Seeing as how I have absolutely no work to do at work, and haven’t had any work to do at work for the last four business days, I guess now is as good as time as any to do my own rendition of a year in review kind of post. The good thing about being such a dedicated and studious brogger as myself is that it’s easy for me to take a glance back through the year, and see what I wrote to refresh myself of the happenings of the entire year, and not just limit my entire judgment of a substantial period of time based on the events of just the last six to eight weeks.
When I look over the general pace and tone of my posts throughout the year, and just my basic perception of the year as a whole, I have to say that overall, 2012 wasn’t really that bad to me at all. Dare I say, it slightly erred on the positive side of the spectrum. I did a good bit of activities throughout the year, went to many places, had some decent experiences, and consumed a lot of unhealthy crap on the way. I like to think of myself as a pretty easy-going person, and I don’t particularly ask for a gargantuan amount of stuff each year, so I suppose I can believe that my year was filled out pretty nicely without that much negative crap mixed in.
I guess I’ll do this in a highlight reel kind of style, of the things that stood out the most to me throughout the year:
I got a job. After way too many years of doing nothing but exclusive freelance work, the roller-coaster came to an end, when I was offered a job with the company I had been freelancing with for the year prior. It’s by no means the sexiest job I’ve ever had, but it’s been stable, flexible, and conducive to my own personal agendas, and I’m quite satisfied by the stability it’s given my life throughout this first year of full-time employment.
Upon acceptance of the job offer, I immediately went to go celebrate by blowing a lot of money. It had been quite some time since I had been in Las Vegas last, and after getting burnt out with such frequent trips, the itch and desire to go back had come just in time to spend a weekend out there in celebration of my friend Allison’s birthday, and enjoy the company of a variety of good people, while we all ate a lot, drank a lot, and did a bunch of gambling.
After successfully evading and surviving the very first zombie run in Baltimore, I roped my local Atlanta friends into running in the zombie run when it came to Georgia. It was about fifty times muddier than the one in Maryland had been, and about three times harder subsequently, but it was still a lot of fun running with a group of my friends instead of just my boy cheetos who played the role of tank for me and unfortunately died for my sins.
Two of my closest and longest-time friends got married this year, and I had the honor of being one of the groomsmen for the celebration. And it was a beautiful ceremony and an even more enjoyable reception, where everyone looked all dapper and neat, and I enjoyed the company with my friends, and caught up with some old familiar faces.
Jen and I adopted Chase in early May, because the house was frankly too quiet and we simply missed having a dog in the house. His story was a little tragic in the sense that he was previously owned by a hoarder in Alabama who apparently was running a puppy mill operation, but he has been nothing but a good dog since we’ve had him, and he’s acclimated himself to us and our home steadily and has been the best addition to the house all year.
Without question, 2012 had the hottest summer that I can honestly say was the hottest in my entire life. I’m talking about 116F temperatures, and routinely over 100F degree days throughout the peak months. It got so hot at one point that at a ballgame that my friend and I were at here in Atlanta, the park was giving away water, because they would rather eat the bloated cost of water than have people dying of heat strokes or dehydration at Turner Field.
Regardless, it didn’t dampen my baseball travel experiences much, as I still did a good bit of traveling throughout the baseball season. The 2012 baseball season saw trips taken to both Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama to see some minor league action. While in North Carolina over Memorial Day weekend, I broke off from the group to go catch a game out in Zebulon. On two instances, I went up to Maryland to see baseball out in Frederick. And in my one major trip of the season, my best friend and I ventured out to Northern California where we saw baseball action out in Modesto, before seeing the homes of both the Athletics and the unfortunate eventual World Series Champion Giants in both Oakland and San Francisco.
After I had a fairly fun time at Neko-con last November, I made the naïve assumption that anime cons could be fun again; and although the company of the people I spent the journeys with most certainly were enjoyable, both Animazement and Otakon just weren’t really my thing anymore. Frankly, I’m either too old for anime conventions, all the people that go to them are too fucking retarded, or perhaps it’s both, but whenever I was wandering around by myself at these events, all I could think about was how out of place I simply felt.
One of my favorite things of the year was getting to meet Hacksaw Jim Duggan at a minor league game out in Maryland. Meeting him was a lot of fun, but what made the whole experience better was the fact that he was simply a wonderfully pleasant, amicable and so down-to-earth individual. It wasn’t just a meet, sign, photograph and run kind of experience, he took the time to stand around, and actually converse with my friends and I, to which I think was about the coolest thing he could have done to endear himself to me even further.
As is always a big deal in my little world, Dragon*Con came and went, and was a lot of fun again. I took a lot of pictures, got stupid drunk on one particular night, and even participated in a costume group, to which I took a lot of pride and enjoyment in creating the prop gun for my own costume. However, there was not hot blue-haired chick for me the pine over this year, but it’s all good.
Being a Braves fan, it was a memorable season in the fact that it was Chipper Jones’ final season in a long, illustrious career. Chipper and the Braves made sure to make it a good one too, as both Chipper turned in a productive season in which the Braves won 94 games, the most since 2004. Unfortunately, the season’s end would be marred by an idiotic rule change in which the Wild Card Braves would have to square off against a second Wild Card team in a winner-take-all, which ended up being the world-beating Cardinals whom of course, beat the Braves, with no-thanks to an asinine blown call by an umpire which spurned the most flagrant crowd outburst I’d ever seen in a baseball game.
But regardless of the shitty finish to the Braves’ season, it was still a memorable one, with several wonderful moments throughout it.
My friends and I went to Orlando for Universal Studios’ Fright Fest, as well as the Disney Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival. The haunted houses were fun and all, but the highlights of the trip were eating 26 countries’ menus of samples, and drinking a whole lot of beer.
A day after I returned from Orlando, I packed up all my shit and got right back on another plane. I honestly had never traveled internationally in my entire life (because I don’t count Canada), so when my friends up north planned a trip down to Mexico, I took the plunge and joined them. It was a pretty enjoyable first time experience in a country outside of the United States, and I really couldn’t have asked for much more than what I did while down there: eat like a pig, drink like a fish, and sit around and sleep, read, or veg out and relax.
Adventure Time Halloween costume group was a fun to take part of, even if the party we went to really left a lot to be desired.
I saw a piece of my adolescence die when I went up to Virginia at one point and saw that Springfield Mall was in the process of being decimated.
And the holiday seasons of Thanksgiving and Christmas were both pleasant affairs, where I opted to stay in Georgia again this year, instead of doing any sort of traveling. And I really liked this picture of some friends and I on Thanksgiving itself.
See, as a whole, 2012 wasn’t so shabby for me. I know that there are people close to me who might have differing opinions based on the events that transpired for them throughout the year, to whom I most certainly commiserate with, but I cannot honestly complain with the hand I was dealt throughout the year.
If 2013 ends up being anything like my 2012 was, I wouldn’t really have much complaints. Regardless of what lies ahead for myself and everyone around me, here’s hoping for the best, and that the worst is not the worst it can get.
