The year 2004 began with a bang - flash, really - as Janet Jackson "inadvertently" exposed her bejeweled breast on national television, thus introducing "wardrobe malfunction" into our vocabularies.
It ended with the horrific earthquake and tsunamis in southern Asia, which may have claimed about 100,000 lives at last count.
And in between, there have been several shocking and thrilling headlines in both national and local news.
We watched as health officials picked through the overgrown hair and beard of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's, moments after he crawled at gunpoint from the spider hole where he'd been hiding.
And we watched all the intimate details as Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck fell in love, then fell apart.
Closer to home, we were consumed in worry and fear as the canyons of west Carson City were engulfed in flames. Then we reached out to the victims whose homes were lost or damaged.
A new principal, Fred Perdomo, took over at the high school, ending the 12-year administration of Glen Adair.
A couple of ex-politicians showed they still have what it takes. Former mayor Marv Teixeira and former assemblywoman Bonnie Parnell both ran for the same offices they had retired from earlier. They both were re-elected.
It was bittersweet news when the body of Carson City mother Bertha Anguiano, who had been missing for nearly a year, was discovered in the desert outside of Fallon. Finally, the case could move forward. But the only suspect in her kidnapping and murder, Israel "Juan Carlos" Tellez, killed himself in a Utah jail cell shortly after the discovery.
And as the year draws to a close, we are still left with some unanswered questions which will surely be pondered in the media.
Who started the Waterfall fire? Where are local murder suspects Maximiliano Cisneros and Gary Brown? Will we ever find Osama bin Laden?
And, of course: What's going on with that freeway?
