Let’s see, what happened in 2009?

Well, we took a big trip to France, a relaxing trip to Nova Scotia and a weekend trip to Ottawa for my brother’s birthday. Closer to home we enjoyed Toronto things like Hot Docs, TIFF and a Leafs/Canadiens game, as well as concerts by Mogwai, Frightened Rabbit and The Rural Alberta Advantage. We also made it through some rather dodgy Toronto moments like being stuck in a high-rise elevator and a tornado-spawning storm.

We celebrated friends’ events like the weddings of our friends Jenn & Trent and Tatiana & Sean, and for my friend Adam the signing of a record deal with a major label. We also said goodbye to some friends, like Nick and Stryder.

We tried, for the first time, fantastic restaurants like Amaya Bread Bar, Jacobs & Co, C5, North 44, Fid, The Wellington Gastropub, Scaramouche, and book-ended the year at Nota Bene in January and December. We also returned to old favourite Canoe, and I got to try Splendido one last time before it changed ownership.

I watched 80 movies (for the first time, that is; I re-watch movies all the time), bought 30 albums and got 15 DVDs. I also read 14 books (quite a change from previous years when the MBA all but killed my pleasure-reading): The Coming Of The Third Reich by Richard Evans, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, Rock On: An Office Power Ballad by Dan Kennedy, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Almost Home by Damien Echols, Columbine by Dave Cullen, The Blind Side by Michael Lewis, The Long Walk To Freedom by Nelson Mandela, Deliver Me From Nowhere by Tennessee Jones, Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk, The Dark Valley: A Panorama Of The 1930s by Piers Brendon, A Short History Of WWII by James Stokesbury and A Writer At War by Vasily Grossman.

So while last December I felt pretty blah about the year gone by, I was happy with this year. Most of the significant change came at work, which I don’t talk about here, but trust me when I say it got a lot more interesting and significantly busier for both of us. Outside of that, though, there was a lot of good, very little bad and a whole lot of steady. Given that 2009 was anything but for a lot of people, I’ll take it.