Here comes the end of the year. 2006 is sneaking up on us and I usually like to reflect on what I did over the year. Here is what I found interesting about my life in 2005.

Uneventful January

January was pretty uneventful. The only thing of importance I had done was to sign up for Japan-Guide.com. I didn’t do anything with this account for quite sometime, but this site did lead to me getting to know 美和 (Miwa). That, however, wouldn’t be until November.

Grandpap Glenn

The month of February was very sad. On the early morning of the 12th, my Grandfather James Glenn died. Although he wasn’t a blood relative, he was every part a grandfather to me. Some of my favorite memories with him was watching baseball games. Even though I wasn’t a big baseball fan, I wouldn’t mind watching them with him. He took me a few times to the stadium where I lived in Hagerstown, Maryland to watch the Hagerstown Suns who at the time was a farm team for the Baltomore Oreoles.

He worked as a brakeman for the B&O Railroad for over 40 years, a position that had him in the caboose of the train. If I was visiting my grandparents during the day, I would stand outside their house and wait for him to come by. Their house was just several yards from the rail line.

During Christmas, he would dress up as Santa Clause, haul a lot of Christmas presents on to the train, and hand them out to children in the poorer sections of the city as the train would go by. I’m not sure exacly how long he did this, but he was in the newspaper many many times for it. I also do not know where he got all the gifts. I know he purchased many on his own, but I believe he had to have collected some via some form of charity.

On Christmas eve we would go to my Grandparents to celebrate and open gifts from them. My grandfather would always run to the store because they “forgot to buy something for the dinner.” About 10 minutes later Santa Clause would arrive bringing gifts. We would take pictures with him, talk for a few minutes and then he left. 15 minutes after that Pap would come home seemingly missing Santa. Of course we were so young we never put two-and-two together and figure out Pap was Santa. To help with the disguise he’d put two band-aids over his nose in a X shape and come up with an excuse why Santa had that on. It wasn’t until later that I found out that, in part, he had that on because he had had cancer in his nose and it hurt when he was out in cold weather.

One thing I did not know however was that he was a scout master for the Boy Scouts.

James Robert Glenn, Sr: January 21, 1924 to February 12, 2005.

Swords of Remora

March was pretty laid back. On the 31st I registered the domain SwordsOfRemora.net for a Final Fantasy XI linkshell I was a part of. The group lasted for a little over a half a year before it merged with another group… that has since sunk under.

XBox 360 Unveiled

Also in April, Microsoft revealed the XBox 360. My geekdom insisted that I would save money to get that at release!

Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst

I played the Beta Test of Phantasy Star Online in May. I’ve always wanted to be apart of a Beta test and, although it was a public test, it was still cool to try. I’m still hoping to get in on a closed beta test some day.

Star Wars Episode III

Star Wars Episode III. I didn’t get to see it opening night, but I did see it the next day. I’m a big Sci-Fi fan. Mostly because of the fantasy involved. Same reasons I enjoy Star Trek, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and many RPG video games.

Astinus.net Takes Current Form

Also in May I finally decided on a website design I could live with. The one you see now. I have always had a problem with keeping one style too long. I’ve always enjoyed building websites, then destroying them to create another one. Ask anyone who may have seen my Final Fantasy Database, Final Fantasy Wiki, my Video Game Database, my imagined world, my gaming news site, etc. etc.

A very small part of my FFXI website still exists at ffxi.astinus.net. A google cache of my Video Game Database can be found at Google Search “cache:vgdb.astinus.net/”.

Old VMU-HardDrive.com Found

Also around this time is when I found my old website on the “Way Back Machine” at archive.org. My old Dreamcast website was, at least I believe, rather popular with those who were still using the game system to go online. Before 2001, the only way I could surf the internet was with the Sega Dreamcast. You can see a saved copy of the website at the Internet Archives copy of vmu-harddrive.com. Some of the links may even work. The “Internet Archive” saves many web pages and the links may lead to other saved files.

No Air Conditioner

Oh, and how can I forget about our Air Conditioner breaking in May, during a very nice hot snap of 100+ temperatures. (37c for those who do the metric dance.) It broke down while we were at the movies watching Star Wars. At times the temperature in our apartment was over 100 degrees. Fun memories there.

New Games

June had me playing with some new games including Warcraft III and The Sims 2. I played Warcraft III a lot since I had been playing World of Warcraft also. The Sims 2 wouldn’t play very well on my computer and it would be another 6 months (December) before I was able to play it with an upgrade to my computer. I also gave Ragnarok Online a try. A 2-D MMORPG with cute anime style graphics.

Hurricane Season Begins

In July I began my yearly visit to wunderground.com/tropical and began reading and posting with other tropical weather geeks like me. ^_^ All the way back on June 7th I made a blog post (Blog Post Link) about how this season was already becoming active. I then made a post on the 12th called “Hell in the Atlantic.” Wow, funny to think of a time when Katrina, Rita, and Wilma wasn’t a part of our daily talk.

ひらがな and カタカナ

I also learned ひらがな (hiragana) in July. I can not believe it’s been that long ago, but it has. I’m still strugling with カタカナ (katakana) but I will learn it!

Katrina

August brought in Hurricane Katrina. A hurricane that was, at the time, the biggest storm we had seen in the Atlantic ocean in quite some time. Of course it was only a mater of months before it would become the second… and then the third strongest of the season.

Hurricane Rita

I continued my tropical weather addiction throughout September. Only a month after Katrina hit, Rita was making it’s way torwards the gulf coast. The most amazing part of that was we went through so many names between one month. K to R.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

I began watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on DVD. I’ve always enjoyed the show, but never seen many episodes. So I filled up my NetFlix queue of all 7 DVD sets and started getting them at the first of the month. I finished with the last DVD in late December.

電車男

It was also durring September that I began my current addiction to Japanese dramas. TV-Nihon began fan-sub translations on 電車男 (Densha Otoko).

25 Years Old, Cowboys

I turned 25 in October. I didn’t do much during this month except buy my first ever Dallas Cowboys item. It took over two years, but this place finally wore me down and I was wearing a t-shirt.

Hurricane Wilma

The strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic ocean displayed itself as Hurricane Wilma during the month. Just about everyone who is remotely interested in tropical weather was floored by the 24 hour strengthening the hurricane displayed. The on-air weatherman for the Weather channel seemd to almost leave out an explicitive when he read the newest report that night.

YesJapan.com

I began using YesJapan.com. They are a very excellent site for learning Japanese. They have helped me a lot AND they have some of the funniest videos. I began learning how to manipulate Japanese verbs into several different conjugations. (ます，たいです，ましょう，なさい)

花より男子 and 危険なアネキ

In November I began watching 花より男子 and 危険なアネキ (Hana Yori Dango and Kiken na Aneki), two excellent Japanese dramas.

美和ちゃん

I met 美和 in the beginning of November. She’s awesome! We exchanged Christmas presents and she had sent me the excellent picture book of Japan. It starts in the north and goes south, pointing out various places. Two photos of her and her friends, and a christmas card that everyone I showed thought was amazing.

Ode to NyQuil

Finally, coming around to December. I got the sickest I have ever been in a long time earlier in the month. It included me finding and posting the song “Ode to NyQuil”.

Star Trek: Voyager

I finished watching the Next Generation DVD’s in the middle of the month. Continuing my DVD watching, much like I did with Next Generation, I’ve filled my NetFlix queue with the Voyager DVDs. All seven seasons.

Winter Driving is Fun

People of the south go crazy at the idea of winter weather. December ‘05 brought about fun driving weather of ice. I have no problems driving on this (my drivers ed. class was taught in Michigan winter). However, the kajilion of people who were in accidents that day proves that people down here just don’t know how to drive.

Upcoming 2006

I’m not one for making resolutions. I think they’re a bit silly because if you do not do something durring the year, whats going to make you want to do it at the beginning of the year? One thing I do want to do is to come out of this shell I am in. I’ve always been extra gaurded about everything. I do not go out often prefering to stay to myself. I also want to continue with my Japanese studies. I would like to take the level 4 Japanese Language Proficency Test in December 2006. I’ve already looked at some practice tests and begun planning a study around those tests. I have a large vocabulary list that I plan to study.

I hope everyone has a happy new year. The best of luck in 2006!