Wow, I'm inspiring. ;-)

To me, the biggest news I think is my son, the one I write about from time to time. He finished his externship at the pharmacy and they had him fill out an application and take a drug test, so it looks like he should be working (and getting paid for being) a pharmacy technician soon.

My son was born! Definitely the feel-good highlight of the year.

Also, work has been going really well- I've finally settled into a role I enjoy with very little stuff I do not enjoy. Here's hoping it stays that way for a long time!

Yes... that's pretty huge, Pink.

Great idea, mightshould! I was thinking it's been a pretty slow year, but -

I started taking pilates classes and boot camp style classes. They push me harder than I would push myself. My core strength, balance, and agility are greatly improved, even though I look about the same.

I took a whole week off from work for the first time ever and went to the beach for some of it.

I played the shit out of Constance in King John.

We adopted an eight year old rescue dog name of Kodiak (Kodi).

Not sure it's really an accomplishment, but I became pregnant after 4 years of trying and despite fertility problems. *falls asleep*

I survived at work this year, not sure if I'll get a good review but at least I didn't get fired or rage quit so I'm happy about that. Plus, my crazy boss who did her best to make everyone miserable managed to get herself fired.

Lots of progress with the "house that will never be finished", we had a new side porch built to look almost like the old one but not rotted and falling down. We also got the floors redone in two rooms and the back staircase and finished the paint job in the guest bedroom.

The kid didn't quite graduate from college but he's one paper away which he says that he'll finish in the next two weeks so guarded joy about that.

Ran both a 1/2 marathon and a 10K and didn't embarrass myself in either. I broke an hour in the 10K which makes me happy because it's a bear of a course with this horrible 1-1/4 mile steep hill right near the end.

Lost my mom this year but feel like the family handled it with a huge amount of love and grace and lots of humor. We had a wonderfully moving memorial service which a lot of her old friends and co-workers showed for. We gave time for anyone to talk about her and people told some wonderful and mostly very funny stories. Over the past few years of decline, I'd forgotten what a hugely amazing and accomplished person she was and how many lives she touched and actually saved.

I finished my book! I lost a lot of weight! I have enough notes to start a new book! I directed a video! I learned how to cook French country food!

I had a fairly quiet year. Work has been ticking along, and although I didn't get a promotion I applied for, I don't really mind because I love my current job. I spent time with my Ohio family in June and then Diane came over to England with me, and we had a side trip to Paris.

I've kept up with my running, although it's slipped a little recently (due to the incessant rain) and so I need to knuckle down and run more in the New Year. I bought some new winter running gear yesterday as a motivator.

In July I started dating a guy I had high hopes for - we got on great, he's interesting, funny, intelligent ... but is a man/child who, at 48, had never been in a relationship before. If I touched his hand he flinched as if he'd been set on fire, so there was no physical intimacy and with someone so closed off there couldn't be any emotional intimacy either. There were also a few red flags - sulky behaviour and unreliability and a need to have his own way. He's now met someone else, which he announced with a huge 'IS IN A RELATIONSHIP' banner on Facebook, complete with hearts and flowers, all very high-schoo and a clear indicator of his emotional immaturity.

I had a lovely lunch today with a friend at a local carvery where we both half-despaired, half-joked about our dating difficulties (she's gay, and the London gay dating scene is every bit as much of a minefield as the straight). So I end the year as I began it, single, but with a life filled with friends and opportunities.

2012 was not a banner year for me. I hit some kind of weird patch in April and the next thing I knew, November was half gone. Except for the 3 times I hit the gym every week, I cannot begin to account for how I spent that time. It is all a blur.

However, since August I did hit the gym 3 times every week.

I tried to do the job of two people this year, realized early on that I couldn't do it, and did the right thing and resigned before I hurt myself with my stress-smoking, crying on my way home from work, and worrying my S.O.

Thanks to my previous five years in therapy, I recognized that I was self-sabotaging at the aforementioned job and it gave me the strength of mind to quit my job. Also due to the five years of therapy, I continued to have an amazing relationship with my S.O. because I was able to communicate what I was feeling and he gave me the space to be able to do so.

Thanks to the good communication with my S.O. and generally being responsible about my finances, he felt empowered enough about our relationship to propose that we become domestic partners upon me quitting my job and having to heft the financial difference between my old salary and my unemployment checks until I got my current job.

Also, I was part of an amazing Kickstarter campaign for a comics anthology I feel so strongly about that I want to make publishing it a side-job for the rest of my life.

Also, my S.O. is so awesome that on a whim, he applied, interviewed for, and got a job offer in Minneapolis, MN. Throughout the whole process, we never stopped communicating our fears, needs, and wishes, and he proposed to me.

And then we got married on Christmas Eve.

So yeah... 2012 was amazing for me, and with the help of my love and my family, the rest of my life is going to be fucking awesome.

The things that have made me happiest this year have been events in other people's lives - Specklet & TheDonF, TPS and Stynxno and Amro and her husband all having babies, and TrishaLynn's marriage amongst them. I also went to a lovely wedding in the summer which made me so happy.

- Convinced someone I was Russian (accent)
- Convinced someone from Australia that I was Aussie (accent again)
- Started a regular beatboxing gig
- Learned javascript, and how to use regular expressions.
- Diagnosed my medical issues, got them under control. Feel better than I have... pretty much ever. Since I was a kid, at least.

Hmmm well... We bought a house, and eventually sold a house. We had a first anniversary. Went to Europe for three weeks. Had my gallbladder removed, which ended up being more complicated than expected. I'm sure there are other things, but that's all I can think of at the moment.

I too have had a quiet year, and I'm happy with that. I hope to get more done in 2013, but I feel like I did okay with the hand I was dealt this year.

Most of my accomplishments this year are either small or very personal, but I feel both completely ready for the year to end and happy with how I'm doing.

I did join the Metafilter team on Health Month starting this summer and have been CRUSHING IT. My goals are modest, but I find it's very useful to be tracking them and occasionally ramping them up. It really is an excellent method for turning goals into habits.

I got some good writing done, and have a new idea that promises to be better still.

I want more from the new year, and that has to start inside. Here's to 2013!

Eekacats sequence of events is not typical. I want to stress that visiting Europe in general does not end with waking up in an ice bath with internal organs removed.

Yeeeah, you SAY that.

It's surprising how little demand there is for a gallbladder.
Or perhaps not.

Eh, I mean; these US images of Europe, and especially the NL, being this place of depravity are spurious and unfounded.

I remember in high school this US exchange student did not want to drink soft drink at his host families house without opening the bottle himself. I wonder if stories of legal weed & prostitution & abortion (and later ~gay marriage) formed his image of the NL.

Of course symmetrically my image of the US was formed by images of gun nuts, flag waving nationalists and ultra-orthodox christian religious fervour...

I remember in high school this US exchange student did not want to drink soft drink at his host families house without opening the bottle himself. I wonder if stories of legal weed & prostitution & abortion (and later ~gay marriage) formed his image of the NL.

Ahahaha, that's either hilarious or heartbreaking. Maybe both.

I was unaware of that stereotype-within-a-stereotype, of U.S. visitors thinking of The Netherlands as a land of debauchery. I mean, I'm aware of the differences in our laws, but even when I was young (and therefore even dumber than I am now), it never occurred to me to think it was depraved. (I am aware of the stereotype of the U.S. college student who goes to, say, Amsterdam expecting a vacation packed with wanton delights. In that stereotype, though, it's the student who's depraved, not the place s/he's visiting.)

What an utterly WEIRD idea. People are a wacky bunch.

Currently my brain associates NL with being trapped in a Puerto Rican elevator. Funny brain.

I'm imagining the Phil Collins song now as titled The Land of Debauchery.

To be honest; I think Amsterdam enjoys the fiscal consequences of marihuana tourists. There was an initiative to ban non-nationals from buying weed. But it ended up only being enforced with border towns where French marihuana runners would form a nuisance.
Affluent tourists visiting Amsterdam are still welcome to partake of what the so called coffee shops have to offer.

Personally I just thought the Italian adolescent tourists in Utrecht were vaguely annoying. Standing around the pavement all dazed, being in the way.

Don't worry about the stereotypes. We all have them.
I'm imagining youllee as wearing shorts and sports shoes. And talking very loudly. :-)

For jouke.

2012, for me, has been a year of lows rather than highs, but I am proud of and count as an acomplishment the work I did to get this bill passed. A tiny bill that has meant new jobs and a whole new professional life for my colleagues and I - given the dramatic cost-cutting that we left behind, probably 50% of us would be unemployed if we hadn't been able to get the bill through. It took two attempts after an election was called just before it was passed the first time and a change of government meant we had to start from scratch again. In the end, it passed late at night on the last day of sitting before an absolute deadline and the process included two of us having to write four 10-minute speeches in an hour because the government wanted to draw the process out while they prepared for debate on another bill. It was an incredibly stressful day, bouncing between Parliament House and my office, scrambling to find answers to hand to the Minister to questions that we felt may get asked based on comments members had made during the debate. But we made - fortunately, because circumstances meant we had no way to put a Plan B in place for the possibility of it not passing.