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A decade in review - 2006
Jan. 3rd, 2010 02:00 pmBet you were starting to think I was gonna let these recaps quietly drop didn't ya? For a minute there, I know I did!!! I felt like there wasn't much of a point to continuing since I missed the window for when this sort of reflection generally happens you know? I thought it would be silly to be doing year-end writing when we're already on our way into a new decade. Then again, I don't have a turtle tattooed on my skin for nothing, right? And I'm so close to being finished that I can taste it! With this in mind, please indulge me as I look back at the year 2006.
The year started with me being out of state, seeing as how Mike and I decided to take our annual vacation a little early. It was his year to choose again, which meant we returned to Disney, and actually spent the last couple days of 2005 there as well so we could experience NYE in one of the theme parks. We watched fireworks at MGM Studios before retiring to our hotel, and we were also joined by his dad, his younger brother and sister, and his stepmom. This was a really nice trip.
I continued my work behind the scenes with AWA Slam, mostly writing show recaps for their website, though Ray Cortese did offer me one opportunity to ring announce. He was in a bind because the person who was supposed to be working had to cancel at the last minute for reasons I do not know. He called me about three hours before the show and asked if I'd be willing to do it. I was scared shitless about getting in the middle of the ring with a microphone, but I wanted to help Ray, so I agreed to do it. I even dressed up for the occasion, donning my favorite pencil skirt, a black sweater and my black leather boots. I doubt I was much competition for Lillian Garcia, but I admit I cleaned up pretty well. And save for a couple of flubs, I did alright with the ring announcing. The guy who reffed the whole card, Nicholas H, had my back for the whole show, and that helped me feel up for the challenge. I don't think I'd want to make a career out of it, but it was amazing for one afternoon. Unfortunately Slam had to go on hiatus not long after this, because Ray's bout with cancer took a serious turn, and it would be several months before they did another show. The last one I attended was right before Wrestlemania, and that time I was really just there as a spectator. Later that fall Ray got sick again, and I was at the House of Blues watching Rancid perform on September 11 when he finally passed. The weird thing about that show, was that the Tossers were the openers, and at one point they stopped their set and requested a moment of silence to remember all of those who had gone, whether in the 2001 9-11 attacks, or just in general. I had known for a few days that Ray was not well, and it hit me at that very moment, this very strong sense that Ray was one of the people that needed to be remembered. The feeling passed, but it left me unsettled for the rest of the night, and after I dropped my friends off at the end of the show I checked my voicemail to find a message from Ray's son Nick informing me that his father, this wonderful man who had been so kind to me, was indeed gone. I didn't know him all that well, but I felt a tremendous sense of loss.
In other wrestling news, I started to lose my enthusiasm for IWA, and really wrestling in general. Though I continued to feel torn between IWA, and AAW, because even though I wasn't going to every one of their shows there were a few people whose acquaintance I started to make, and it made me feel like I had friends to share the entertainment with.
Another passion of mine, my mixed martial arts classes, also began to cool though mostly because going to training twice a week was making it really hard for me to even think about novel/thesis writing. I realized that I was using karate chop as a way to avoid fiction work, and even though it was a positive distraction, I ultimately came to the difficult conclusion that the time commitment and expense it required was simply too much. With a really heavy heart I left my dojo almost exactly a year after I had joined it. I still think about my time there often and hope that I can someday find my way back to martial arts.
I continued writing feature articles, seeing as how that had helped me get my copywriting job. I thought I should not let myself get rusty in this area and I published a cool feature article about roller derby. And seeing as how journalism had led me to marketing, I started thinking about how to make marketing lead to other fields I wanted to write for. The possibilities seemed endless, and I explored ways to make myself more attractive to agencies where I could be a copywriter focusing on more than just educational recruitment. I also had my eye on work in non-profit development, thanks to a friend who was doing well writing for that field. In order to gain experience, I took on a volunteer project through the Taproot Foundation, where I was assigned a brochure copywriting project that helped me learn how to write materials meant to entice prospective philanthropists. I learned that I liked this type of writing, and I started plotting my next career move.
In other feature writing news, I had an experience publishing another wrestling feature that reminded me a bit of my experience publishing about wrestling with NewCity. I submitted a pitch to do a story about Shimmer, the all-women promotion that my old contact Dave Prazak was running, to an editor at TimeOut Chicago. I didn't hear anything back and assumed there was no interest, but then got a call to do a quick turnaround on the piece. I don't know for certain that I was being asked to fill space in the magazine in a pinch, but I assume that was the case, and since I had already proven to myself that I was good at handling the pressure of short deadlines, I accepted the assignment. Seeing as how I only had a couple days to do my legwork, and seeing as how a bunch of the women from Shimmer were going to be appearing at an ROH show the next night in Detroit, I recruited Mike for an impromptu road trip and off we went. We drove a little more than halfway that Friday night, stayed over in Battle Creek and took our time getting to the ROH venue the following afternoon. I got my interviews, we drove all the way back to Chicago that night, and I spent the rest of the weekend writing my ass off in order to meet my Monday or Tuesday deadline. Got it done, and wound up with a nice check and cool clip for my trouble. Oh, and did I mention that I skipped my 10th-year high school reunion for the Detroit road trip? Well, I did. And I have absolutely no regrets because I really enjoyed this excursion!
Made another visit to Philadelphia with Mike for WizardWorld. This time I got to meet with a friend I'd been corresponding with online, a fellow female wrestling and comic geek who I hit it off with really well. We had a nice dinner and she introduced me to some of her friends.
I also made a return trip to Eureka Springs for a second writing residency at Writer's Colony at Dairy Hollow. This time I only spent a week there, but I didn't lose any pay since I had actually earned enough vacation time to cover my time away. There was a new crop of writers to meet, including a wonderful poet who was also from Chicago and a seasoned journalist who was visiting to finish his third suspense novel. It was different being in Eureka in the fall (I went in October) rather than the summer, but I didn't appreciate this visit any less than the first one.
I had an experience that I like to refer to as the Saw III debacle. If you've been reading my blog long enough, chances are you know what I'm talking about. So I'll just leave it at that.
Toward the end of the year, Mike and I got the idea of moving in our heads, because we realized that we were in over our heads staying in a rented house that we didn't have the time or desire to maintain. He started researching apartments, and one of the ones we visited was in Forest Park. Turns out that it was available as a rental or for purchase, and when I heard the price it occurred to me that buying property was more feasible than I thought so long as we didn't move to Chicago proper. And knowing that owning a place was within reach, I couldn't go without looking into it further. I fell hard and fast for that first Forest Park condo, but Mike convinced me to keep looking. We found another place just a couple blocks south of the first one that was in better condition and slightly less expensive. I knew that I didn't know jack shit about buying real estate or getting a mortgage, but when we took a look inside my gut screamed out, saying, "Jenny, this is the one. This is home." At that point I had to trust my instincts, and though I gave myself some time to think things over it wasn't long before I was submitting my bid. The sellers counter-offered once, and I accepted that offer, and just like that, I was on my way to buying my first condo. It was a whirlwind experience that happened over the course of Thanksgiving weekend, and from there we were off and running at full speed, juggling our moving preparations with the madness of the holiday season. We closed out 2006 at home, sorting through all our junk, starting to box up all the things that we were getting rid of or didn't need immediately at our disposal.
While all of this was going on, there were also preparations being made for me to serve as maid of honor in my best friend's wedding. Dawn didn't have her big day until 2007, but she got engaged at the end of 2005, so I had all of 2006 to space out all the work that needed to be done. By the end of the year, on top of the moving preparation and the holiday stuff, I was neck deep in planning her bachelorette party, which took place in January of 2007. Also had to help with her bridal shower, and there was an marathon session of assembling invitations for that event right before Christmas.
And that brings me to the end of this recap! I will not make any definitive statements about when you can expect my final two write-ups, but trust that a review of 2007 and 2008 is indeed forthcoming.
The year started with me being out of state, seeing as how Mike and I decided to take our annual vacation a little early. It was his year to choose again, which meant we returned to Disney, and actually spent the last couple days of 2005 there as well so we could experience NYE in one of the theme parks. We watched fireworks at MGM Studios before retiring to our hotel, and we were also joined by his dad, his younger brother and sister, and his stepmom. This was a really nice trip.
I continued my work behind the scenes with AWA Slam, mostly writing show recaps for their website, though Ray Cortese did offer me one opportunity to ring announce. He was in a bind because the person who was supposed to be working had to cancel at the last minute for reasons I do not know. He called me about three hours before the show and asked if I'd be willing to do it. I was scared shitless about getting in the middle of the ring with a microphone, but I wanted to help Ray, so I agreed to do it. I even dressed up for the occasion, donning my favorite pencil skirt, a black sweater and my black leather boots. I doubt I was much competition for Lillian Garcia, but I admit I cleaned up pretty well. And save for a couple of flubs, I did alright with the ring announcing. The guy who reffed the whole card, Nicholas H, had my back for the whole show, and that helped me feel up for the challenge. I don't think I'd want to make a career out of it, but it was amazing for one afternoon. Unfortunately Slam had to go on hiatus not long after this, because Ray's bout with cancer took a serious turn, and it would be several months before they did another show. The last one I attended was right before Wrestlemania, and that time I was really just there as a spectator. Later that fall Ray got sick again, and I was at the House of Blues watching Rancid perform on September 11 when he finally passed. The weird thing about that show, was that the Tossers were the openers, and at one point they stopped their set and requested a moment of silence to remember all of those who had gone, whether in the 2001 9-11 attacks, or just in general. I had known for a few days that Ray was not well, and it hit me at that very moment, this very strong sense that Ray was one of the people that needed to be remembered. The feeling passed, but it left me unsettled for the rest of the night, and after I dropped my friends off at the end of the show I checked my voicemail to find a message from Ray's son Nick informing me that his father, this wonderful man who had been so kind to me, was indeed gone. I didn't know him all that well, but I felt a tremendous sense of loss.
In other wrestling news, I started to lose my enthusiasm for IWA, and really wrestling in general. Though I continued to feel torn between IWA, and AAW, because even though I wasn't going to every one of their shows there were a few people whose acquaintance I started to make, and it made me feel like I had friends to share the entertainment with.
Another passion of mine, my mixed martial arts classes, also began to cool though mostly because going to training twice a week was making it really hard for me to even think about novel/thesis writing. I realized that I was using karate chop as a way to avoid fiction work, and even though it was a positive distraction, I ultimately came to the difficult conclusion that the time commitment and expense it required was simply too much. With a really heavy heart I left my dojo almost exactly a year after I had joined it. I still think about my time there often and hope that I can someday find my way back to martial arts.
I continued writing feature articles, seeing as how that had helped me get my copywriting job. I thought I should not let myself get rusty in this area and I published a cool feature article about roller derby. And seeing as how journalism had led me to marketing, I started thinking about how to make marketing lead to other fields I wanted to write for. The possibilities seemed endless, and I explored ways to make myself more attractive to agencies where I could be a copywriter focusing on more than just educational recruitment. I also had my eye on work in non-profit development, thanks to a friend who was doing well writing for that field. In order to gain experience, I took on a volunteer project through the Taproot Foundation, where I was assigned a brochure copywriting project that helped me learn how to write materials meant to entice prospective philanthropists. I learned that I liked this type of writing, and I started plotting my next career move.
In other feature writing news, I had an experience publishing another wrestling feature that reminded me a bit of my experience publishing about wrestling with NewCity. I submitted a pitch to do a story about Shimmer, the all-women promotion that my old contact Dave Prazak was running, to an editor at TimeOut Chicago. I didn't hear anything back and assumed there was no interest, but then got a call to do a quick turnaround on the piece. I don't know for certain that I was being asked to fill space in the magazine in a pinch, but I assume that was the case, and since I had already proven to myself that I was good at handling the pressure of short deadlines, I accepted the assignment. Seeing as how I only had a couple days to do my legwork, and seeing as how a bunch of the women from Shimmer were going to be appearing at an ROH show the next night in Detroit, I recruited Mike for an impromptu road trip and off we went. We drove a little more than halfway that Friday night, stayed over in Battle Creek and took our time getting to the ROH venue the following afternoon. I got my interviews, we drove all the way back to Chicago that night, and I spent the rest of the weekend writing my ass off in order to meet my Monday or Tuesday deadline. Got it done, and wound up with a nice check and cool clip for my trouble. Oh, and did I mention that I skipped my 10th-year high school reunion for the Detroit road trip? Well, I did. And I have absolutely no regrets because I really enjoyed this excursion!
Made another visit to Philadelphia with Mike for WizardWorld. This time I got to meet with a friend I'd been corresponding with online, a fellow female wrestling and comic geek who I hit it off with really well. We had a nice dinner and she introduced me to some of her friends.
I also made a return trip to Eureka Springs for a second writing residency at Writer's Colony at Dairy Hollow. This time I only spent a week there, but I didn't lose any pay since I had actually earned enough vacation time to cover my time away. There was a new crop of writers to meet, including a wonderful poet who was also from Chicago and a seasoned journalist who was visiting to finish his third suspense novel. It was different being in Eureka in the fall (I went in October) rather than the summer, but I didn't appreciate this visit any less than the first one.
I had an experience that I like to refer to as the Saw III debacle. If you've been reading my blog long enough, chances are you know what I'm talking about. So I'll just leave it at that.
Toward the end of the year, Mike and I got the idea of moving in our heads, because we realized that we were in over our heads staying in a rented house that we didn't have the time or desire to maintain. He started researching apartments, and one of the ones we visited was in Forest Park. Turns out that it was available as a rental or for purchase, and when I heard the price it occurred to me that buying property was more feasible than I thought so long as we didn't move to Chicago proper. And knowing that owning a place was within reach, I couldn't go without looking into it further. I fell hard and fast for that first Forest Park condo, but Mike convinced me to keep looking. We found another place just a couple blocks south of the first one that was in better condition and slightly less expensive. I knew that I didn't know jack shit about buying real estate or getting a mortgage, but when we took a look inside my gut screamed out, saying, "Jenny, this is the one. This is home." At that point I had to trust my instincts, and though I gave myself some time to think things over it wasn't long before I was submitting my bid. The sellers counter-offered once, and I accepted that offer, and just like that, I was on my way to buying my first condo. It was a whirlwind experience that happened over the course of Thanksgiving weekend, and from there we were off and running at full speed, juggling our moving preparations with the madness of the holiday season. We closed out 2006 at home, sorting through all our junk, starting to box up all the things that we were getting rid of or didn't need immediately at our disposal.
While all of this was going on, there were also preparations being made for me to serve as maid of honor in my best friend's wedding. Dawn didn't have her big day until 2007, but she got engaged at the end of 2005, so I had all of 2006 to space out all the work that needed to be done. By the end of the year, on top of the moving preparation and the holiday stuff, I was neck deep in planning her bachelorette party, which took place in January of 2007. Also had to help with her bridal shower, and there was an marathon session of assembling invitations for that event right before Christmas.
And that brings me to the end of this recap! I will not make any definitive statements about when you can expect my final two write-ups, but trust that a review of 2007 and 2008 is indeed forthcoming.
