of what was once a very large and expensive house with nothing but a bed, a kitchen table and 23 semi-feral cats, from which we immediately bought Russel Crowe under the theory that it was our duty to save anyone we could
- June, at my parents' house, building my first PC on a very short deadline with help over the phone from Wax - it worked too!
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Six weeks of work practice training as a classroom assistant for 1st and 2nd graders in the local elementary school rectored by Wax's sister-in-law's mom's best friend. Introductions were made which meant I didn't have to come up with impossible amounts of bravery to make a phone call out of nowhere, but I still had to have interviews and things. It was fun and increased my confidence a lot.
9. What was your biggest failure?
My 3-year residence permit expired and I applied for a renewal 1 week too late. As a result, instead of getting a permanent automatically-renewing permit like I was scheduled to do, I had to start over the qualifying "4 years' uninterrupted residence" period with another expensive permit and I also had to go to a billion government offices with papers and lost my eligibility for social services like help from the employment office just when I needed it, consequently losing eligibility for the next round of intensive Finnish courses that I wanted to take.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I slipped and fell, fracturing part of my elbow in June (I think?) in what the ER doctors told me was the "best possible place" to get an elbow fracture. I gathered eventually that what they meant by this was the place most favorable for healing without too much assistance or pain, which it eventually did. My first broken bone.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
That would be Russel Crowe aka Rusty aka Mr Snugglepants aka Squishy aka Snookums aka Fatty. We were worried that Arwen aka the BB aka the Perfect Being aka Rusty's Tiny Sadist Girlfriend was lonely/bored because our other pets, Perry the Beagle and the Crazy, are geriatric while she's a tiny badass ninja cat who doesn't give a fuck. So we basically just wanted a second young cat to provide her some friendship and companionship, but Snookums was the best possible purchase. He's the world's most hilarious, loveable, snuggly, fat-assed, rubberband-chewing, fetch-the-shoestring-playing Cornish Rex. He's also a handsome lanky (strawberry) blond with killer cheekbones and enormous slightly clumsy feet, sort of like a porkier feline Laurence Fox, only with a very groovy congenitally deformed iris that gives him David Bowie eyes. He and the BB have a kinda kinky sadomasochistic romance which is rather odd since they are both neutered.
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
My baby sis. She was stuck in a bad relationship and despite being depressed, living alone for the first time, and in a tough spot of self-esteem, she broke up with the bad boyfriend eventually and handled the whole thing really well, alleviating a huge amount of worry that I was feeling for her over the summer.
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Flaky, the sis's ex. He started off just a flaky pothead, but progressed to apparently compulsive lying and repeatedly doing coke, then transparent attempts to emotionally manipulate her. And he capped it all off by hitting her right before she broke it off.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent and bills bills bills. And it would have gone to emergency vet expenses but it was already all gone, so my parents had to step in and pay for it. Perry was diagnosed with Cushing's, a chronic hormone imbalance, and it costs about €74 a month for meds plus vet and blood testing costs.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
American food when I visited home in June.
16. What song will always remind you of 2011?
Probably Kent's "Sjukhus" because I had one of those periods of listening to nothing else at all early in the year.
17. Compared to this time last year, you are:
Happier or sadder? Sadder or at least more ennui-filled.
Thinner or fatter? Not sure (haven't been weighing myself) but think it's the same.
Richer or poorer? Richer.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Writing.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Feeling guilty.
20. How did you spend Christmas?
Alone on the sofa with Wax and our knitting projects watching NCIS, which was great. We forgot to buy sufficient groceries before the holidays and ended up reduced to oatmeal before the store opened up again, though, which was not so great.
21. What was the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in 2011?
Probably when I dropped my phone at a bus stop and the headphone cord came out, blasting Hilary Duff all over the other occupants including a little old lady and a teenaged girl.
22. Did you fall in love in 2011? Only with Russel Crowe.
23. How many one-night stands? Haha no.
24. What was your favourite TV program?
Criminal Minds due to overwhelming love for the whole cast even if the writing can be lame. Unless old shows count, in which case it's Star Trek: The Next Generation.
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Probably, if I consulted my file of people to remember that I hate, but no one who really stands out by name.
26. What was the best book you read?
New to me: I've been enjoying Jack McDevitt's Engines of God series. Newly purchased rereads: Nina Kiriki Hoffman, A Red Heart of Memories.
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I didn't make any. :(
28. What did you want and get?
To dye my hair rainbow colors! Also a lovely birthday present of chocolates that came as a big and really touching surprise. ♥
29. What did you want and not get?
A job. And more pedestrianly, a pair of 8-hole Dr Martens and a computer drawing tablet.
30. Was missing in
isilya's survey but I conjecture it would be something like "What did you not want and get anyway", in which case I would have to answer THE FLU, or "What did you not know that you wanted and get anyway", in which case I'm kind of stumped... maybe fluffy chenille socks?31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was 29! And like a grownup, I held a dinner party with three whole guests. We had a delicious meal and
pierydys even came all the way from Rauma by bus and baked me a pecan pie, which I haven't had in ages. I hadn't actually started cooking the main dish when the guests got there, and they had to watch me move the furniture and vacuum, so that part was not so much like a grownup.32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
A job!
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
"I like this" / "Does this look reasonably respectable without resorting to wearing something other than jeans, even though my jeans have holes in them?"
34. What kept you sane?
Dr. Petit-Chou the therapist, my confidant
perhael, and my baby sister (who is now 20 and old enough to talk to like an adult sometimes!). Honorable mention to Venlafaxin (generic Effexor).35. Which celebrity / public figure did you fancy the most?
In BSOs, Tom Hiddleston the most, and then to lesser degrees, James McAvoy and Chris Evans. In actual staring at (and putting them on my computer desktop), Scarlett Johansson.
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Occupy.
37. Who did you miss?
Parents.
38. Who was the best new person you met?
In June I met
effex in person for the first time! I have known her a pretty long time though. For actual first time introductions, there were a couple of cool co-bridesmaids at pierydys's wedding in October.39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.
You can go for years thinking the reason you can't talk about something with someone is that they're irrational about it when the whole time you were the one with the problem. I'm still not sure how the penny dropped - it seemed really random at the time. It's just that the inversion is mind-boggling...
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I really don't seem to be able to do this. Sorry. I don't tend to like song lyrics because they apply to me, but because they apply to fictional characters, so all the ones I've thought a lot about have been because they seem like Loki, and they really don't fit me.
(no subject)
Date: 7 Jan 2012 11:50 am (UTC)This was really interesting to read. A lot of it made me go "Oh yeah, I remember that!" even though obviously I wasn't there when it happened, lol.
(no subject)
Date: 8 Jan 2012 02:57 pm (UTC)