kartooner

I’ve noticed that web folks are dili­gently recap­ping the events that occurred to them in the year 2006.

Always will­ing to fol­low suit when it comes to tra­di­tion, it’s no sur­prise to me that last year was one of the more plen­ti­ful years in my life­time. There were many expe­ri­ences that I’ll cher­ish for a life­time and those can be attrib­uted in most cases to the friends that I met for the first time (in per­son, and not through a com­puter screen) at SXSW.

Bear with me, as I’ve got a plethora of info to cover, but also know that while it’s inten­tion­ally “wordy” it’s also pretty mean­ing­ful to me.

To recap:

• My son, Quinn Har­ri­son, was born Feb­ru­ary 9^th, 2006. I remem­ber receiv­ing the call while I was at work from my father-in-law inform­ing me that I needed to make a mad dash to the hos­pi­tal. He didn’t use “mad” or “dash”, but I cer­tainly didn’t need any more con­vinc­ing. Quinn is a joy to have around–as is our daugh­ter Zoe–and while they drive us a bit batty some­times, it’s worth it.
• I also tran­si­tioned to a new job with new hours, after being let go from a job I held for close to 3 years. It wasn’t the eas­i­est move to make, but turned out just fine in the end. If any­thing, it allowed me to spend more time with my kids and that to me is more impor­tant than anything.
• Going to SXSW ’06 was a treat for sure. Meet­ing many tal­ented, funny and down to earth peo­ple made me real­ize that deep down we’re all in the same boat. Hon­or­able men­tions, or shout outs, go to Jonathan Snook, Dave Seah, Eric Shep­herd, Robert ‘The Swede’ Nyman (who car­ried on the tra­di­tion of call­ing me ‘Sagen’, passed down many gen­er­a­tions no thanks to the US mil­i­tary), Nathan Smith, Joshua Lane, Zach Inglis, Derek Feath­er­stone (thanks for the Star Wars arcade time) and many, many oth­ers. This year will be the first time that I’ll be par­tic­i­pat­ing on a panel with the likes of Dan Rubin, Anton Peck and Glenda Sims. (more to fol­low on that)
• Trag­i­cally, how­ever, my mother passed away at the age of 45. It came as quite a shock to my brother and I as we had no clue that she was so sick. For the both us, it was a heart­felt and coming-of-age expe­ri­ence shared with our sis­ter whom we’ve had lit­tle con­tact with over the years, or I should say not as much con­tact as we’d like.
• As a fam­ily we trav­eled once again to Cal­i­for­nia (our old stomp­ing grounds) to visit friends and fam­ily. It was too short but full of mean­ing and good mem­o­ries to boot.
• Towards the end of the year my daugh­ter Zoe turned 3 years old, pro­claim­ing, every hour of every minute of every sec­ond of the day, that it was indeed her birth­day. She even let com­plete strangers know of her won­der­ful day.

In the end, 2006 was pretty event­ful and a year I’ll remem­ber for a long time. I’m cross­ing my fin­gers and scrunch­ing my face that 2007 will be just as good and along­side that thought that I’ll meet many oth­ers and con­tinue pur­su­ing my per­sonal goals in life.

To my read­ers, thank you for stay­ing with me this long (yes, you know who you are) and inter­act­ing with what I have to say. You, alone, have made this site some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent than what it orig­i­nally was sup­posed to be.

I hope every one of your res­o­lu­tions came true last year, and that those you’ve set this year will carry you along.