The Highs and Lows of 2006 - The Lows

I did this last year, and it was a great way to go back and remember all the things that happened, or didn't happen, or what I wrote about during 2005. It was just as refreshing to do for 2006! The High Points will be in a different post...

"The 10 Low Points of 2006"
(from least low to lowest of the low)

10. Three dead birds. Baby birds. One a day for three days. In spite of my best efforts to save their lives, I killed them. Was this a metaphorical example of what my whole life is? Nope. Just three dead birds.

9. My continuing frustration with the musicians in the orchestra. No specific post about this, but the concept of commitment is lost on a lot of them. The good news here...things are much better than what they've been, and there's a lot let stress. But what's so hard about just honoring a commitment???

8. Back in February, I had a bit of a meltdown, giving a rant that no one knew I had in me, including myself. To the point that I scared people! It felt so good, that I seem to remember doing it again a couple of months later. The result--I've cut some people out of both my real life and my blogger life. Due to bad timing, I also was apparently dropped by some that I really thought were close blogger friends. I AM happy to report that 2 of the 3 have reestablished ourselves, which is a great thing. The entire ordeal, though, showed me how fragile a lot of the relationships we establish here and in real life actually are! If you check out the link, be forewarned--it's toxic!

7. In April, HNTers basically came under attack by a particular blogger. And then by the writers of a site that "reviews" blogs. And joined in by former HNTers who were pretty proud of themselves for being "recovering" HNTers (I don't mind people who drop out, but it's a bit hypocritical to criticize those of us who still do, especially since you were an avid participant). A nasty little fight ensued, and for a couple of weeks there was a great deal of animosity. Specific HNTers were singled out. The question of stealing pics from sites vs. common courtesy were debated. I'm guessing that many HNTers didn't want to deal with it, and dropped out. Which is too bad, but understandable. As I expected, it all calmed down within a couple of weeks, but things were tense for awhile!
7b. A secondary thing here--I miss many of the bloggers that have dropped out of sight. For whatever reason. Some just quit. Some went to a password system. Some have moved to three or four different sites this year. Some changed their name/blog, but didn't tell a lot of people. Whatever the reason, I miss many of them. If you're out there reading this, let me know you're still alive!! VELMA!!!

6. My personal financial situation came to light in June, due to some other events. Things aren't much better now than they were then, but I'm not digging through dumpsters for my dinner! Some things have changed, but there's still a lot more to deal with.

5. As most of you know, June was not a good month for me in terms of my driving record, either. Go back and read yourselves, but the final tally for the summer: 7 tickets in 2 months (5 within 9 hours), $1000 in fines, another $500 to take care of the other things, and a 90-day suspension leveled against my car (bad car). For those keeping track--my insurance was renewed ten days ago, AND IT DIDN'T GO UP!

4. I think we've all been affected by the lousy performance of Blogger, and Blogger Beta. I will NOT change to Beta until the day they pull the plug on the original version. Also noted for very poor performance--Castpost (still "upgrading"), Blogrolling (still not doing updated blogs), and just about any video hosting service, other than YouTube. PLEASE QUITE USING VIDEOCODES!!!

3. Stop me if you've heard this--Macs never break down. But when they do, they do it up good! April saw my Powerbook die. Fortunately, I was able to resurrect the iBook at the same time, so I was OK. I even resurrected the Powerbook. For awhile. In October, its hard drive encountered a "fatal error". I was able to revive it to the point of accessing its files, but I'm still using a temporary hard drive to actually use the computer. Then there's that matter of the cracked screen...

2. This will be news to most of you, but the OsShirt is currently M.I.A. I have no idea where it is right now. No one to blame here, other than the US Postal Service, or maybe the Crowne Plaza Manhattan. Still working on it, and being the optimist that I am, hope to get it back in circulation soon.

1. The worst low of the year--my Dad's health. Right off the bat, let me say that he's doing fine. But it hasn't been a good year. In January, he had a pacemaker implanted, which took awhile to get properly adjusted. In the summer, it was determined that he probably had bladder cancer after tumors were found during a check up. Then his right arm was ripped out of his shoulder in a freak accident while golfing. Currently, his right arm is fairly useless. There are a number of movements that he can't do. Surprisingly, he can swing a golf club. He had the tumors removed earlier this month (malignant), and he still can't pee. So he continues to self-catheterize 4-5 times a day (shiver...), but that is scheduled to end soon. Just in time for Mom & Dad to spend 3 months in Hawaii! He should be fine while he's gone.

So that's the lows of the year. I'll get to the high points in the morning!