I was going to write up details on everything, but I figured it'd be a real downer, so I'll just summarize.

I've watched 3 families face irreparable or near irreparable damage - the person that used to watch over my mom when she was a kid died in Nov (and we only found out when we were going to visit her on X-mas day... and her husband had already died years ago from a sudden heart attack), one of my dad's closest friends who lost both feet to diabetes is currently in the hospital in and out of coma for reasons currently unknown (it was full body fever, but that went away I think - he's been in the hospital since the week before Christmas), and my aunt's mother got in a huge fight with her son in law on her 81st birthday (12/31) and left in a huff back to Hawaii the next day. That one's bad because she's got cancer and you really have to take every birthday as if it's her last. My aunt is depressed because they parted on negative terms now.

All this and I was constantly downed with a fever, cold, and coughs from just after Christmas until about the 3rd. I didn't even get to go to the birthday party because I didn't want to risk getting her sick.

Now, I'm not particularly close to these people, but these are direct connections to my family, so everyone's affected here in some way. It's just depressing how this year has ended for me. Hell, I was so sick I was asleep when the clock hit midnight on 12/31.

On a lighter but still negative note, a figure I ordered from Japan shipped on 12/10 via SAL (usually 15 days) and still has not arrived. Sigh.

Way to ring in 2012, huh?