Happy New Year!

2005 Balcony Sunrise.

Well, I began posting this once, but my browser crashed while I was trying to upload a photograph. One of these days...

I had a rather uneventful New Year's Eve... I stayed home and edited the photographs I took yesterday while out for a four-hour Walk-n-Shoot™.

I was pleased to see that the paper I photographed on December 1st was still in its place awaiting the third installment of a series I hope will last until the spring (which yesterday resembled by the way).

I kept the television off all night, wanting to have nothing to do with the ever-burgeoning foolishness that television has become. No doubt everybody missed Dick Clark... Fuh!

As sunrise came this morning, I woke to it beaming in my windows and had to grab a shot quickly – my first photograph of 2005 isn't the best, but it's my first. A year ago, I probably wouldn't have thought to run grab a camera; neither would I have done it many years before that. This must be a sign of something!

With a very strange year behind me – one in which I've re-invigorated my interest in photography, got inspired to become a bit more vocal politically (albeit mostly in the form of blogging), experienced the hell known as "raging teenage hormones", lost my full-time job thanks to the state having yanked 50% of its funding to the arts...

Doors close. Doors open.

Some open for a second time... Last year, I created an alumni website for my high school (currently down due to problems with hosting), and in the process I was inspired to look up people I'd known long ago.

I found Mike Baird – one of my best friends as a kid – by doing a Google search, and finding so many results that I chose to click on Google's image search link. One of the first images that came up was one in which I recognized Mike after not having seen him in close to thirty years. He's a web developer in California. He has overcome a lot to become a successful businessman.

Alice Wilkinson – a teenage romance that never seemed to quite find its flame – lives near Chicago, two marriages and a couple of children (and step-children) later.

I located Sandy Harley, a woman I'd worked with (and fell for) when I lived in Minneapolis one summer – she's also in California and working on a Masters degree.

Sandy Pfefferle. I met her in the summer of 1978 in the parking lot of Bloomington, Minnesota's Metropolitan Stadium (where the Mall of America now sits, I believe) where I was tailgating (my first time) prior to a Minnesota Kicks (NASL) game. She gave her phone number to me and I must have dialed six of the seven numbers a dozen times – I was seeing the other Sandy at the time (or so I thought), so I couldn't quite get myself to dial the seventh. However, we talked and corresponded for a year or so after I left Minnesota; that I lived in Ohio and she in Minnesota was too difficult a commute to imagine, however, so things just petered out. She's happily married with three boys.

2004 has no doubt been an interesting year for my friends, as they've seen me become a bit more reclusive. I guess that so much of my vocation and avocation are computer-related that I find myself mercilessly tied to one. I am hoping to rectify that this year, as well as loosening up on other commitments.

I have been very lucky to know the people I call my friends; even luckier that they call me their friend. For fear of leaving someone out, I'm just going to say, "You know who you are!" and sincerely hope that covers it.

Here's to a great 2005!