It was, in many cases, a year of headaches and hand-wringing over what wasn’t being done or what was to come.

Work on almost every north-south traffic artery in McHenry County at the same time led to frustrated motorists. Continued inaction by state lawmakers led to Illinois being in a worse financial quagmire than it was last year – and little hope for improvement on that front.

Nonstop election coverage saturated the airwaves for 10 months, with politicians and pundits shouting their views at every turn. It didn’t stop with the Nov. 6 victory by President Barack Obama, as it was replaced by finger-pointing over who was to blame for the looming Jan. 1 “fiscal cliff” that the country still might fall off.