Sunday Stealing: The Final Week of 2009 Meme

This week’s meme comes from Nik of Spat­ula Forum.

The Final Week of 2009 Meme

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?

I guess the most impor­tant new expe­ri­ence I had was pur­chas­ing a home by myself. When I pur­chased houses in the past, the trans­ac­tion was a joint one with Big­Bob. This time, I shopped for and bought the house with the advice and coun­sel of my boys and real­tor. Big­Bob did not see the house until we moved in and he came over to visit for the first time.

2. Did you keep your New Years’ res­o­lu­tions, and will you make more for next year?

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions.

3. How will you be spend­ing New Year’s Eve?

This is a very pop­u­lar meme ques­tion that I’ve answered sev­eral times already. We’ll be right here at home.

4. Did any­one close to you die?

Yes, as I wrote about here yes­ter­day, the year began with the death of a very close friend, Clint Ritchie, who por­trayed “Clint Buchanan” on the ABC day­time drama “One Life to Live” for more than twenty years. It ended with the death of the senior part­ner of the law firm where I prac­ticed for more than seven years. Both men played very impor­tant roles in my life for quite dif­fer­ent reasons.

5. What coun­tries did you visit?

In 2009, I never even left the state of California.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

My full salary. I love hav­ing three-day week­ends the first three weeks of each month, but the approx­i­mately 15 per­cent reduc­tion in pay is galling, to say the least. Yes, I am grate­ful that I am employed and able to sur­vive nicely on the reduced income. But that does not change the fact that I have worked long and hard to achieve pro­fes­sional suc­cess and stand­ing, and California’s bud­get woes were not cre­ated by its work­force. The politi­cians run­ning this state are inept, at best.

7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your mem­ory, and why?

Prob­a­bly Sep­tem­ber 5, 2009, because that is the day that I, along with my boys, moved into my new home.

8. What was your biggest achieve­ment of the year?

My biggest achieve­ment this year was over­com­ing the iner­tia that for far too long pre­vented me from tak­ing affir­ma­tive action to improve my life circumstances.

9. What was your biggest failure?

I had one pro­fes­sional chal­lenge that did not result in fail­ure. Quite the oppo­site, in fact. I was ulti­mately suc­cess­ful. But I wish that I had approached cer­tain aspects of that sit­u­a­tion dif­fer­ently. I do not believe in regret, though, so I plan to use the knowl­edge I gained from that expe­ri­ence in the future.

10. Did you suf­fer ill­ness or injury?

In Jan­u­ary, I expe­ri­enced excru­ci­at­ing pain and spasms that ran from my fore­head, down my nose, under my right eye, and around my ear down into my neck. It felt as though some­one were try­ing to tie my face in a knot. Noth­ing relieved the pain and I ended up in the emer­gency room. A com­bi­na­tion of Baclafen and Vicodin made the pain man­age­able. I was diag­nosed with a form of neu­ral­gia and referred to a neu­rol­o­gist. Since I have a his­tory of temporal-mandibular joint paint (TMJ), I also con­sulted my oral sur­geon. All of my symp­toms were related to a molar. After it, along with the adja­cent impacted wis­dom tooth, was sur­gi­cally removed, the pain sub­sided. It turned out that I didn’t have neu­ral­gia, after all.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Aside from my house, my best pur­chase in 2009 was my com­fort­able, beau­ti­ful waterbed.

12. Where did most of your money go?

My biggest invest­ment this year was the down­pay­ment and monthly mort­gage install­ments, of course. I have also spent a lot of money on asso­ci­ated items like fur­ni­ture, cook­ware, etc.

13. What song will always remind you of 2009?

I will always asso­ciate “All the Sin­gle Ladies” by Bey­once with 2009, in part because of all the hilar­i­ous par­o­dies I have seen, espe­cially Justin Timberlake’s sketch on Sat­ur­day Night Live, and in part because I finally rejoined the ranks of sin­gle ladies this year. I am not, how­ever, look­ing for any­body to “put a ring on it.”

14. What do you wish you’d done more of?

I wish I were able to do more read­ing for plea­sure, but it is very dif­fi­cult due to my visual chal­lenges. My job requires me to spend count­less hours read­ing and at the end of a long work­day, my eyes are too tired for me to enjoy doing any more read­ing. That’s why I have a 24″ flat screen mon­i­tor and I enlarge the fonts on the web­sites I visit so that I can read com­fort­ably with­out strain­ing my eyes.

15. What do you wish you’d done less of?

I wish it weren’t nec­es­sary to spend so much time driving.

16. What was your favourite TV program?

My new favorite show is Lopez Tonight. I have long been a fan of George Lopez, but I did not watch his sit­com reg­u­larly sim­ply because I am not a big fan of sit­coms. But I really like his new late-night show and his band, Michael Bear­den and the Ese Vatos, is smokin’ hot.

17. Do you hate any­one now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

I don’t hate any­one and I’m com­pletely inca­pable of hold­ing grudges (believe me … I’ve tried and failed).

18. What was the best book you read?

One of my all-time favorite books is “The Road Less Trav­eled” by the late M. Scott Peck, M.D. It lit­er­ally changed my life.

19. What was your great­est musi­cal discovery?

This hol­i­day sea­son I redis­cov­ered some Christ­mas tunes that I hadn’t per­formed for a cou­ple of years, and it was fun. I teamed up with a pianist friend and we played together sev­eral times. We had a blast per­form­ing flute and piano duets. She played piano solos for awhile and I took a turn doing that, as well. As pianists, we have very dif­fer­ent styles, so that keeps our col­lab­o­ra­tion inter­est­ing. For lack of a bet­ter name, we call our­selves “Two Gals Hav­ing Fun” and yes, we are avail­able for par­ties, wed­dings, bar mitz­vahs, etc.

20. What was your favorite film of this year?

The only movie I saw in a the­ater this year was “Avatar.” My boys took me on my birth­day last week (Decem­ber 21). It took me a lit­tle while to become engrossed in the story and for­get that I was wear­ing those 3-D glasses, but once I did, I loved it.

21. What did you do on your birthday?

I had lunch with my boys at Strings and then we saw “Avatar.” After the movie, Big­Bob came over with a choco­late birth­day cake that we all enjoyed.

22. What kept you sane?

I have both a job and home that are per­fect for me. I am blessed to have two sons who inspire, assist, and love me. They keep me laugh­ing every day. Now that I don’t have to live in the same house with him, I like my hus­band so much more than I have in many years. My life is far from per­fect, but I really have very lit­tle about which to com­plain. I’m lucky.

23. Who did you miss?

I’ve missed Clint the most because his death was just 11 months ago. I can’t count the num­ber of times I have wished I could pick up the tele­phone, dial his num­ber, and hear his voice. I will always miss my par­ents, even though my father died in Jan­u­ary 1992, nearly 18 years ago. My mother died in Octo­ber 2005, but she had no qual­ity of life due to demen­tia for more than two years prior to her death.

24. Who was the best new per­son you met?

I met a lot of new peo­ple this year, both pro­fes­sion­ally and in my per­sonal life. I couldn’t label just one as the “best.”

25. Tell us a valu­able life les­son you learned in 2009:

This year, I learned yet again that it is best to take deci­sive action to rec­tify a sit­u­a­tion, rather than hes­i­tate in hopes that things will change for the bet­ter. When the evi­dence is trust­wor­thy and per­sua­sive, one must acknowl­edge and accept it, rely upon it, and act in accor­dance with it. Promises are rarely kept, peo­ple rarely change. Wait­ing around and hop­ing only wastes one’s own life. It’s a point­less exercise.

Click here to see the list of other par­tic­i­pants, visit their sites, and read their responses.

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Tech­no­rati Tags: Sun­day Steal­ing, The Final Week of 2009 Meme

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