I thought about starting this out by saying "well, we survived"... but given the state of the world, that seems very tone deaf.
So pretend I said something that conveyed that same message, but wasn't that tone deaf. That thing, I said that thing.
I will say that I've never appreciated living on the world's largest island quite as much as I did this year. And living in a city with a smaller population. And having a government that wasn't actually useless.
Don't get me wrong, fuck this dumpster fire of a year. But at the same time, we haven't had it that bad here.
And you need to be thankful where you can right now.
Sadly, the set of Chinese zodiac stamps I've been using for the last ten years also ran out last year (I was a little late to that particular party, so missed out on 2008 and 2009), so we've got... whatever that is up there. So that might be the thing for the next 12 years. Who knows. Also, postage now costs double what it did when I first used one of these stamps. Because, time.
Weirdly I thought this year's monthly round up was going to be blank for several months in the middle of the year. And, don't get me wrong, it's not exactly the height of thrilling. But this year was basically about small steps or small achievements. Honestly, that's just my life currently. And some of them don't have links because either the reference was a blink and you'll miss it, or it was already covered in a previous link.
So, this was my 2020...
January: I tried dyeing IKEA chair covers. There was much DnD. I went to the ENT doctor.
February: There was too much rain on one day. We finished our Wednesday night campaign after almost two years. I changed my blog header for the first time in six years. Fringe started. I dyed the IKEA chair covers for the third and final time.
March: It was my 46th birthday. Fringe ended. I had the last haircut I'd have for five and a half months. The wheels fell off the world. I finally made the Lego Batman set that had been lurking on top of my wardrobe. We switched over to Discord and Roll 20 for DnD for several months. Wednesday games at the comic book store stopped. I discovered Board Games Arena which helped keep me sane for the rest of the year.
April: One of the Friday DnD characters died. I literally left the house twice a week at most. Plus once a month for my chiro appointment. This continued for some time.
May: I did much colouring in (from March onwards really) thanks to Wizards of the Coast. Life continued in much the same pattern, we occasionally went to places other than the supermarket on a Saturday. A tradie finally turned up to look at my busted oven door.
June: One of my former Monday DnD boys joined the Wednesday group. We skipped over Ma's birthday. Our Friday group finally got to be in the same room together. Ma and I watched Onward, one of only two movies I reviewed this year.
July: After spending much of this year turning 3d character screenshots into character art, I posted some. I finally watched Into The Spider-verse. Critical Role returned. It was the third anniversary of my first DnD game and my fifteenth blogiversary. Fuck.
August: I had my first haircut in 169 days.
September: My oven door was finally fixed. It took 126 days. I made belated birthday sausage rolls for Ma.
October: HeroForge released the ability to colour their models. It was the one year anniversary for our first Friday night game. I went out and took photographs for the first time this year. It was the first time the Wednesday night DnD group all got together in person.
November: I had people come over to my house and play board games. We had the "it's a lockdown, sorry, now it's not a lockdown" lockdown.
December: We put the Christmas tree up. I fell down. We had Boardgame Christmas, followed by actual Christmas.
Yeah, my life is really boring.
I will just stop and say that I would have gone completely around the twist this year had it not been for my friends. And online board games and virtual DnD and Discord and video chat. And Ma. But mostly my friends.
For as much as I occasionally complain about them, I would have been confined to my house, not speaking to anyone bar Ma and the people at the supermarket. And I would have gone loopy. You gave me things to look forward to, and points in my week so that I actually remembered what day of the week it was. So, thanks.
Also, the completely anonymous randoms I've played the 1280 virtual board games with in the last six months, you get a thumbs up from me also.
As far as movies go, well, you saw the two movies I listed above. Both what I would still call "new releases"... even if one of them was from 2018. And I never set foot in a movie theatre at all this year. In fact, it was 12 months ago last Monday.
But I have watched a lot more movies on SBS On Demand. Older movies, newer movies, foreign movies for the most part. A lot of Asian movies... Japanese, Chinese, Korean, all the Asian movies. The notable ones overall include:
- Alfie (1966)
- Fist of Fury (1972)
- The Young Master (1980)
- Police Story (1985)
- Let the Bullets Fly (2010)
- Little Big Soldier (2010)
- Sacrifice (2010)
- Colossal (2016)
- Train to Busan (2016)
- Loving Vincent (2017)
- The Villainess (2017)
- Alpha (2018)
- Believer (2018)
- The Great Battle (2018)
- Rampant (2018)
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