Blimey, I always think people have a much rougher time than me when reading these threads but nothing compares to Mito. May your 2019 be somewhat easier than that (Mito and all of you, bunch of cnuts).
2018 started for me with wedding planning. We’d fixed the date and venue during 2017 but done nothing about outfits, guests, food etc. By March it became apparent that the venue we’d chosen (owned by the council, so I thought it wouldn’t fleece me) was simply unaffordable for the reception because they had a tied caterer which charged from £40 a head just for the basic sit-down food, excluding canapés, drinks etc. With the meal cost rapidly heading for £10k I realised nobody comes away from a wedding remembering the food so after some heartache with my bride we switched to just having the ceremony there and going on to a hotel for the reception. Which meant we could stay the night afterwards too, and cut the cost by about 2/3. This sounds like a complete win but the process was pretty fraught; we were lucky to find somewhere for a wedding at short notice and nearly had a tent in the garden. That would have been hilarious because we discovered a week or two before the wedding that a marathon was running past our house on the wedding day, doing something like 9 laps through the village without closing the road. To cap it, they were running a 50k straight after
It was enough fun for the wedding car to pick up the bride; but the organiser got all the runners to sign a card for us which was really sweet.
During the organisation we went down to Salcombe for a week in March, where it snowed more than it has in decades. Really lovely to see the place in the snow after 40 years of going there, but we had to cut short our holiday because the forecasters were threatening that the A38 would be closed; it was, for 12 hours, not long after we'd escaped Devon, so good timing. But we immediately booked to go back to the same place in September to make up for the bit we'd missed.
This review is looking chronologically poor because I've just remembered another highlight from early in the year; January in fact: a jaunt to climb the Skirrid with a bit of an explore of castles in the Marches on the way home. I'd been meaning to climb the Skirrid for a couple of years since a week in Hay-on-Wye, the Black Mountains and the Brecons in early 2016 when we happened to find the Skirrid Mountain Inn, the oldest pub in Wales. Obviously we went back there for lunch in 2018. A lovely place and highly recommended.
Shortly before Christmas 2017 my dad had separated from my second stepmother, so 2018 was spent finding out what was happening with his divorce; that came through in November 2018, and he and his new partner had bought a house on the edge of the New Forest in October 2018. My sister bought a house in 2018 too, just round the corner from my last house. After moving myself in 2017, it was rather nice to see other family members' house moves go pretty smoothly.
The wedding basically absorbed most of my spare money in 2018 so work on the house ground to a halt, other than getting the hot water pressure sorted by installing a new cylinder.
Getting married was really the big thing last year. It was a fantastic day and, unlike my first marriage, I had no niggling doubts beforehand. The honeymoon was great too, in Vegas and Hawaii, though I don't fancy travelling all the way back from Hawaii in one go again. We came home to an immediate car replacement for me (literally the day after we got home - Audi picked up in the morning and the Volvo arrived before lunchtime despite being from an entirely different company, all without me having to leave the house), and then within a couple of weeks acquiring three kittens which we'd found online while lying on a sunbed in Hawaii. The latter half of the year was spent trying to integrate them with the dogs and existing cats, which seems to have gone better than we could have hoped. Though the living room curtains and landing carpet have lots of holes in now.
Both of my next-door neighbours died during 2018, both in their early/mid 90s. They had both been pretty well when we moved in, in July 2017, but just like my own grandmother who died in 2017, they went from seeming well to expiring within a fairly short timeframe. I'm hoping I live past 90; that would mean I'm still only half way through my life. But my dad is 75 this year and it makes you appreciate more that you won't have your parents forever.
Work has gone pretty well; I'm bringing in more clients than ever and getting the benefit financially but the firm has finally started to go through a somewhat lengthy and complicated process to make up new partners. Which started just before our wedding, so I wasn't massively focussed on it and despite the fact it's still ongoing with nobody yet made up, I suspect I'm going to be overlooked purely because I've not been killing myself for work; it's as if that's the main criterion despite the large number of boxes I already tick. Frankly, I have the longest commute to work and I never stop working in the evening, always dealing with clients until I fall asleep, so if the firm doesn't recognise this then it's their own loss; I could set up on my own and do very well, but I really love my colleagues, my clients and my work and don't have any desire to leave. So we'll see what happens. That really leads into plans for 2019...
Couple of holidays already booked: a week in New York in April and a week in Salcombe in May. I also want to finalise our extension plans and get planning permission by the middle of the year if possible. Work will be whatever it is; I don't think anything can really happen until the end of the firm's financial year so no plans to be made there yet other than to keep doing what I'm doing. I'm going to be as helpful as I can to my wife, to find her a different job which allows us to have more free time together (though frankly I'm the limiting factor because I'm out of the house a minimum of 12 hours every day).
Not sure whether to sell my old house and/or my Mazda this year; the money for our extension would be available if I sold the old house, but it's financially OK to keep it and emotionally a bit of a thing to sell, so who knows. And while I fancy a new car, I think I'll wait until next year and get a mk4.5 MX5 with the new 2.0 engine, so the current MX5 has no reason to depart just yet. I do fancy a Rolex though, which would get a lot more use than an MX5 even if it's much slower
Oh, and Rev: a lot of what you describe also describes me. I only realised over Christmas that you have blocked me on FB; I promise not to argue with you if you want to unblock me.
It was enough fun for the wedding car to pick up the bride; but the organiser got all the runners to sign a card for us which was really sweet. 
) but have goals and plans for 2019 so not going to dwell.