Some things stand out to make '05 a bit different

The year that just ended was like no other. Except maybe the one that came before it and the one before that.

They really do run together after a while, don't they? That's especially true as we age, but it's the case even for you youngsters out there.

One February looks pretty much like any other, and one autumn does little to differentiate itself from any other.

As I looked back on the 52 columns I wrote in 2005, though, I found a few things peculiar about the year that are worth mentioning again.

For instance, a year ago I bemoaned a new crime show on TV call Numb3rs, saying I was disappointed because there were more numbers in its title than in the plot. Well, I'm pleased to report that the show got better by involving more math and science into its stories; that angle makes it pretty watchable.

At Valentine's Day, I told you how hard my wife is to buy for because she's not much for boxes of chocolates, flowers and jewelry. That's always been true, but just before Christmas she surprised me by laying a newspaper ad for a jewelry store on the breakfast table and hinting for a certain item. It was so out of character for her that I immediately went out and bought it. On Christmas morning, she opened the little box and said she loved the jewelry, but denied ever hinting for me to buy it. I told you she was a tough customer.

While taking a couple of Spanish classes at work to hone my marginal skills, I wrote about the nickname I earned in high school Spanish class by mispronouncing a word. My 11th-grade classmates, I recalled, promptly started calling me the mispronounced version, even writing me that when signing my yearbook.

The good thing about writing that is that I received e-mails from a couple of my high school classmates, Nita and Jeanette, who helped me catch up on old times. I don't think they ever had funny nicknames.

In April, I mentioned that I was picked to teach class one week in Sunday school and was afraid my incompetence might get me booted from church.

I remember standing up to speak when my Sunday came, then sitting down.

The hour in between is a blur; I have no idea what I said. People still walk up to congratulate me on that morning, but I notice no one has asked me to do anything else in church, so ...

I devoted a column to my brother Tim's account of his trip to Paris, if less than a day can be considered a trip. A few weeks ago, he and his family visited Rome and saw the pope, but I'm afraid to ask him how that went.

One of the best parts of writing a column is getting your responses, and few topics this year drew more comments than the question I posed: Do Hollywood celebrities gossip about us the way we do about them? Like me, many of you wondered whether Brad and Angelina, Tom and Katie secretly envy the particulars of our mundane lives.

It was a Thanksgiving column, though, that brought perhaps the greatest deluge of mail and telephone calls. I mentioned in passing that we were planning to serve a turducken instead of a plain old turkey. You would have thought I had said we were going to roast a porpoise or a hobbit.

The mail came from those of you who had never heard of the boneless turkey stuffed with a boneless duck, which itself is stuffed with a boneless chicken, which itself is stuffed with, in our case, seafood jambalaya.

Readers wanted to know what a turducken was, where you get it and how you cook it. Others said you had tried one in the past or were planning to serve a turducken for Christmas.

Thanks for reading me in 2005, and thanks for your responses. If you stay tuned in 2006, we might just work on that hobbit recipe together.

Reach Glynn Moore at (706) 823-3419 or glynn.moore@augustachronicle.com.