I’m going to cheat on an annual review by shamelessly lifting Kirsty’s post format on the same subject. So:

2008 In Review:

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?

Um. Ah. 

Oh, I signed up with eMusic.com for 50 songs a month to force myself to listen to new music. It’s been a mixed bag, but Dead Heart Bloom, Let’s Wrestle, and a couple of others were good finds as bands go. I also acquired (elsewhere) (legally) Stainless Style by Neon Neon and They Live by Evil Nine, which were very good, and I rather liked the Adam Freeland mix from Radio 1’s Essentials show. 

And I played Rock Band for the first time – the only reason I didn’t rush out to get all the equipment (including an X-box) was an interest in remaining employed and married. 

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions? 

Oh hell. Aside from drinking more water and not buying it in plastic bottles, no. My diet and sleep management are still crap. My ambition to read more was undone by excessive ambition in what I picked – so Fathers and Sons by Alexander Waugh and Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore remain partially read, and all I achieved by signing up with goodreads.com was being reminded of my crap reading pace, and discovering that people’s enthusiasm for books doesn’t always translate into having something interesing to say about them. 

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No. The missus was excited by two dear old friends of hers having their first (and possibly only) children, but that’s it. 

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No, which is always a plus.

5. What countries did you visit?

Domestic travel only this year, but in the “new” category we had a family excursion to downeast Maine to see my mother-in-law and her husband, and I have started travelling to New Orleans for work. An old friend got married in Los Angeles, so I was able to sneak out there for a long weekend to be best man, and catch up with a bunch of friends besides. 

6. What events from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory?

Taking the girls to Chinatown in Manhattan for dinner on Chinese New Year’s. We went with the wife’s aunt and uncle who live on the Upper West Side – between the ride down in the back of a car service Lincoln Navigator with the kids looking at the buildings in awe (me too), watching the world go by while waiting for a table, the unbelievable food, and the girls’ wonder and happiness about getting a fiver each in a very fancy red envelope from the manager (for good luck for the restaurant) – that was grand. 

Also, the 6 year old deciding to get me a replacement pocket knife – I had been forced to chuck my old one at airport security coming back from Maine, and the lack of it had been vexing me for months. So big girl got her sister on board with getting me a replacement for my birthday, got their mother to take them out to buy one, and made sure it was the same color. I couldn’t have been more touched, except for perhaps a couple of days later when it emerged that little girl had “bought” a doll for big girl that big girl had fancied for ages – huge hugs all round. 

In the area of things that others might care about, the election. I’ll admit to misting up a bit during the speech in Grant Park. 

7. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

See above answer. Also, embarrassingly, Holland versus France in Euro 2008, Michael Phelp’s gold medals, and Usain Bolt’s 100m and 200m records. 

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Sadly, I think it might have been finally finding a home at Megacorp on a new project. And that was handed to me. Ahead of the layoffs and benefit and effective pay cuts. But, in terms of monthly cash-in, cash-out, all remains steady, and having a job is always better than not having a job, I find. 

9. What was your biggest failure?

Aside from last year’s resolutions? I spent the summer working on a business case for a client and it just was crap – which is to say, all the logic and assumptions were impeccable, but I am challenged by numbers and I spent effing months trying to clean up the actual cost model… all the while looking like a bigger idiot. 

Failing to curb my short temper or raising my voice to the children was a poor show, also. 

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Nothing out of the ordinary, with the possible exception of throwing out my back while using a brush to kill ~100 camelback crickets in the garage in the late summer.  

11. What was the best thing you bought?

An iMac for the missus, followed closely by a chassis for the hard drive of her old PC (to establish that I could rescue her data from it when the old PC crapped out from a motherboard issue), and closer still by Aid4Mail, an application made by a Swiss company that allows you to process Outlook mail into mbox format, while stripping out and indexing all the attachments. Not a life saver, but a data and “institutional knowledge” saver, which was at least as exciting. 

12. What was the best thing you were given?

As noted above, a pocket knife, as well as an iPod Classic, a Nalgene camping water bottle with the slogan “I will never take this camping” printed on it, and, from the missus, Persepolis and Kitchen Confidential. 

13. What song will always remind you of 2008?

Perhaps Show Your Hand from Hey Venus by the Super Furry Animals (hey, it was a 2008 release here), or any of that album, really. 

14. What was your favourite TV programme?

Embarrasingly, Top Chef and Top Gear. 

15. What was the best book you read?

Harrumph – well, what I read of Young Stalin was pretty impressive. 

16. What was your favourite film of this year?

I didn’t see any films that were released this past year. I’m not sure that I actually watched any films this past year. And I feel completely fine about that. 

Now, for 2009:

I have only one resolution – whatever I end up doing, don’t do it half-arsed. The details are where I always go wrong, so I’ll pick a couple of things to work on, and see how doing them well goes.