2011 in review

So many ways to sum up a year.
First(ish) sentences:

• January: I know I said we were going to have a quiet night and probably not even see the New Year in, but plans do have a habit of changing.
• February: It’s the first of February, so that means TWO MONTHS UNTIL AMERICA!!!
• March: We’re back in Christchurch, and feeling much refreshed and ready to face whatever this city throws at us.
• April: In just a few hours I’ll go to the airport to fly to Auckland, where I’ve got a couple of hours’ wait before I fly for another 12 hours to San Francisco, and then it’ll *still* be the morning of the first of April! (I love time travel ;-))
• May: We’ve just come back from Riccarton, where we almost but not quite bought a new vacuum cleaner (our trusty old Dyson has so many parts needing replacing that it’s been looking more and more economical to just get a new one – and we realised it must be about 11 or 12 years old now, so it’s actually lasted quite well).
• June: Another big aftershock this morning.
• July: In the last couple of weeks I’ve actually ventured in to town a couple of times.
• August: Too late to back out now, I’ve booked my flights.
• September: One year ago today, the people of Christchurch thought we’d had a disaster, but we had no idea how much worse it was going to get as the year progressed.
• October: After a couple of incredibly busy weeks trying to catch up with work and study after my unplanned break, I had my final exam on Friday, which means I have finished my BA!!!
• November: Yay! I managed to release 11 books at 11 am on 11/11/11.
• December: Yesterday’s mail: I got a corporate Christmas card, MrPloppy got a bank statement, and George got a parcel from Lytteltonwitch.

Photos (a few of which never made it into my diary, me being so slack at updating this year!):

• January
  
• February
  
• March
  
• April
  
• May
  
• June
  
• July
  
• August
  
  (Ok, that was actually taken in July, but it snowed in August as well)
• September
  
• October
  
• November
  
• December
  

Or just in thoughts. This has been such a huge year. The bad stuff (earthquakes, depression, work uncertainties, Stepfather dying, more earthquakes…) has been so prominent it’s hard sometimes to remember that this year also contained some pretty good stuff. The American roadtrip, for a start – I keep forgetting that was only 8 months ago! There were enough wonderful moments in that trip to last a lifetime. And looking back through the year’s entries I’ve been reminded of all the other good times of 2011: going camping (and goat hunting!) with brother and the kids, making bookmarks with mum, fishing for yabbies with dad, welcoming MrPloppy home from his trip, all the laughter and catching up with friends at conventions in DC and in Wellington, finishing my degree and being accepted for honours… yeah, for a stink year it’s actually been quite good, really 🙂