Happy New Year!

We had a pretty mellow celebration here in Iowa. Barack Obama invited us to his New Year's Eve party, but we decided to lay low and party with Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest instead (this is not a joke). We drove 17 hours on Saturday to come home, as I had some housekeeping I needed to take care of here on Monday.

[4:15 pm edit: Way back when, I complained about the Central Time Zone and how annoying it is. Well, last night, they played New Year's Rockin' Eve live. No tape delay. Do you know what that means. People here in the midwest celebrate the New Year at 11 pm. Why? I don't know. people here are weird. For some reason they live life like they live in the Eastern Time Zone, with most people starting work at 7 am. There's a lot of things I don't understand about this place; Central Time may be the hardest for me to understand.]

We also we wanted to be back in time for the caucuses on Thursday, and judging from the weather report I saw/heard for the Northeast, I think we made a good choice in leaving a little early. Incidentally, I still don't know who I will be caucusing for - if you feel strongly for any candidate, please make your case in the comments - but I'm not voting for Tom Tancreado, no matter how good your argument. I can go either way, in terms of party, I mean.

I usually don't make Resolutions, because I usually don't keep Resolutions. But this year, I've made a few. Most of them will remain in my head, but one of them is to try to be more productive in my writing. Hopefully, that means more posting on this here blog; hopefully, it means interesting posts on this here blog. We connected with some old friends while in Boston and spread the word of the blog; in addition to the legions of fans already visiting, I want to keep people happy.

Kimberly and I are also working on something else for the internets which is a little more interactive and collaborative - we're keeping it private for now, but hopefully it will go public in the future.

My first post of the year will be right below this. I'm sure Kimberly will check in soon to complain about the weather - it isn't supposed to get over 10 degrees today, so I have to agree with her for right now.

Please feel free to comment if the inspiration strikes. We hope to see you soon.

2007 The Year in Pictures

Last year was pretty exciting for Kimberly and I. We drove all over the country, including a move from Portland to Iowa. We spent two months in Italy eating and drinking everything in sight. And we got a niece, 1900 (who, coincidently, kind of looks like a pumpkin right now, because of her red hair and chubby cheeks).

1900 with her grandmother Nonnina

As part of a project I was working on in December, I went through pretty much every picture we took last year (and pretty much every picture I've taken since I was 6). Since I already did most of the work, I uploaded some of the ones I thought were the best of the bunch to Flickr.

Most of them are from our trip to Italy.

Some you may have seen before.

Some are a peek into future posts.

Some are technical.

Some are dramatic.


There's a bunch more on the Flickr page: my preferred viewing method is the slide show.

Hope you enjoy.