So, as promised, here is a brief rundown of some of the miscellaneous events of the last twelve months.

The Pub Quiz. This was the year I discovered the pub quiz. Doesn't it seem like I've been doing the pub quiz forever? I haven't. Just since January. See, I was at this Minneapolis TWoPcon at Kieran's and coming back to M. Giant and Trash's table and she said, "Okay, we decided you should be on our pub quiz team." Which I almost said no to, purely because I hate downtown, in case you've missed the four hundred thousand times I've pointed it out. Fortunately, my wits returned to me, and after we had gone a few times, we -- as you know -- actually won. And then we won again, and then we won again, and after loudly griping for quite a long time, we even managed to get our trophies. Highlight of the year: identifying "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" before pretty much anyone in the room. Lowlight of the year: Every time I knew the answer and didn't say what it was. Such as "George Strait." About whom I officially know nothing, but for some reason knew was the answer to a question. Not that I told the team.

Oh, wait -- I totally lied. The highlight was the Irish guy who turned me around to ask me about my little handheld email machine. He was officially trying to find out if I was cheating, but he was so cute that I didn't even care. Like, at all. And then G. Grod tried to embarrass me by loudly declaring that I was using the email machine to pick up guys. Because he doesn't want me to have any fun, EVER.

Doggerel. Also in January, I wrote a poem for M. Giant's birthday. I am very proud of it. Mostly because it includes the word "microspectrophotometer" without the slightest lapse of meter. I inherited that ability directly from my grandmother, who wrote funny, wonderful little poems throughout her life. Love you, Grandma.

I am a curse. I almost forgot about this, but early in the year, Pool Boy and I discovered that I was a curse whenever I eavesdropped on him playing online poker. I wouldn't have mentioned it, except that it was highly noteworthy for its apparent reliability as a theory. I showed up, he got spanked. (These are the things you remember when you refresh your recollection by looking through your old email.)

Clay Aiken fans. One of my entertainments of the year was angry emails from Clay Aiken fans after I discovered that it took merely a negative glance in his direction to get apoplectic and sputtering emails. This one went on to insult my parents later for not teaching me any manners:

Your parents must be really proud of you. Paying for law school, but yet you write nasty articles about decent human beings for the internet!

Or this one:

I hear you talk trash about Clay, and I don't like it. I just saw a picture of you and I don't see why you think you can talk trash because you are one of the ugliest mofo's I have ever seen. Additionally, I like how you claim to be an attorney. You must be a VERY successful one, as you appear to have a lot of time to run worthless websites. In sum, you suck. I hope you get run over by a parade of Clay fans on their way to his concert in Saint Paul.

Okay, wait. This was actually my best hate mail of the year:

Feminist Bitch. That is all. Go home to your cats.

This place. F&D was redesigned by Joelle. Joelle kicks ass.

Mullendash. Oh, my God. Mullendash wasn't invented this year, but this was the year we tried it online. Damn, I love Mullendash. And I am usually the Couch Baron's inner Mullen, and he is mine. We tend to pick each other's answers. Glark picks my answers, too. Nobody ever picks Pam's answers, because hers are always too funny. I can usually locate Pam's very easily -- "That's Pam; it's funny; it can't possibly be Mullen."

Reading in New York. I read at a bar. And my favorite part was the email I got later that said, "I loved the reading! But really, I'm writing to ask you where you got the sweater you were wearing." Nobody doesn't like to hear that.

Television. I was on TV twice this year, once to talk about American Idol, and once to talk about fall TV. And I decided that if I ever do it again, I am going to (1) wear some powerful blue color; and (2) not watch it later. Because . . . eesh.

Grandpa. My grandfather turned 90. He is still the strongest person I've probably ever met. I kind of think of him as a combination of Mr. Wizard and MacGyver. He broke his back when I was, like, six or seven years old. He was never supposed to walk again, but he did, for many, many years. And I pulled my act together enough to go and see him on his birthday, and it's one of the best things I did all year.

Vegas. Uh, so this was a less well-thought-out trip, and slightly less noble. I flew out for one party on one day -- out in the afternoon and back on the redeye. I kid you not. My clock got completely thrown off, I got wickedly drunk, and I smacked a basically unknown guy on the ass who had to inform me later that I had done it. Well, he didn't have to, but he did.

Dream A Little Dream. I had the following dream. This description is taken essentially verbatim from my email to Pool Boy the next morning telling him about it:

Somehow, it turned out that the woman who was at the time the most recent Apprentice bootee had disappeared after her booting, and speculation on the news was that she had died in a helicopter crash. (?) So then it turned out that a couple of other Apprentice contestants were also missing, also presumably killed in helicopter crashes.

Well, as time went on, it turned out that a whole slew of assorted reality show contestants were missing, and some kind of theory emerged that they had all died in helicopter crashes on their way to one of these mondo reality events. I then found myself at some kind of gathering of friends and loved ones of missing contestants. (??) At which time it became clear that one of the missing was Ethan [Zohn, of Survivor]. And some woman I was talking to came up and told me that it comforted her to look out the window at the nearby birdhouse hanging from a tree, because it reminded her of the treehouse Ethan had been living in recently. (???) And then -- this is my favorite part -- Colby [also of Survivor] walked up to me, collapsed on my shoulder weeping, and wailed, "EEEEEETHAN!" And then -- okay, THIS is actually the best part -- I was sitting there thinking about the TWoP boards and the posters, and I very specifically had the thought, in the dream, that I needed to get to the boards, because if the posters found out that all these people were dead, they were going to want to have a gathering of some kind, and it was important that I get there soon enough to give it a dignified title like "Memorial Gathering" or something, because if I didn't, they would call it "FuneralCon." I am not making that up. In the dream, I thought, "Oh, God, they'll call it FuneralCon."

When I woke up from that dream, I literally lay in bed laughing and laughing and couldn't get back to sleep. True story.

New York, New York, New York. This is the year we learned that I will go to New York for almost any good reason. I went four times for four different things. The reading, a party, The Famous Ghost Monologues, and . . . the last one was mostly to hang out with Sars and the Couch Baron and rattle around in Brooklyn for my birthday, I would be forced to admit. It's getting serious, the New York love affair.

My high school reunion. The girls I was friends with in high school are, in many cases, even more lovely now. And they have babies and jobs and all sorts of interesting things that have happened to them in the last 15 years. Aside from the part where Jen got conked on the head with a football at Homecoming, it was really quite lovely.

M. Tiny. Officially, M. Tiny did not happen to me; he happened to M. Giant and Trash. But he was a great event. Being at the hospital with them was a little anxious at first, just because . . . oy, stress. But then it got easier, and I liked showing up with Thai food and Reese's Mini-Cups (if you ever want Trash to love you forever, that's pretty much the key) and talking to them about, from time to time, something other than being at the hospital. And then they brought him home, and a week and a half ago or so, I stayed with him all day. Discovered (1) the healing powers of "Bye Bye, Blackbird," (2) my limited burping skills, and (3) that the only thing that trumps the healing power of "Bye Bye, Blackbird" is the mid-feeding screechfest that is his trademark. He's lucky he's so cute.

Things. FlyBoy got engaged. The Professor's having a baby. Snowmobile Boy came and then went from the office where I now work. Everything moves, all the time.

It's hard to say you've made substantial progress in a year in which, at the end of it, you still can't dress yourself (see the entry just below this one). But all in all, I had a very happy year. Quitting my job was so smart I wish I had done it several years sooner, and everything worked out kind of the way it was supposed to. Of course, there is no peace, ever, in the best way, so I can already hear the whirring in my head where I try to figure out what's next. Because, again in a good way, something's always next, you know?

Things happen, and I look around, amazed. They're out of nowhere. They're insane. The good ones and the bad ones both. But three or four years ago, my complaint was that nothing ever happened. I didn't talk to people, I didn't like my job, I wasn't writing, I felt gross, it was . . . kind of sad. I prefer it this way, by leaps and bounds. My life has a certain Whack-A-Mole quality at times, but I constantly get better at it. Weirdly, the times I really feel like I screw up the most are when I have trouble being comfortable being happy. Happiness can make me nervous; it can make me jittery, like I can't relax. I have that instinct, still, to think the other shoe is about to drop. And it's not like it doesn't. Bad things happened this year; bad things will happen next year and every year. But I am finally figuring out how to kind of . . . not worry about it. Because really, what are you going to do? Life does not run well, I have ultimately discovered, if your primary strategy is a prevent defense.

So ultimately . . . lots of good. Mostly good. Basically, fundamentally good.

When you type the word "good" enough times, incidentally, it starts to look very strange.