The first sentence of the first blog post for each month of 2012...
It's perhaps a little less informative than in previous years if only because a number of the posts are either template changes or Random Hotness posts...
But that's okay... it seems like it was something of a reduced year on the blog this year anyway.
January: I have to say that last night didn't really feel properly like New Years Eve... and today really didn't feel like the beginning of a new year when I woke up this morning, although it's starting to feel a little more like that now.
February: I have no idea who this week's toned little blonde Random Hotness is... but I'm running a little behind schedule with everything this evening... I still need to finish drying the dishes and make sure everything is organised for the morning.
March: Would you believe that the Autumnal template photo was snapped in the entrance to Sportsgirl on Bourke Street Mall in Melbourne?
April: Having a photo of Lego minifigures on your desktop at work isn't a good way to distract yourself from the fact you have a parcel full of new minifigures in your bag that you'll have to wait until you get home before you can open.
May: First off... Joss Muthafuckin Whedon!
June: I realised yesterday when I went to Myer to buy two Lego Star Wars sets that my recent reconversion to an Adult Fan of Lego (or AFOL as they're sometimes called) is pretty much complete.
July: This hasn't been an especially good week for me so far...
August: I'm going all moody black and white for this week's Random Hotness with these photos taken by photographer Daniel Jaems during London Fashion Week.
September: It's time for a little bit of Spring green around the joint...
October: There are two types of time travel movies... ones where everything happens in the order it was always meant to happen and always has happened that way... and the other kind where new things can happen based on what happens right now.
November: I decided that today's Random Hotness needed to be something at least vaguely Halloween related... and what's the main thing about Halloween, after the scary stuff and the candy... costumes!
December: Yes, okay... so my descent into Lego related madness would seem to be complete... the Summer template is nothing but Lego accessories!
Fortunately I started working on something else the week before Christmas that perhaps reviews the year a little more appropriately...
My 2012 in review...
I know my boys (and girls) from Burger Theory have been around since last year, but this year has just seen the whole food truck phenomenon take off like crazy here in Adelaide. And while both of the two Fork On The Road events were a big hit and featured a range of vendors, it's really the ones that are out there, on the streets as often as they can be that have really made it amazing.
Burger Theory, La Cantina Co, Raw Thirst, Veggie Velo and Chimichurri Grill have all managed to make my workday lunchtimes a much more pleasant experience.
Now what we really need as we head into the heat of Summer is a reoccurring ice-cream/gelati truck out and about... that would be awesome.
I also can't talk about 2012 and food trucks without mentioning Burger Theory and their fantastic Art Burger menu. I actually find that I miss it a little now... especially the Be Friendly and the Shizzle burgers. Plus all the artists who produced the art that went along with the burgers. I just need to get them framed up.
But the food trucks have all been a major part of my life this year... from following Burger Theory around (and ensuring I got my hands on the aforementioned Art Burgers as soon as I could), enjoying the brief period of time when they did a dinner service in North Adelaide to the discovery of the other trucks and finding the perfect thing on the menu to order and just the simple joy of sitting in the park eating a lunch that's fresher, tastier and generally better than anything that may have been sitting around in a bain-marie for several hours.
And although it's not a truck, going to Pearl's Diner for the first time was a pretty special experience as well.
Like food trucks, it was something that was already in place in my life, but this year definitely saw an increase the frequency of my art purchases... hand in hand with my regular visits to Espionage Gallery. It started with a visit last December, but really ramped up when I started going to the opening nights of shows... the first of which, I think, was the group print exhibition in April where I bought four pieces.
Add to that the fact that there seem to be a few smaller galleries popping up owned/run by people who understand street art and street artists (or who are street artists themselves). On top of Espionage, there's also These Walls Don't Lie and Tooth and Nail...
I now own over 30 pieces of art... the only downside is that I don't have the wall space to hang them all or the ability to put nails in the wall. But one day... when I'm living somewhere else... I want to have one of those feature walls for all my art where you start at the centre and just move outwards as your collection grows.
It's been a great experience... 14 of my top 20 photos on Instagram at present are Photo-A-Day prompted shots (and the top three are all from PAD), and just that push to photograph something every single day has been great.
I am tempted to create a Printstagram page-a-day calendars out of all the photos... even though I know I phoned a few of my shots in during year... but I haven't found another page-a-day calendar that I like, so it could be a way to go.
I'm still undecided about joining the 2013 Photo-A-Day challenge... but I honestly don't quite know what I'm going to do with myself once tomorrow rolls around if I don't have one of Chantelle's word prompts urging me to take a particular photo.
As I've already mentioned, I discovered The Lizzie Bennet Diaries at the beginning of the year (and it just continues to get better and better even with my earlier complaint), and then only a few months back I finally got around to watching Tabletop hosted by the charming Wil Wheaton.
I would never have suspected that watching a group of people play a board game on YouTube could be so much fun... but the combination of great board/dice/card games that I've not heard of and "celebrity" players turns out to be a winning one.
I ended up watching the majority of the sixteen episode season in a few days, but fortunately the series restarts on January 3... so I'm excited about that.
I'll devote a whole post to this later, but I've seen more movies that I've never seen before this year than I saw movies in total last year!
The number of movies I saw in the cinema was the same as last year, but my review of Wreck-It Ralph took me all the way to 200 movie review posts here on the blog.
Yes, it crept back in in 2010 when the Lego minifigure collections were released and I bought my first two... but it was just something I bought now and again.
Then, with the release of either Series 5 or 6, my obsession really took off and I not only collected that whole series (and every one since), but I had to go back and fill in the previous series with the assistance of eBay.
I also bought three major Lego sets (I'm not counting the Star Wars minifigure/vehicle/planet sets... although I have all six of those now)... Lego Hulk, the Lego Sydney Opera House (bought from the actual Opera House... which is as it should be) and the Lego R2D2 which I put together earlier this week.
But like my art collection and my small collection of vinyl toys and my toy soldier collection (which didn't even make it out of the boxes this year due to a lack of space) and to a lesser extent pretty much everything I own, I would have more, but I just don't have the room for it, or even the storage space to pack it away.
This is definitely why 2013 needs to be The Year I Reorganise Things And Buy New Bookcases... or possibly, but less likely, The Year I Move House... but that would mean that it would also need to be The Year I Get Permanent Employment.
In a non-"Year of the" way, there was once again quite a lot of theatre in my year... 21 Adelaide Fringe shows, 4 Adelaide Cabaret Festival shows and a handful of other shows...
- Doctor Who Symphony Spectacular
- Bell Shakespeare's Macbeth
- Reaper Man
- Rock The Ballet
- Will And The Ghost
- Circa
Ma and I didn't do any "major" interstate trips this year... there was a brief "long weekend" trip to Melbourne in February for the Doctor Who concert, and I did an overnight trip to Sydney for Macbeth in April... but since then, nothing.
But that's partly so we could do a trip to Sydney in April 2013. Unfortunately I discovered the week before Christmas that the reason for that trip, to go to the second Outpost street art event, has now been cancelled. Which is a total shame... and I haven't really heard why it was cancelled either, which is a bit of a bummer.
I think we'll probably still do an April trip though... I mean I already have it on the Big Board Of Stuff at work and I think Ma has already applied for the time off.
I honestly haven't had a large amount to complain about this year... sure there are always little niggling complaints, but overall there has been much in the way of major disasters... although, to be honest, one is more than enough.
However, 2012 was also The Year I Injured My Back... or possibly, just that it was when the issue that had been present in my back since I was a teenager finally made itself officially known.
I now pretty much divide the year into two halves... everything that happened before I injured my back on May 6 and everything that happened from May 6 onwards. And it's one of those things that I don't know if it will ever be completely under control. Every time I think I have a handle on it, I slide backwards a little bit...
But it's difficult to relearn how to stand and walk and generally hold your body after doing the same thing for the last 30-something years.
I just wish that putting that next to the fact that my sex life has slipped from being in intensive care to an unresponsive coma during the latter part of the year into perspective.
So that was my year in a nutshell... mostly good, and a lot that was memorable.
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