Holidays and feasts we humans choose to celebrate say a lot about us. It’s no accident that Christmas, the festival most associated with giving and selflessness, is followed immediately by New Year’s, the festival most associated with self indulgence. Time and marriage have carried me safely past the years when my New Years Eves were noteworthy for any of the traditional forms of debauch, but I can still celebrate with an orgy of self indulgent, random reflection on the year gone by, couched in the format favoured by every cheesy end-of-year analyst…The List.

Weirdest Temperal-cinematic Displacement of 2006: clambering through the ancient Mayan ruin of Lamanai, abandoned and overgrown in the Belize rain forest, then watching Mel Gibson’s astonishing “Apocalypto” two days later and seeing an identical Mayan City bursting with commerce and life.

Biggest Life Lesson of 2006: Start planning to be old when you’re young. Insight prompted by the need to move my father into a nursing home. A brilliant man with a huge wealth of life experience, dad, like many of us, simply ignored the fact that humans get old, get sick, and eventually die. There’s a lot we can decide and do before that happens to make our own lives, and those of our families, better when we get to that stage of life. I, of course, have my beloved Bunker-mates to look after me in my declining years, but the rest of you might want to think about that.

Speaking Of Which, 2006 Discovery Most Likely To Result In A Retirement Spent Eating Catfood: I-Tunes Artist’s Essentials lists.

Best 2006 Alterrnative to Catfood: Sweetgrass Aboriginal Bistro, in the Market in Ottawa. I really had no idea what “contemporary Aboriginal cuisine” was supposed to mean, and was expecting buffalo tacos and maybe caribou stew. But Sweetgrass has one of the best menus in Ottawa, a fusion of Aboriginal ingredients and staples with the best new cuisine. Recommended without hesitation if you want to try something special, different, and wonderful.

Thing I’m Proudest of in 2006: Becoming a Scuba Instructor. One of those things I was honestly afraid I wouldn’t be able to get through, and did. Not in the same league with becoming a grandfather twice, but still…

Funniest 90 Cinematic Seconds of 2006: The rodeo scene in Borat. I almost choked on my popcorn.

2006 Film Featuring the Greatest Number of Snakes on a Means of Public Transport: Hmmm. Can’t think of any.

Blog Retirements I Was Happiest to See Fail in 2006: Candace and Shlemazl.

Most Idiotic Meme of 2006: Condoleeza Rice and Peter McKay. Pleeease.

Most Useful Advice Gathered in 2006 From Another Blogger: If you want to make yourself interesting to celebrities, be really interesting and have lots of booze and blow available. Thanks, Raymi. I will definitely bear that in mind.

Best Non Fiction Book That I Struggled The Longest To Get Through But Just Couldn’t Even Though I Know How Good It Is: Collapse, by Jared Diamond. Ever have one of those?

Magic Moment< of 2006: Being buzzed sixty feet underwater off Turneffe Reef by a pod of three curious dolphins, wild but friendly.

Political Disappointment of 2006: Secretly hoping in my little lefty heart of hearts that Harper had actually meant that stuff about openness and accountability, then watching business unfold as usual under a thin veneer of self-righteous, self-congratulatory truculence.

Cinematic Disappointment of 2006: Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”. The science was good, and I’m sure it worked well in its original form, a powerpoint presentation. But the film itself, in its incessant return to Gore, his past, and the long shots of our weary enviro-hero slogging through another airport on his way to save the planet, was a bit too transparent in promoting Gore’s Eco-Warrior persona as vigourously as the environment, making his very valid points way too easy for critics to dismiss. A good cause undermined by a personal political agenda.

Lifestyle Trend Adopted Before You Found Out It Was A Lifestyle Trend: Discovering a TV show and watching a whole season on DVD over a weekend (in our case, Battlestar Galactica, which to me had always meant Lorne Greene and bad special effects).

Most Embarassing Accoutrement of 2006 Which I Nonetheless Love: Sigh. My Blackberry. (Truculently) You got something to say about that?

Literary Rediscovery of 2006: That rotten old imperialist Rudyard Kipling. I’d forgotten that he was an absolute master of the short story. But a five volume collection of his India tales, acquired cheap at a Tobermory flea market, brought it all back. Some authors you really shouldn’t read when you’re young.

Resolution for 2007: Same as 2006. But this time, REALLY. Honest.