2006, Year in Review

I really don’t have a topic to for this blog entry but I guess I’ll just go free form and see what happens. I haven’t written anything about it being a new year yet so maybe I’ll write about that. I want to write about last year, however, because except for a few scares and bumps, the main scare being my father’s health, it was an exceptionally good year. Yes, 2006 was one of the best, and I believe I was due for one. So already, in a few short sentences, I have formulated a topic: 2006, the year in review.

So I will try not to make this like one of the form Christmas card family updates that people send you which I’ll only read the first sentence of each paragraph to see if Mary got her PHD or Ed’s out of jail yet. I just want to list some of the things that I am proud of.

I started out the year with a long overdue trip to see my sister Emily and her husband Bob in New York. This was his last year at Union Seminary, and I wanted to take advantage of the fact that they had an apartment in the city before they had to give it up and return permanently to their house in Connecticut. We spent the week rushing from the Museum of Natural History to the New York Public Library, to various cathedrals and even made it out to Connecticut to watch the BCS championship. Bob is a very enthusiastic tour guide, and by the time I got home I was very fired up to start the semester and really make the year count. It was an excellent way to begin the New Year, and I kept up the momentum for a couple of weeks.

The spring semester had me taking four classes and working full time. This was a very hectic schedule. One of my classes was meant to take care of the dreaded science requirement for my degree. I chose Botany. Bad choice. I told my classmates that I was a history major just looking to fulfill a requirement, and one of them turned to me and said “and you chose Dr. Keegan’s class?!” I took this as a bad sign. This was by far the hardest class I’ve had, and it is a 100 level class! I just can’t imagine what his molecular chemistry class is like. Is there such a subject as molecular chemistry? That’s how scientifically illiterate I am. I soldiered through it and ended up with a respectable grade, but I will never look at a tree or a blade of grass with same appreciation that I used to. Trees provoke just the slightest degree of resentment in me now.

The other classes I took went very well though. I took my history seminar class and wrote about the Colonization of Liberia during the 19th century, a much more manageable subject than xylem and phloem. I got an A, and my advisor suggested that I become a teacher’s aid for this semester’s seminar. I’m looking forward to watching, and helping, the class survive the experience. I also managed to get an A- in class with a notoriously tough but brilliant professor, and this gave me a little consolation for the Botany nightmare.

Before the Christmas of 2005, my father decreed that no one was to give him a Christmas present that year. Instead we were to send contributions to our friend’s medical mission in South Africa. Prompted by this suggestion, we began brainstorming for ways to raise money, and I suggested that we hold a dinner. I had raised money this way before to fund a trip that I took to Costa Rica in 1991, and had been amazed at how much money I had been able to raise with just a couple of chicken pies and some desserts. We chose my parent’s church as the “volunteer” venue for the event, and decided to hold the fund raiser during fall break. So, on a break from cell walls and John Dryden, Margaret and I drove to Charlottesville with chaffing dishes stuffed into the back of her Subaru. We let my Mom put us through the paces as we pulled off a dinner that managed to raise almost $7,000. Our goal had been $5,000. My sister Lindsay, an artist, donated a painting for the silent auction which helped to push us over the top.

At the end of the semester, I was honored with an award and a small scholarship from the history department. I was also selected to join Phi Alpha Theta, an honor society for historians. I remember feeling very overwhelmed at times during the semester, but now it seems like it was pretty exciting.

I also had the opportunity to see my niece, Mary Katherine, graduate from high school. She started as a freshman at UNCG in the fall. Amazing, I used to baby-sit her just yesterday.

As the spring semester ended, I prepared for summer school. During the summer I was able to take care of my language requirement and fulfill more credits toward my English degree (I’m a double major, History/English) with a great class called Cult Films. Also during this time, the folk/blues/whatever-kind-of-music-we-want-to-play trio I’m in played a number of times at a bistro downtown. Those were some good times with close friends.

The fall semester had me taking only three classes, but one of them was English 400 with the notorious but fair professor from last semester. This was an extremely difficult and rewarding experience, filled with scholarly articles written by men and women who write in a language forsaken by mortal men. Very Challenging! Two history classes rounded out the semester and got me closer to my history degree.

We also held another fund raising dinner for our friends in Africa. This time it was in Winston-Salem, and we raised yet another $7,000. Yes. I have to say, this is the proudest I’ve been of something lately.

I also met a couple of people around campus who play bluegrass, and we held impromptu jam sessions a number of times. This was a great diversion on days I had buried myself with history and English.

I turned forty, so it wasn’t all good, but I’m getting used to it. I can actually form the words in my mouth now, and sometimes I can even articulate them. It’s not so bad being middle-aged, mainly because I definitely don’t feel middle-aged. What a terrible expression—middle-aged. I prefer fully-matured.That doesn't sound quite right either. How about ten-year-old trapped in a forty-year-old's body?

My father got sick and we were scared for a while there. He is much better now and much of the worry is gone, so that turned out for the better as well.

And as 2006 turned into 2007, I acquired a notebook and a wireless router so I can read and write blogs anywhere in the house. It was a good way to kick off the New Year, and hopefully it will be one of a series of things to be grateful about. Seems like 2006 was filled with such things.