The Year that Was… 2010
Posted on January 23, 2011 by Ching under Life.
Last night was one of those nights that you definitely do not want to happen when you’re first dating someone. Brian told me this morning that he deserved a medal. I’m sure if I could remember everything that happened, I’d probably agree with him. Needless to say, if we’d only been dating for a couple of years or so, I’d probably would’ve been dumped.
There are some things that only a decade of being together can help you survive. That, and we’re married. He can’t just dump me. Well, he can. But he’s not going to, because we made a commitment. That includes taking care of your wife when she’s drank herself into oblivion and puking her brains out. Brian said at least I didn’t vomit into his armpit this time as I had done back in 2004. It was a good call on putting the trash can next to the bed, babe. Experience really does make people smarter. LOL.
Getting puke drunk only once every six or seven years actually isn’t a bad record. For some people, this is a typical weekend. We are not some people, though, and I’ve been warned never to get drunk like that ever again.
So anyway, now that 2011 is well under way, let’s look back at the previous year. You all should be used to my year-end recaps by now as I’ve done it for the last couple of years. Gotta love traditions! Here’s the 2009 and 2008 highlights (in case you missed them) and our relationship timeline (if you need to get completely caught up).
The previous year was a year of triumphs and tragedy, and triumphs over tragedy. I think that pretty much sums it up. You want to know all the glorious and gory details, though. So let’s start from the beginning.
We rang in the New Year at Kansas City Power & Light with the Dills. That was a lot of fun. Even though we stood outside in the cold for the ball drop, it was worth it because the Dills picked up a few bucks when they rained dollar bills over the crowd. Of course, I didn’t get any. That night pretty much set the tone of the entire year. We did a lot of traveling in 2010. More than we’d ever done in all of our years together.
A month after our New Year’s Eve adventures in Kansas City, we were hanging out with the Dills again. This time in San Francisco. It was Brian’s first time and only my second visit. It worked out perfect because my best friend from elementary and high school in the Philippines (Sheryll) was in the area for a job fair. Not only did I get to see Sheryll and her family, we also got to hang out with Pia (my oldest and dearest friend who we hadn’t seen since our wedding).
Other trips that happened in 2010 were trips to Kansas City (for the 4th of July weekend, right before Brian left for Germany), Dallas (to visit the Orbase clan), Houston (for Richard and Amy’s wedding), Scottsdale (for the social media customer response summit), Kansas City again (for Midnight Magic at Legends), and then our recent trip to Las Vegas that you’ve been reading about over the last few weeks. To say that it was a busy year would be an understatement.
Besides all the traveling, probably the biggest thing that happened was that Brian and I sold (more like gave away) our house. It was the single largest check we’d ever written (prior to that, the check we wrote for Brian’s truck held that record) because we had to pay the difference between the purchase price and the amount left on our mortgage. Yes, believe it or not, after owning the house for 10 years, we trashed it so completely and thoroughly that we actually had negative equity. It’s tragic, I know, but Brian and I are both just happy to be out of there.
That single event pretty much wiped out most of our savings so we went on a bit of a spending binge. Our savings are pretty much all gone anyway, so why not go all the way? Rather than move all of our crappy old stuff to our new place, we just got rid of everything. We donated some stuff and gave away the rest. The only things we sold were the washer and dryer because they were only a year old (we probably paid $800 for the set — not bad considering $800 gets you just a washer these days — and got $200 out of it a year later) and mom’s old solid wood dining table (sold to a friend of a friend for $50) because it was too big to fit in our tiny apartment and too heavy to move (we didn’t want to mess with it). Our first purchase was a mattress, our first new one in ten years. Our old one was just a cheapo, generic mattress set from Sam’s Club so went all out this time. After everything we’d been through, we decided that we both deserved to sleep in something heavenly. Brian will be the first to tell you that our bed is actually more comfortable than the heavenly beds that Westin brags about.
Besides that, we got all new furniture from Slumberland (prior to that we just had hand-me-downs). We got rid of everything so we had to buy living and dining room furniture. Brian also got a new TV. He’d been wanting an LED TV for a really long time and since we were getting all new stuff, he squeezed that in there. It’s a long story on the TV, which involves mystery shops and our inability to say no, but I’ll save that for later. The TV was quite expensive so we racked up a lot of MyRZ points from Best Buy. That led to the purchase of a few other things to go with the new TV such as a PS3 and Bluray DVD player. We bought so much stuff last year that I think we singlehandedly supported the US economy.
We also had to buy some new clothes because, although the Battle of the Brubakers wasn’t altogether successful, our 2010 selves actually looked better than our 2009 selves. All that racquetball and Zumba was actually paying off. Brian and I decided that, since we both looked better than we did last year, we both win and deserve to go on shopping sprees. LOL.
- Other things that happened in 2010:
- I started really getting into coupons. I also got addicted to Groupon. I just love, love, love deals!
- Brian and I dusted off our bikes and got into biking. We even participated in the “I Bike Douglas” event.
- We got to walk in the Sundown Parade. It was actually pretty cool.
- We got a Laddergolf set for free.
- We rediscovered the Bradley Fair summer jazz concerts and made some new friends in the process.
- First time at the Kansas Underground Salt Museum, Cosmosphere, watching Rush perform live, playing miniature golf, and camping at Lake Afton.
- We got to watch Logan when Jen C gave birth to Quentin. It was a lot of fun. Well, maybe not the giving birth part, but hanging out with Logan for the weekend sure was.
- We hosted a few parties: a couple of fight nights at our place (the Pacquiao vs. Clottey one was pretty lame, but the Pacquiao vs. Margarito one was pretty good though) and the Ponderosa Party, otherwise known as Ching’s 33rd birthday. We hired VW to perform and had food catered. I even had a smash cake! It was awesome.
- Our new weekly ritual of Salsa night at Suede was born. Friday nights just weren’t the same after Highlands closed in Fall 2009. That is, until we discovered Salsa at Suede which is our new weekly routine. Gotta love new traditions! (I think I might have said that already.)
- Brian learned that he can drink wine and survive at Zoobilee 2010 and hasn’t looked back since.
There were some things on our to do list that we didn’t get to do (like playing poker in the 2010 WSOP and soaring in Colorado), but all in all it’s been a pretty fulfilling year. I’m pretty sure I’m missing a ton of other stuff that happened, but these are the highlights. If you think of something I missed, feel free to post it in the comments. 🙂
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