2011 as a year was kind to me.  I lost 95 lbs, that’s kind of cool. I spent a good amount of time with those close to me, somehow managing to visit Chicago or see Peter 7 times and visit Cincinnati or see Suzie 11 times.  Distance is for chumps.  I didn’t write about it much, but I had the first notable relationship of my adult life this year and it fit neatly within the calendar year starting with a trip to Cirque Du Soleil in January and ending with me holding my phone and a sweater vest in a Kohl’s shortly before Halloween.

I cried a lot this year, and this is my short list of when:

• Bill Zeller Suicide Note – http://gizmodo.com/5726667/the-agonizing-last-words-of-bill-zeller
• An Atheist’s Sermon – http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/2011/12/20/rd-extra-an-atheists-sermon/
• Jim Henson’s Fantastic World – http://www.movingimage.us/exhibitions/2011/07/16/detail/jim-hensons-fantastic-world/
• First Hearing of the Pale Blue Dot speech – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_blue_dot
• From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
• Cranking – http://www.43folders.com/2011/04/22/cranking
• Receiving Chris Lutz’s wedding invite

There are a few others but they are private, not in the sense that I wouldn’t share them but in the sense that I wouldn’t know how to.

I have some things I’d like to do in 2012 but “resolution” would be too strong a word.  I’d like to start reclaiming activities I couldn’t do as a larger person and ice skating fits into that.  Hang gliding, skydiving, and breaking into abandoned buildings all fit in that category and these I look forward to trying.  If I can finish the year around 210 lbs, I think I will be satisfied.