amer8491

This year was rather bucket-listish.  Or at least I thought it was until I went to see a screening of Elf last night and director Jon Favreau informed the crowd he had just flown in from working with Martin Scorsese, thus crossing off a major item on his own bucket list. Suddenly my bucket list seemed so underachieving…so middle class…so middlebrow.

Nonetheless, here are the things I count on my bucket list this year.

1. We finally made it back to L.A. This was more on husband’s bucket list than mine, but, predictably, now that we are back I like it better than grass-is-always-greener spouse.

2. To get to L.A. we drove cross-country from Boston. Before we left that fine city, we enjoyed a debauched weekend with friends from England and visited Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod. On our journey west we saw Niagara Falls, spent the night in a Harold Pinter- themed hotel room in St. Louis, ate Frito pie in Tulsa, watched a steak eating contest at the Big Texan motel in Amarillo, Texas, and stopped to see where Clark Gable honeymooned with Carole Lombard in Oatman, Arizona.

Gracie

3. After a lifetime of failed attempts, I have a cat that likes to cuddle. Meet Gracie. She was my grandmother’s cat and luckily for us the person who had rescued her after my grandmother passed away was looking for a new home for her when we moved  back to California.

4. Much to husband’s distress, I travelled to Beijing, Delhi, and Reykjavik (twice!) for work this year. I am going to go ahead and count Iceland as a proxy for Antarctica and thereby declare I have fulfilled my childhood ambition to travel to all seven continents.

Captain America meets Captain Kirk

5. More exotic than Beijing, Delhi and Reykjavik combined was the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, where husband fulfilled his childhood ambition of meeting William Shatner.

6. I did a five minute stand up set in a comedy club in L.A. Warning: I say the c-word (NOT cancer) a lot.

7. My book, Americashire, is coming out on She Writes Press in March 2013. I will be bothering you substantially about it in the new year, but for now I would be terribly grateful if you could take a moment to like the Facebook page.

One thing that was NOT on my bucket list was to be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but life is sometimes like that. Earlier this month I experienced  “persistent neurological symptoms,” which is a rather fancy way to describe the right side of your face feeling like you are fresh from dental surgery. I have since seen two excellent neurologists, one of whom I am proud to say deemed me as “too neurologically boring” for her and unworthy of her specialist skills on an ongoing basis. (This same lady was on Extra earlier this year talking about MS in a short clip that is very informative if you are interested. video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player Oh and Extra!  How very L.A. is it for your neurologist to appear on entertainment television?) In general this seems like a manageable condition that should have little impact on my life, and I am looking forward to starting my new routine of weekly “shooting up.”

On the husband front, he continues his rampage through global entertainment organizations. Following a stint at Paramount Pictures he has recently joined the happiest place on earth, Disney. Let’s hope he leaves it that way.

And now, in the words of Psy: Dress Classy. Dance Cheesy. Merry Christmas 2012, Gangnam Style.