Memories are made of this: once again, G.D. Gearino reviews the year that was, putting such a spin on it that 2011 feels quite dizzy.

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Or you could rename it the Christo Westin and jack up the room rate.

Charlotte had to close a downtown light-rail station and portions of two streets after a chunk of aluminum sheathing on the 300-foot-tall Westin hotel detached and fell 24 floors. The city reopened the station and streets only after the hotel wrapped two sides of the building with a special net to prevent more pieces from falling.

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"Rockn gem prty my pad thrsdy! C U there!"

Concluding that traditional advertising wasn't working, Charles & Colvard, the Triangle-based manufacturer of Moissanite gemstones, announced it would move into social media, reaching out to bloggers and engaging online commenters. It also said it might try Tupperware-style home parties.

Makes sense only when you realize "healthy" is defined as "least sick."

Builder magazine forecast that the Raleigh-Cary housing market would decline only 10% in 2011, prompting the publication to proclaim it the healthiest of the nation's 100 largest metro areas. Durham-Chapel Hill ranked third.

Forgo the cigarette for a post-coital vaccine.

Medicago, a Montreal-based biotechnology company, opened a plant in Research Triangle Park to make H1N1 flu vaccines from tobacco. The "noxious weed"--as early smoking foe King James I of England referred to it--has an easily modifiable genome that makes it useful for pharmaceutical purposes.

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Within a month, they figured out how to bundle subprime mortgages and sell them to suckers, uh, investors.

To get a first-hand feel for finance, two dozen Charlotte high-school students got training from a local credit union and started an after-school bank at Harding University High. It opens every Tuesday to handle transactions for students, faculty and family members.

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Cost to keep employees who have no other prospects? billions.

Regulatory filings last year showed that Charlotte-based Bank of America had earmarked $3 billion to cover charges related to its acquisition of Merrill Lynch, including money to retain executives. Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, questioned why the bank needed to pay them to stay when Wall Street was laying off people: "I don't think anyone was out there hiring."

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Thus will no AmEx customer ever hear again: "Hello, kin I hep y'all with something?"

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