Saturday, December 31, 2005

The Highs & Lows of 2005

There's less than 12 hours left in 2005 in my particular time zone. I've been reflecting on what the last posts of the year should be. Many of you have done the full "year in review" thing. Some have gotten reflective. Others have started looking to 2006 already. I've decided to do two lists--"The 10 Low Points of 2005" and "The High Points of 2005". If I had a little more gumption, I'd have given them snazzier titles, but I've only got 11+ hours left!

"The 10 Low Points of 2005"
(from least low to lowest of the low)
    10. I got ticketed for slowly rolling through a stop sign. Which then got me the obligatory "not wearing seat belt" ticket. Fortunately let me slide on the "no proof of insurance" thing.

    9. Death of Pope John Paul II. Though I'm not an actively participating Catholic, I was raised Catholic, and consider myself a Catholic. John Paul has always been a great man in mind. Sure, there are those who have issues with him and the Church, and that's OK with me. I watched the entire week's worth of coverage on TV. It was a very sad week indeed!

    8. Katrina, Rita, et. al. While safely tucked away in the mountains of Montana, I'd normally look at the destruction and give the standard "Wow, that's too bad" response, but this time around, through blogging, I found that I knew people who were dealing with it on a first-hand basis. The fact that parts of the area still look like a war zone still amazes me.

    7. Bloggers dropping out of sight. Everyone has their reasons for starting a blog. And there's as many reasons for dropping it. But I hate seeing that bloggers that I've enjoyed either drop with no warning/explanation, or they drop after bitching for awhile. Regardless of the reason, I generally don't like it. I'm selfish in that respect.

    6. Bad things affecting my blogfriends. There's been death, cancer, suicide, sexual assaults, divorces, etc. among them or their RL friends. Again, this stuff happens all the time, but now it's affecting me, because it affects my new friends. I said this when I first posted about it---damn you all for making me care!

    5. Music stand in the mouth. This happened in April, while loading a U-Haul to go to an out-of-town gig. You can read about it here. It happened the day after my birthday. It screwed up my chops for about 2 months, and I now have a permanent dent in my upper lip from where it hit....

    4. Missing the Crosby, Stills & Nash concert. I spent some bucks for these tickets. The concert was in Missoula. Twenty minutes before the gates were to open, I was in a park in Helena drinking beer, oblivious to the fact that I'd forgotten about the concert. They would have been playing their encore by the time I would have gotten there. So I stayed in Helena and drank considerably more!

    3. Assholes invade HNT. And not in a good way. I should have expected it, but haters decided to attack a couple of HNTers in particular. Of course they left anonymous comments, or made it difficult to track them down. Some sites were shut down. Others were renamed/moved. In any event, this has left a tremendously bad taste in my mouth.

    2. My camera gets stolen. While playing a gig, at the same park mentioned in #4. While it did result in a great camera to replace it (without any insurance $$), and spawned a great number of weeks of Mystery Guests, my trusting nature took a kick to the gut.

    1. The worst low of the year-- the lack of commitment from players in my orchestra here. It has been the #1 source of frustration and tension in my life for over a year. It forces me to have to spend money to replace them at the last minute, which in turn incurs the wrath of the overlords of the Symphony. I'm disgusted with the attitudes of some players that I used to consider friends. I know it's not personal, but I take it that way. And I shouldn't.

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