your new year's memage

Happy 2006! I will be a quarter century old this year, and will have completed half of my first graduate degree. Hopefully I will accomplish some of the following things (as per Lauren and Jill over at Feministe, these are not resolutions per say. I prefer to call them, "common sense resolutions".

1. Play more trombone- and find ways to make it enjoyable. If this means pulling teeth to get a brass quintet together, well then, so be it.
2. Find more students to teach, and save more money.
3. Keep in touch.
4. Swim- and not big a big pansy about the cold water at UNT's natatorium.
5. Find a profitable and enjoyable summer job.
6. Gig with more regularity- especially take gigs that are outside of my normal comfort zone.
7. Be less afraid of hiding my politicals and personal views from native (and sometimes scary) Texans.
8. Bike to school at least once a week.
9. Take auditions.
10. Get to a state I haven't been to yet. I still have 25 options.
11. See New York City.
12. Try a new cheese from Central Market every other week or so.
13. Find a roommate to fill the Skelton House vacancy.

And, stolen from Jane, a ten things meme.

Ten Super Awesome Things about 2005:
1. The Skelton House and shenanigans.
2. The entire month of March (my one and only Dirty Bird award).
3. Kitties!
4. Studying with Jan.
5. Ani live last February.
6. Meeting Tim and Allison, plus subsequent Wednesday nights (miss those!).
7. Winning New Orleans.
8. Wisconsin in July.
9. Megan's (brief) visit, also in July.
10. The mere fact of OWNING a home- and enjoying everything that goes with it, including yardwork, decoration of, paperwork, and seclusion from neighbors.

Ten Not So Awesome Things about 2005:
1. The 90 minute drive to Mesquite for teaching purposes.
2. The entire month of February, minus the Ani concert.
3. Watching New Orleans go under- especially after having just been there and fallen in love with the place.
4. The confusion of "hurray, I'm back in school" with "holy shit, I'm stuck in Texas for another two years!"
5. Having very little money to spend on cheese at Central Market.
6. My first trombone departmental performance.
7. Being told I should think about quitting trombone if I couldn't make it past my jury.
8. Car trouble.
9. My very first speeding ticket.
10. Not being able to escape to Minnesota for the rest of my life because of my failure to enter their graduate program.

And falling into the category of "things that sucked like crazy at the time but turned out in the long run to be quite beneficial" is:
1. My ass-kicking at the hands of the trombone faculty. Having your ego handed to you on a platter smothered in "I'm disappointed in you" sauce is quite a wake-up call.

All in all though, 2005 wasn't so bad! Better than 2004, that's for damn sure.