Six…

Just six days to go, you still have time to plan a party. We’ll behaving ours on Monday, to ring out Bush’s last night in office and leave us Inauguration to shake off this eight-year hangover and enjoy the inauguration on TV (which is as close as we’ll be getting). Here’s a fun web site to help you plan your own Bush Bash for next Monday…

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Looking Back & Looking Forward

On New Year’s Day, it feels appropriate to look back and take some stock of the year that has just passed, and look forward to the year ahead. No major deep thoughts here, just a checklist and a draft ‘to-do’ list.

Looking Back at 2008

– lost 25 pounds

– ran a Half-Marathon, Marathon, and a 5k

– got a new dog

worked very hard locally to help elect our new President

– first time visits to Austin, TX and Denver, CO (loved them both)

Looking Forward to 2009

– organize and enjoy a local inaugural ball

– run a Half-Marathon and a Triathalon

– paint the kitchen

– take a trip home to Huntington Beach, CA this summer

– send my oldest child off to college

The Great T-Shirt Census

Media_httpfarm4static_aaafaI often wonder if I might suffer from some degree of OCD. The latest evidence of which is today’s project, sorting and cataloging my t-shirts. I have too many t-shirts, and it would not be an unreasonable chore to look through them for ones that I might throw out. But I couldn’t just do that. T-shirts are one of my primary pieces of clothing. I have acquired those that I have over many years, and most of them have some sort of personal or historical significance, at least to me. Before any purge, there must first be a census!

So what did I find? Here’s some results from my T-shirt Census:

Total Count: 54

Type Breakdown:

Political: 14
I acquired a few in this last year, my favorite of which was this Obama/Biden shirt purchased at the Democratic Convention in Denver. I attribute Obama’s historic win in Virginia to my wearing of this shirt while running in my Northern Virginia burb. But I also love this bush-basher.

Sports Related: 17 (5 Chicago Cubs)
Music/Band: 1 (wow, this is a change. In my younger days, just about all of my shirts were concert tees).
Blank: 3 (two orange, why?, and one single plain white tee).

Top Colors:
White & Grey: (combined total of 21 shirts)
Tie-Dye: 2

Top Brand:

Hanes & Gilden: 7 each

Age:

There are two that date to the 80s. One of which, I’m embarrased to say is a black tee that reads ‘Hustler Muff Dive’, which I think I acquired in high school and I hope I’ve never worn, but just never through out either. The other says, “Miru Mir”, Russian for “Peace on Earth” from the foreign language house I lived in off campus at UCSB.

My favorite in the batch is one of the oldest. It’s a black t-shirt from the Internet World Conference I attended in 1995. The shirt has held together enough to wear, but the fabric has achieved a unique softness that feels nothing like the heavy cotton it once was.

What other insights did I gain? Probably just that I need to do a better job prioritizing my tasks. Feel free to browse my list of tee shirts here, and see what insight you can learn about me from it.

Digital Christmas Past

In the classic 1989 movie, Christmas Vacation, there is a touching scene where Clark Griswold spends an afternoon locked in his attic. He bundles up in some old clothes, discovers some old hidden Christmas presents, and get misty with nostalgia watching old holiday movies.

I’ve recently moved my online abode from one web host to another. The task involved taking some time to backup and transfer files from one to the other, and that brought about some fun discoveries in a digital analogy to Clark’s experience in his attic.

Way back in the year 2000, we took our annual family Christmas letter digital. No longer would we stuff, lick, label and stamp envelopes as we had for years. In the new millennium, our holiday wishes could travel the digital tubes of the net (Yes, there are some offliners to whom we will always have to send a hard copy letter, but they miss out on all the fun links).

Typically, in addition to sending our Christmas letter by email, I also post it to the web for easy sharing with afterthoughts or others who missed out on the email. For that first letter in 2000, we produced the below video (and made it available in high and low bandwidth versions in Quicktime AND RealPlayer!). And for any who care to dig deep into the Casey Family digital Christmas Letter archive, I say, “Get a life, and enjoy!” Here they are: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Stay tuned for this year’s letter coming soon!

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