Happy New Year!

2010 is ending, and good riddance! It wasn't a particularly good year for a lot of people, your editor included. It wasn't all bad, as several good things did happen. Off the top of my head, some of the positive things were

- "Don't ask, don't tell" was repealed. Or at least pre-repealed. Definitely a positive step.
- The Walking Dead premiered, was good, got good ratings, and got renewed.
- My sister announced that she's going to have another baby.
- I got a new(ish) car.
- Even though Democrats lost big in November, the uber-crazies (Christine O'Donnell, Joe Miller and especially Sharron Angle) lost.
- Election 2010 was nothing if not entertaining.
- The stock market went up (even if my own meager stocks declined).
- I got my first Mac. And didn't get assimilated into the Cult of Mac collective.

Okay, so it's not much of a list. And I did no research. I may tomorrow, if the mood strikes. Hey, I'm on vacation, cut me some slack! Bad stuff doesn't seem like a good thing to dwell upon, though I may visit a little of that too. For now, I'll leave you for now with a couple of observations:

- 2010 is the last year that those goofy New Year's Eve glasses will be credible, being the last year with two zeros in it (without a giant number in the third slot, at least). I have no doubt that the trinket hustlers will try to make them with 2011 and beyond, but they'll look dumber than they already did.
- 2010 is the end of the first decade of the 2000s, but it is also the last decade-ending year of the century that will be viewed that way. 2020 will be the last year of the teens, but will be viewed as the start of the '20s, much as 2000 is included as the beginning of this decade, even though it was not. Which is why you're seeing decade retrospectives this year, rather than last year, and they start at 2001.
- We got through a whole decade without naming it. I suppose this is normal. I'll bet the "gay nineties" wasn't thought up for the 1890s until later (and wouldn't get a name like that today!). But what was it? The oos? The two-thousandsies? The aughts? The lost decade? Or is that to come?

Anyway, have a very happy (and safe) New Year's Eve, and a prosperous (or at least better) 2011 than we had in 2010.