Entry One Hundred Eighteen.
Saturday, 2010.01.23, 1:57 AM CST.
A belated farewell to 2009.
Current Mood:  Tired and a bit ill.  Current scent:  None.

Well, I'm sitting here at home, fairly ill.  I've been having coughing fits as I recover from a fairly nasty infection - something that was giving me a 103.5-degree temperature two nights ago.  (That's not an exaggeration; that's the actual reading the digital thermometer gave me.)  Luckily, the fever quickly went away, but I still feel like poo.  My upper bronchial passages intermittently feel like an ant farm, and the back of my throat feels like a mixture of sandpaper and gravel.  Fun.

It's hard to believe we're already three weeks into the new year.

I want to go over 2009 a bit more.  It was an odd year, for sure.  I had the weird feeling I was going to die last year, and I didn't... so "Go me," I guess.

A lot of others died last year:  My old friend Chuck, and a whole slew of celebrities.  I mean, some deaths like that of Ed McMahon and Carl "Uncle Zeb" Bartholomew were to be expected... but Patrick Swayze?  Farrah Fawcett?  Michael Jackson?

If you'd told me in 1999 that those three would not only be dying on the same year, but that the year would only be a decade away... I'd have thought you mad.

I did two major club gigs last year.  That was pretty cool.

Lanna and I made some new friends, which was even cooler.  Actually, last year brought about significant additions to the cast of my life.

My son X continued to get bigger and smarter... and I almost lost my dad.  I'm glad I didn't.

More than anything else, though, 2009 appeared to be "The Year of the Cameo."  I got "back in touch" with more people in 2009 than any prior year.

I reunited - mainly via the Internet - with a number of my high school classmates (among the few there that I didn't, you know, despise).  I found people who used to help me with DJ gigs during my early mobile days.  I got to chat again with old friends like Dodger and Gomez, for the first time in years upon years.

I even, in a strange and amusing twist of fate, found myself suddenly and unexpectedly having a conversation with the doctor who delivered me - a doctor with whom I had not had any contact for over 19 years.  He remembered me well, and even passed on his condolences regarding my mother's death 2007 death.

The most astounding "cameo," however, was a young lady named Neddra, whom I had taken to my high school junior prom all the way back in 1989.  After I had looked for her for years and years and years and pretty much written her off as "either dead or chained up in some psycho's basement somewhere" (yes, those were my two theories) she contacted me and notified me that she was okay.

I genuinely hope that 2010 is a bit different, in a good way.  Already, it's improving.  My wife has graduated from college, which will hopefully free up some more time for me to start pursuing my own hobbies again.  We'll see.

I'm still going to be "Family Man Badger."  I can't really allow myself to tear away from that role.  But, I want to do more with my life again.

I'm not going to make any promises or say that there's something really "big" around the corner.  I feel like I've done that too often in the past, and it's backfired when things didn't happen.

All in all, I can at least say that I've got a good "feeling" about 2010.  I feel unusually optimistic.  Let's hope things go well for all of us.

Badger