Newspapers feel the need to do 'yearly recaps' and 'best of the year' and 'top stories' and stuff like that this time of year. The tsunami blind-sided some of these articles, prepared in advance. AP's top ten stories selection doesn't include it. What's with the AP anyway? They thought the top story was the U.S. Presidential Election. Ho hum. Well, here's the whole list. I'll bet you'd forgotten, momentarily at least, about at least one thing on the list.

1. U.S. Presidential Election
2. Iraq
3. Florida Hurricanes
4. Abu Ghraib prison scandal
5. Sept. 11 Commission Report
6. Gay Marriage
7. Yasser Arafat dies
8. Ronald Reagan dies
9. Beslan, Russia school siege
10. Madrid Terrorist Bombings

So if the tsunami had been a little sooner then it would have presumably bumped the Madrid bombings off the list. Ronald Reagan dies? Please. Of course, his dying wasn't the half of it. It took him weeks to get buried. Yasser Arafat was still wielding power. That makes more sense as a 'top story' or a significant event.

In my little world, these were the top stories of 2004, in no particular order.

1. Bob Reitz dies of pancreatic cancer.
2. We go to Washington, D.C.
3. They discover my dad has a goiter the size of a small animal which is CAT scanned a couple of times and determined not to be growing.
4. My sister breaks a bone, has to have surgery and has another arduous recovery.
5. We finish our remodel, feeling quite out of sorts with the contractor.
6. We also replace a toilet that never quite worked right for us, did a preventive termite treatment.
7. We planned and executed our trip to Normandy, Paris and (briefly) the Alsace. FFP's first trip to Europe.
8. Austin's year started out dry but got wet and stayed wet, setting records.
9. FFP's Dad has a piece that gets published in the Writing Austin's Lives project.
10. Our pergola, which had a tin roof perched on the antique columns, collapsed and became a slab.
11. The dead tree that had remained as a post to continue shining light on the junk trumpet player collapsed.
12. I took my SCSI scanner and the WIN95 machine that was its lifeline to the network out of service.
13. I do my Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving (mostly) and send cards out for Thanksgiving, too.
14. I got a digital video recorder and changed the way I watch TV.
15. I signed up for Netflix and changed the way I rented videos.
16. My uncle (Dad's brother-in-law) died after a struggle with Alzheimer's.
17. I did a number of relative visiting and entertaining duties.
18. I took an online Visual Basic class.

So my life was dull, devoid of real amazing drama or accomplishment.