2006 is over

Well, there are a few days left of course, but for all intents and purposes the year has come to a close. Sigh.

I've completely missed writing about the last third of the year (naughty me), so here are some highlights to sum up what you've missed:

September: my 26th birthday, and our 2nd anniversary.

• The former, well, I don't feel 26 at all, rather I still feel 17 or 18. Funny how that works. But things are coming together like a 26 year old would hope: a degree, a career, a house, and a wonderful relationship.
• And it seems that time is going by faster each year - they say it's because each year represents a smaller and smaller percentage of your life. I.e. to a five year old, it seems like forever before she will be six, because that coming year represents 1/5 of her life. For a 25 year old, that same year is a 25th of her life, and seems that much shorter. It can only get worse, eh? Grin.
  
• The latter, well, 2 years ago I would have said that 2 years would be a long time. Now, it seems the time has passed far too quickly, and 2 years is such a short time. Our relationship seems to get richer and deeper every day - here's to another fabulous year!

October:

• Dogger's one-year anniversary of adoption came.
• Work was busy, with me having a night meeting pretty much every week!
• We were busy preparing for the winter season and ending the summer season, buying skeleton gear and preparing for that sport.
• Final hurrah: we spent a weekend in Moab, riding Porcupine. I made an attempt on the Notch, almost got it but got stuck on the turn. Just trying it, though, made my day!
  
• AND: I sold all three of my bikes! (Well, sold two, gave one away.) Yes, that's right, I no longer own a bicycle. Saving for a better downhill bike next year, and a nice cross country bike as well. Spent the money on runners for my skeleton sled - robbing Peter to pay Paul, eh?

November:

• Hints of winter came, but not enough snow to really enjoy it. Didn't ski / ride at all, sigh.
  
• Flew out to Minnesota for the weekend before Thanksgiving to surprise B's mom, and had a great visit.
• Skeleton Team Trials were held, and since B & I didn't qualify to compete last year, instead we foreran for the races and volunteered as well. It was a crazy hectic week, but SO nice to be back on a sled! My first run, I was so nervous I thought I was going to lose my dinner all over the track. But of course, once I pushed off and was heading down the inrun, the nervousness went away. "Oh yeah" I realized, "I remember this."
  

December: this one is more recent, so is more fresh in my memory!

• Christmas (putting this first 'cause it's the best): B shocked the hell out of me with an amazing pair of cornflower blue sapphire earrings! Stunned.
  
• I'd mentioned a while back how my ears get infected with the $5 earrings I always get, and that I needed to just accept that I needed to start shelling out $30 for quality pairs that wouldn't do that.
  
• He, knowing that I'd never buy myself anything nicer than said $30 earrings, wanted me to have one truly nice piece of jewelry.
  
• They're studs too, so I can wear them all the time, not just special occasions - they don't have to sit in a box all the time.
  
• I'm constantly checking to make sure I haven't lost one!
  
• Not that I'm usually a girly girl or he usually a flowers & jewelry kind of guy, but it really is amazing how nice it feels to have such nice things in my ears, and how good it felt that he cared so much.
  
• Well done. I almost cried. Okay, so I teared up, but no leakage. :)
• Cancelled our Christmas trip to MN at the last minute, so we could stay and help with America's Cup. Good decision too, since our original flight out of Denver ended up being cancelled, and we would have been stranded with thousands of people in Denver for days. Big storm. Lucky us.
• Skeleton: We pretty much lived up at the Utah Olympic Park for the first few weeks of the month, since Skeleton and Bobsled World Cup races were here, and the next week the America's Cup races.
  
• We trained with the athletes so we could forerun, and ended up with heaps of ice time.
  
• Never saw any of our times though, since forerunner times aren't shown.
  
• Guess it was paying off though because I'm an average of one second faster this season than I was last season, and B two seconds.
  
• Parker spent some time on our sleds, legalizing them (the FIBT changed some rules, so our sleds had to be modified to comply) and changing our weight systems. LOVE the new system!
• Got a lot of experience working as officials for the various races, and both filled up our volunteer quota two times over (we get a discount on ice fees if we volunteer a certain number of hours).
• Helped with a skeleton school, so there are a bunch of new sliders.
  
• Speaking of school, it's been one year since my skelly school! Cool to see how far we've come, comparing now to then.

• Two new County Planners, since two left in the last months, including the girl who was pretty much my mentor. She and her husband joined the Peace Corps and are going to Romania in February.
• Work at the bike shop going well - I'm a snowboard tech now, which is heaps of fun. The owners bought all the employees a snowboard for Christmas, so I've got this fantastic Arbor Abacus, a handmade eucalyptus board designed for powder. So SCHWEET!

Phew, and that's all folks! Sort of - one more story to come....